Biography
8 December 1922, Viper, Kentucky, USA. Ritchie was the youngest of 14 children from a well-known family of traditional singers. Her parents, Balis and Abigail Ritchie were of Scottish-Irish descent, and it was her father who taught her to play the mountain dulcimer (Ritchie’s book, Singing Family Of The Cumberlands, recounts the history of her family growing up in the Cumberland mountains.) The family were visited by Cecil Sharp in 1917 during one of his song-collecting expeditions to the Appalachian Mountains. Ritchie graduated with a bachelor’s degree in social work from the University Of Kentucky in 1946 and moved to New York City. She was first recorded two years later when she was heard by Mitch Miller as she demonstrated a dulcimer in a store. Miller was impressed enough to produce her debut, Round And Roundelays. She was later introduced to Alan Lomax, the well-known, and equally well-respected, folklorist. Lomax recorded Ritchie’s songs,...
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