Born on December 8, 1922, in Viper, Kentucky, Jean Ritchie was the youngest of 14 children who grew up in a poor but happy family for whom the singing of traditional songs was the principal entertainment. After attending local schools and studying for brief periods at Cumberland College and the University of Kentucky, she became a schoolteacher in 1942. She later returned to the University of Kentucky, and after her graduation in 1946 she was appointed supervisor of elementary schools in her native Perry County. The next year she moved to New York City to become a social worker with the Henry Street Settlement.
In New York her ballad singing, accompanied usually by her dulcimer, attracted considerable attention among friends and coworkers, and in 1948 she sang publicly at a folk music festival at Columbia University. In 1949 she gave up social work to devote herself to her music. In 1950 she gave a concert at the Greenwich Mews Playhouse and appeared regularly on a local radio program, and she soon became a favorite artist at folk festivals and music camps and in college concerts.
Ritchie performed at the Royal Albert Hall and on the BBC radio network during a visit to Great Britain on a Fulbright scholarship in 1952. Her researches there into the roots of Appalachian folk music found their way into several of her books, which included The Swapping Song Book, 1952, A Garland of Mountain Song, 1953, Singing Family of the Cumberlands, about her family, 1955, The Dulcimer Book, 1963, Apple Seeds & Soda Straws, 1965, From Fair to Fair: Folk Songs of the British Isles, 1966, Jean Ritchie╒s Dulcimer People, 1975, and None But One, 1977. She remained, in concert and on records, one of the most popular exponents of the traditional ballads of her heritage.
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