Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness (Feb 2010) From: maeve Date: 21 Jun 10 - 07:18 AM Hey, Joe: The most recent update is over here. Great news! Another thread relating to Jean and Jon is here. |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness (Feb 2010) From: Joe Offer Date: 06 Jun 10 - 04:55 PM We haven't had any news since February, so the "update" title of this thread was a bid misleading. We'll change the date on the thread title when we do get an update. I hope Jean is improving. Maybe no news is good news. -Joe- |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: gnu Date: 06 Jun 10 - 03:03 PM Me too. All of the above. |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: Art Thieme Date: 05 Jun 10 - 03:58 PM George and Jean, I surely do hope the rehab is going good for you! My thoughts are with you more than you know. Love from Art and Carol Thieme. Peter, thanks for suggesting your dad be a friend of mine on Face book. As we speak, that has come to fruition. I hope you are doing good too!! Art |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: Janie Date: 05 Jun 10 - 01:50 PM Just wondering if anyone knows how she is faring. Sending continued good thoughts.... |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: GUEST,Derek Schofield Date: 21 Apr 10 - 09:56 AM This press report is of a Port Washington concert featuring Peter Pickow which was videoed for Jean. No update on how Jean is. Anyone know? Hope she is improving. Derek http://portwashington.patch.com/articles/dave-sear-and-peter-pickow-appeal-to-port-folk |
Subject: Jean Ritchie health From: GUEST Date: 28 Mar 10 - 11:34 PM Anyone heard how Jean Ritchie is doing? Also maybe have her address at the facility where she was receiving care. I have lost it after I sent a card. Thanks, dulcigal |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: Janie Date: 26 Mar 10 - 02:00 AM Still adding my thoughts and positive intent to the circle of care and concern. |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: GUEST,Nell Shively Date: 26 Mar 10 - 01:51 AM I grew up in Viper, KY and our families knew one another quite well. Jean's sister was one of my teachers at the Viper High School. I just recently heard of Jeans's sickness and she and her family are in my prayers. I think of her every day and send my healing thoughts and all good things her way. It was so good to read about Jon singing and playing the dulcimer at her bedside. That must have meant so much to her. Bless you Jon. I would love to hear more about how she is doing at this time. |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: wysiwyg Date: 24 Mar 10 - 01:30 PM I just figure that no news is good news, that healing is continuing, and that the family are busy with that. Beyond that assumption, of course, there's confident thoughts and prayer. GO JEAN! ~S~ |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: Max Date: 22 Mar 10 - 07:10 PM I've been getting some requests for updates lately by phone and mail. Anything new to report? |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: kendall Date: 18 Mar 10 - 04:31 AM Greetings from Maine, and continued best wishes for a full recovery. |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: katlaughing Date: 17 Mar 10 - 10:16 PM I've almost missed sending you St. Patrick's Day wishes. May your days be suffused with Light and Progress and Love. We miss you. love, kat |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: GUEST,Philppa Date: 11 Mar 10 - 08:16 AM belated international women's day greetings, early St Patrick's Day greetings from Ireland keep up the good work best wishes to Jean and all the family |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: Marco Date: 08 Mar 10 - 07:46 AM All the best wishes from Italy, Jean. You are the mother of all the dulcimer players of the world and I think to you every day. Marco. |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: GUEST,Paco Date: 05 Mar 10 - 03:16 PM I left a message on your facebook page. It did not seem to be enough. I am anxiously awaiting the news that you are back to your previous self. That indeed would be selfish. What I do wish is your continued progress. You have a long row to hoe. A strong country women you are. our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family. As you have Blessed us may God Bless you and your family. |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: maeve Date: 26 Feb 10 - 06:27 AM Good morning, Jean and family. I heard the wild geese calling last week. maeve |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: Janie Date: 25 Feb 10 - 10:48 PM Spring will soon be here. Still thinking of Jean and family, and all who love her. Strength, love, hope and peace to all. |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: EBarnacle Date: 25 Feb 10 - 10:05 PM The mention of the word "SHERO" above, reminded me of something my ex-wife once said. She commented that a toy of She-ra the most powerful woman in the universe needed a special stand to stand erect but once she was up, watch out! |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: regiberry Date: 25 Feb 10 - 09:45 PM I'm so glad to hear of Jean's improvement. I have been singing her songs alot lately. She has been a SHERO to me. Her kindness, humor, and honesty have touched me. I met her when I first began to play the dulcimer over 30 years ago. I'm also grateful to find Jean on Youtube singing her songs! |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: GUEST,Lisa Johnson (Strumelia) Date: 23 Feb 10 - 08:32 PM Still thinking of Jean and her family every day. |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: gnu Date: 22 Feb 10 - 08:54 PM Hope. Just that. |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: maeve Date: 22 Feb 10 - 08:25 PM Sweet dreams, Jean and family. maeve |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: iancarterb Date: 21 Feb 10 - 11:08 PM The Bainbridge Island (WA) