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Jean Ritchie (December 8, 1922 – June 1, 2015) was an American folk music singer, songwriter, and Appalachian dulcimer player. ==Out of Kentucky== Jean Ritchie was born to Abigail (née Hall) and Balis W. Ritchie of Viper, an unincorporated community in Perry County in the Cumberland Mountains of south eastern Kentucky. The Ritchies of Perry County were one of the two "great ballad-singing families" of Kentucky celebrated among folk song scholars (the other was the Combs family of adjacent Knott County, whose repertoire formed the basis of the first scholarly work on the British ballads in America, a doctoral thesis by Professor Josiah Combs of Berea College for the Sorbonne University published in Paris in 1925.)〔Alan Lomax, foreword to Jean Ritchie, ''Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians as Sung by Jean Ritchie'', forewords by Alan Lomax and Ron Pen (University of Kentucky Press, 2nd edition, 1997). p. 1. The book by Combs, who was a specialist in the dulcimer, was translated into English as a monograph by D. K. Wilgus in 1967 as ''Folk-Songs of the Southern United States (Folk-Songs Du Midi Des Etats-Unis), Publications of the American Folklore Society, Bibliographical and Special Series, Vol. 19'' (University of Texas).〕 In 1917, the great collector Cecil Sharp collected songs from Jean's older sisters Una and May. Many of the Ritchies attended the Hindman Settlement School, a folk school, where people were encouraged to cherish their own backgrounds and where Sharp also found many of his songs. Jean's father Balis had printed up a book of old songs entitled ''Lovers' Melodies'',〔Charles Wolfe and Jean Ritchie, foreword to new edition of Jean Ritchie, ''Jean Ritchie's Swapping Song Book'' with photographs by George Pickow (University of Kentucky Press, () 2000), p. 1.〕 and music making was an important activity in the Ritchie home. Jean's forebears had fought in the Revolutionary War in 1776 before settling in Kentucky, and most of them later fought on the Confederate Side in the Civil War. Her grandfather Justice Austin Ritchie was 2nd Lieutenant of Company C of the 13th Kentucky Confederate Cavalry. Alan Lomax wrote that: They were quiet, thoughtful folks, who went in for ballads, big families and educating their children. Jean's grandmother was a prime mover in the Old Regular Baptist Church, and all the traditional hymn tunes came from her. Jean's Uncle Jason was a lawyer, who remembers the big ballads like "Lord Barnard." Jean's father taught school, printed a newspaper, fitted specs, farmed and sent ten of his fourteen children to college.〔Lomax, foreword to Jean Ritchie, ''Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians'', p. 1.〕 As the youngest of 14 siblings, Jean was one of ten girls who slept in one room of the farming family's farm house. She was quick to memorize songs and, with Chalmers and Velma McDaniels, performed at local dances and at county fairs, where they repeatedly won blue ribbons in Hazard, the county seat. Jean recalls that when the family acquired a radio in the late 1940s they discovered that what they had been singing was hillbilly music, a word they had never heard before. Ritchie graduated high school in Viper and enrolled in Cumberland Junior College (now a four-year University of the Cumberlands) in Williamsburg, Kentucky, and from there went on to graduate Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in social work from the University of Kentucky, in Lexington in 1946. At college she participated in the glee club and choir and learned to play piano.〔(Biography of Jean Ritchie ), music.yahoo.com; accessed January 9, 2014.〕 During World War II, she taught in elementary school. After graduating she got a job as a social worker at the Henry Street Settlement, where she taught music to children. There she befriended Alan Lomax, who recorded her extensively for the Library of Congress. She joined the New York folksong scene and met Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, and Oscar Brand. In 1948 she shared the stage with The Weavers, Woody Guthrie, and Betty Sanders at the Spring Fever Hootenanny and by October 1949 was a regular guest on Oscar Brand's Folksong Festival radio show on WNYC. In 1949 and 1950, she recorded several hours of songs, stories, and oral history for Lomax in New York City.〔(Association of Cultural Equity: Research Center: Song Collection Guide. )〕 Elektra records signed her and released three albums: ''Jean Ritchie Sings'' (1952), ''Songs of Her Kentucky Mountain Family'' (1957) and ''A Time for Singing'' (1962). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Jean Ritchie」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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