Tag Archives: Jean Ritchie
From the Archives Music

Lost 1960 Jean Ritchie concert recording and rare photographs unearthed from the archives of folklorist Ellen Stekert

By on Friday, July 17, 2026
Jean Ritchie at Indiana University, 1960

A major historical discovery offers a rare, high-fidelity window into the “Mother of Folk” in her prime, now available to the public alongside newly released archival photographs.

A remarkable piece of American music history has emerged from the archives of legendary folksinger and folklorist Ellen Stekert. Today marks the official multimedia release of a previously lost 1960 Jean Ritchie concert recording, complete with a companion gallery of rare, intimate photographs taken during Ritchie’s visit to Indiana University.

The complete, newly remastered concert audio can be heard for free on the Swingin’ Pig YouTube Channel, which is embedded below. Concurrently, Stekert’s stunning archival photographs of Ritchie have been made available for viewing and purchase at her official Darkroom store.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Jean Ritchie was a towering figure in the American folk music revival, widely celebrated for her mastery of Southern Mountain a cappella ballads and the mountain dulcimer. In 1960, Stekert arranged for Ritchie to perform a solo concert at Indiana University in Bloomington—then the premier center for graduate folklore studies in the United States. The performance was captured on tape and later broadcast on Stekert’s radio program, The World of Folk Music, on WFIU.

For over six decades, the original reel-to-reel tapes remained preserved in Stekert’s personal collection until her producer, Ross Wylde, began the process of releasing her vast archive to audiences.

“This is a major archival discovery,” says Wylde, who mixed and remastered the 1960 recording. “Very few complete, high-fidelity live recordings of Jean Ritchie exist from this pivotal era. There are several songs on this tape that have no known comparable versions elsewhere. Some of these renditions may very well be the last surviving examples of the ‘Mother of Folk’ in her prime.”

The newly released live set is split into two distinct halves: the first featuring the traditional Kentucky heritage songs of Ritchie’s upbringing, and the second highlighting ballads she personally collected during her travels through the British Isles. The recording captures not only her precise musicality but also the wit, charm, and storytelling that captivated early revival audiences.

Ellen Stekert, now 91, reflects on her late friend and contemporary: “Jean Ritchie wasn’t just authentic; she was special, a singular artist who bridged two worlds and left them both infinitely richer. She was a brilliant ambassador who combined the traditional world she grew up in with an ever-changing commercial market.”

To accompany the audio release, Stekert has opened her personal vaults to share her photography from Ritchie’s visit, capturing the artist both on stage and in rare, candid moments behind the scenes in Bloomington. A newly published, comprehensive essay detailing Stekert’s memories of the concert, their subsequent friendship, and their early days as “imaginary rivals” in the New York folk scene can be read at this post on Ellen’s website.

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Music

Ellen on her friend and “imaginary rival,” Jean Ritchie

By on Friday, July 17, 2026

On the occasion of the release of a newly rediscovered 1960 concert by Jean Ritchie in Ellen Stekert’s archives, Ellen writes a reminiscence of her decades-long friendship with the folk-music icon. (Ellen also took the above photo of Ritchie in 1960. It is available on her photography store at Darkroom.com, along with many other of Ellen’s historic images.)

I had known of Jean Ritchie before I ever met her. In 1952 or '53, I was about to cut a record for Stinson Records. Around the same time, Jac Holzman had recently founded the now-famous Elektra Records as a small, independent folk label, and I was anxious to record for them—but Jac had found Jean Ritchie and said, “She’s the real thing.” So, Elektra cut one of their first folk records of Jean Ritchie.

A year or so later, I learned that Jean had received a Fulbright scholarship to go to England to find the "source" of her family’s traditional songs. I had applied for a Fulbright to England as well, and had not gotten it–it was the most coveted of the Fulbrights.

So, in a way, Jean Ritchie started off in my imagination as my rival!

On February 20, 1960, Jean Ritchie gave a concert at Indiana University in Bloomington, at that time the home of the most respected graduate program in folklore in the United States. It was a stellar concert. The first half featured traditional songs from Jean’s Kentucky heritage, and the second half featured songs collected during her Fulbright-sponsored travels to the British Isles.

As was her usual performance, it was a delightful evening. Jean’s wit and unaffected charm, combined with her outstanding and tasteful musicality and insight into her “roots,” gave the audience a rare view of the workings of tradition with an overlay of personal creativity.

