From a 2008 interview in Kentucky Today:
Read the last line -
"In 1946, she graduated from the University of Kentucky with a B.A. in social work, and later took a job at the Henry Street Settlement in Manhattan. While in New York, Ritchie met other important musicians and became at home singing her mountain songs on the same bill as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and The Weavers.

Since then, Ritchie has performed her family�s songs from the smoky coffeehouses of Greenwich Village to the prestigious Carnegie Hall in New York, the Royal Albert Hall in London, England, and back home to the forks of Troublesome Creek at Hindman Settlement School in Knott County. And if the 85-year-old has her way, she'll be singing them for many more years to come.

"It keeps you alive longer," she says, sitting at her dining room table at home in Port Washington, New York. (She also maintains a home in Perry County, Kentucky.) "It wouldn't be much fun sitting in a nursing home, just waiting. If you want to stay longer in this world, you have to join in."


I hope Jean's head is full of music and her days in the nursing home pass quickly.