I had arranged for Jean to come to Indiana University. I had known of her since the early-1950s, when she began doing concerts in New York City and the surrounding suburbs. I had always admired her and felt she was one of the great “translators” of a branch of America’s folk tradition, a connection for the New York City urbanites and other audiences to their assumed past: the Appalachian Mountains, one of the first great obstacles settlers from Europe had to overcome to form the United States, and one of the main focuses of this second part of the Folksong Revival that was sweeping the country.

In 1959, I was able to get to know her personally. We had both been recruited for a CBS TV program called Camera Three. The episode was called “Ballads Are News,” and each of us (Jean, the New Lost City Ramblers, Oscar Brand, and others) sang about historical natural disasters in the U.S. It was a successful program with good people, and we had an easy and enjoyable time working together. Each of us was given a song or two to sing. Jean and I sang a duet about the Santa Barbara earthquake. You can hear the program in its entirety on my Bandcamp page. While working together, I discovered that Jean lived very close to me and my family on Long Island. She and her photographer husband, George Pickow, had a house on top of a rise in Port Washington, just a hop and a jump away from my home in Great  Neck, and fairly isolated from the buzz of Long Island traffic.

Several months later, I invited her to Indiana University. I invited and arranged for her appearance not only because of her wonderful talents, but also because the head of our Folklore program at Indiana University was decidedly antagonistic to the folksong revival. He treated those of his students (such as me and Joe Hickerson) who were even glancingly associated with it, as though we were inferior students. I wanted him to see a dignified and informative program of traditional folk music intelligently and beautifully performed. Unfortunately, he didn't even attend the concert.

Jean was anxious to come to Indiana University so she could meet some of the students and scholars who were studying folklore. So, after the concert, we had a blast of a party at the home of a fellow student. A few years before, Jean had been awarded a Fulbright scholarship to the British Isles to find the “sources” of her traditional family songs.  She devoted the second half of her concert to those songs, and sang some that she had collected for us. It was clear why she had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Kentucky.

Jean’s husband had not accompanied her to IU, so I spent a good deal of time with her during the days she stayed in Bloomington. By the time she left, we felt we could call each other friends. I drove her to the airport followed by a gaggle of fans who stayed to see her off.

Over the years, she often asked me to come over and visit her in Long Island — her letters to me are full of invitations, but as a graduate student, I was too busy, and I now regret that.

In 1974, I wrote to Jean asking her to perform a concert at the University of Minnesota, where I had just been hired. I tried, but the various venues in the Twin Cities were all full by the date that I wrote her. However, she and George still came to visit. I gave them a tour of the city, and to my delight, she performed in my class. It was a treat for the students. It was the last time I saw her, although we kept in touch. I had become lost in the webs of academia and she was still in entertainment.

Some have called Jean Ritchie “the mother of the folksong revival.” Jean was even more than that. She was one of the best ambassadors of an American traditional art form, the Southern Mountain a cappella ballads and songs. Even more remarkable, she was an ambassador who created a new art form by combining the aesthetic of the traditional world in which she grew up, with that of an ever-changing commercial market. She not only presented a song in a vocal style as close to that which an urban audience at the time would accept, but she also produced a performance that was essentially a refined mix of authentic Southern Mountain music combined with unorthodox harmonies taken from the urban classical art world and used by her “traditional” dulcimer accompaniment.  The single note harmony lines of her dulcimer were as good as, if not better, to the ears of the urban audience as those of Alfred’s Deller’s counter-tenor or Jean-Pierre Rampel’s flute.

Jac Holzman had it right all those years ago when he called her "the real thing"—though he only knew the half of it. Jean Ritchie wasn't just authentic; she was special, a singular artist who bridged two worlds and left them both infinitely richer.
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From the Archives Music Photography

Ellen on Pete Seeger and “Old Devil Time”

By on Wednesday, May 20, 2026

In her own words, Ellen tells the story of her friendship with Pete Seeger and the story behind her cover of his song “Old Devil Time.” The song is available now on all major streaming and digital platforms and can be purchased on her Bandcamp page. To view her exclusive photographs of Pete Seeger, visit https://ellenstekert.darkroom.com/. 

I learned this song from a woman named Elli Winters when I was first teaching at Wayne State University in Detroit. I later was told that Pete Seeger had written it, and that he had composed it at the last minute when he was asked to write a song for the film Tell Me You Still Love Me, Junie Moon. It has always been one of my favorites; it shows Pete’s remarkable musicality and his inclusive sensitivity.

One day when I was working on an arrangement of the song "Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens", also known as "The Little Sparrow", I was struck by how similar the melody was to "Old Devil Time." It seemed to me that Pete might have had the traditional song in mind when he composed "Old Devil Time." I never did ask him about it, and I suppose it really does not matter, but by not asking, I missed an opportunity to see a bit into the mind of one of the most influential musicians of our time.

I do miss Pete. He seemed indestructible. He was always encouraging to other performers as well as folksong enthusiasts. He was positive almost to a fault. I remember how surprised I was at his handshake — you expected it to be firm and steady, after all he was a banjo player, but it was surprisingly gentle, almost limp.

Pete had few obvious aggressive traits. He was one of the most generous and gentle, yet compelling ambassadors still left of the few remaining souls who bridged the gap between World War II the first part of the Folksong Revival and the Second (the 1930s though the 1980s). Even though he was blacklisted by the U.S. government during the McCarthy era, it seemed to not decrease his influence on American popular culture.

Pete and I were long-time acquaintances, good enough to call each other friends. We had met at New York City "hoots"—informal musical jam sessions—in the late 1940s, and he followed my education and training in folklore, even mentioning me in his Sing Out column when I drove across country alone in my basic VW in 1956, singing my way and collecting/recording traditional material. When I had become a teaching professor, he often let me know when he would be in my vicinity and dropped in for a visit. One photo, which has been released to my online gallery (ellenstekert.darkroom.com), was taken during such a visit to Minneapolis around 1983.

Those of us who were around folksinging circles during the Revival have our Pete Seeger stories, and some of those stories also include others who were moving forces in the movement. My favorite story was told to me by Jean Ritchie, and I find it an endearing one since it is about a major event in the history of the folksong movement in the U.S. Here is how Jean told it to me:

Jean and Pete were backstage monitoring the performers onto and off the stage at the Newport Festival in 1965. All seemed to be going well when Bob Dylan took the stage in front of the thousands of excited fans present. According to Jean, Bob sang a number of acoustic songs and then, in a surprise move, switched to a high-volume set of electrified pieces with his band. The crowd went wild (both pro and con). Pete had long advised Bob not to go electric, yet here he was, defying Pete’s advice, not having forewarned anyone on the Newport Board of Directors (including Jean). That sent Pete (formerly a gentle supporter of Dylan), scurrying around, looking at the ground. Jean (who was a studied avoider of controversy) after watching him for several minutes, asked him what he was doing, to which he replied, "I’m looking for a stone to throw through that blasted machine!"

That was Jean’s story, but the idea of Pete becoming so angry as to want to throw a rock through Dylan’s amplifier, and Jean, who had avoided controversy at all costs in her career as a gentle Southern Mountain lady, both comforting one of the pivotal revolts of the Folksong Revival, is enough to be a memorable event.

Both Jean and Pete were being part of an event that was an historic and violent disruption and rebellion within the industry and social movement that had given each their celebrity status. Jean, who put her grandfather’s name as a pseudonym on her “protest songs” about the Harlan coal mining, and Pete, who had faced the U.S. congress’ House Un-American Activities Committee, had finally met their Waterloo in a bloodless coup that was inevitable.

The previous story about a story is an analysis of a story told by another person who is implicated but not the focus of the initial story but who actually factors in it and into yet another story... And that is the plight of the professional intellectual—and at times it is enlightening, but only at times. Nonetheless, it is through stories that we learn. Beware of story-tellers and remember to be "critical" in the best way; that is, think on what you hear.

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Music

New album: “Ballads Are News: Live On Camera Three”

By on Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Following up on Ellen’s long-lost Woody Guthrie cover “High Floods & Low Waters“, released earlier this month, we are pleased to share the entire recording of that 1959 session, Ballads Are News: Live On Camera Three. Originally taped for the CBS news program Camera Three, the hourlong show also features several of Ellen’s good friends in the folk scene, Jean Ritchie, Oscar Brand, Dave Sear, and The New Lost City Ramblers—all of whom are folk legends in their own right.

The album is available now via Bandcamp. Give it a listen below.

About the album

A group shot from the rehearsal for the recording, taken by Ellen’s brother Jim Stekert.

Here is Ellen’s commentary:

Early in the summer of 1959, a number of New York City singers involved in the growing urban “folksong revival” were asked to do a program for CBS network TV. I was one of them.

The program was part of an hour-long anthology CBS carried on Sunday mornings called Camera Three. It was a network program that ran from 1954-1980—the predecessor to the current Sunday Night news magazine. It highlighted matters of interest to “intellectuals,” and it often strayed from recognized genres to more arcane ones. As one reviewer put it:

"Camera Three did not discriminate... One week might be an examination of torch songs, and the next would be Shakespeare, and the week after that would be Japanese films. Examples were given, and experts were brought in. There were no ads. It was done as a service for people who felt ignored by the television industry. Remember, this was at a time when TV was acknowledged to be a cultural wasteland..."

The program we were being asked to do was a focus on folksongs as purveyors of news. It was scheduled to air on September 13, 1959. John Cohen, my friend from high school in Great Neck and my initial contact with the Greenwich Village folk music scene, had called and asked me to take part in the program. He had already rounded up Jean Ritchie, Dave Sears, and Oscar Brand, as well as his own new old-timey group, The New Lost City Ramblers. We were all from the New York City area, so there would be no problem with logistics.

John and Oscar had already mapped out the program with the director and the studio personnel. It was to be narrated by the well-known news broadcaster, Harry Reasoner, a favorite broadcaster of mine. In addition to the song we all sang together (“Wasn’t That a Mighty Time”), I was assigned a song with Jean Ritchie about the Santa Barbara earthquake as well as the solo verses of a song by Woody Guthrie, with the group singing the refrain. The song was called “High Floods & Low Waters”, and it was about the then-contemporary droughts that caused serious water shortages in New York City. The problem was that I had never heard the song.

So, a few weeks before the program, I met with John Cohen at Oscar Brand’s home on Long Island. John sang the song into Oscar’s tape machine and gave me the tape to listen to and learn the song. John’s style of singing was similar to Woody’s, and I was at first somewhat concerned since my singing presentation was closer to an understated urban pop singer than to either of them. I knew I could not become an old-timey singer in a few weeks. But I practiced, and when I now listen to my first attempts to sing the song, which I still have on the original tape that John made for me at Oscar’s, I don’t think I did a bad job learning it.

I recall the run-through that we did in the CBS studio. It was fun, and both the singers and the studio folks were happy with the production. At the end of the rehearsal, one of the producers came up to me, complimented my singing, and suggested I go to some auditions for a new Broadway musical that was being produced by a friend of his. It was going to star Theo Bikel, a singer I had recently met and liked, but I pointed out to the CBS producer that I was about to return to my graduate school studies in Bloomington, Indiana, and I couldn’t manage both my classes and a Broadway musical at the same time. The musical he was telling me about turned out to be The Sound of Music. I still wonder what would have happened had I gone to those auditions.

But to top that off, on the way down from the studio, in the elevator, I met two fellows who I later realized were part of the folksong group The Tarriers. They said that since the Weavers had just broken up, there was room for other groups. They were looking for a female singer and asked if I would be interested… and yet again, I had to beg off since I felt compelled to continue the course I was on. As I look back on these two opportunities I had to break into ‘show business’, I think I did not mind missing the opportunity since I always felt I had a better mind than voice. The idea of trying to be part of a New York-based singing group and also attend classes in Bloomington was more than anyone could handle. I would have had to give up my graduate work, and above all else, I loved learning, even though I loved singing almost as much.

The actual airing of the show was live, and it was a great success. My older brother, Jim, came along armed with a camera and an audiotape that I believe was recorded by CBS for us. He snapped some interesting photos of the original group that John Cohen had formed as The New Lost City Ramblers. Tom Paley was on banjo, and Mike Seeger was on fiddle. The grainy Tri-X black and white film captured all the members of our small production. When Jim changed to color film, the camera evidently jammed, hence the double, triple, and who knows how many–exposure picture of us singing that is the ‘cover’ of this streaming 1959 digitization. Art is created in many mysterious ways!

Credits

Released May 16, 2025

Artists: Ellen Stekert, Jean Ritchie, Oscar Brand, Dave Sear, The New Lost City Ramblers (Mike Seeger, Tom Paley, John Cohen)
Producer: Ross Wylde
Production Assistant: Bates Detwiler
Editorial & Publicity Manager: Christopher Bahn

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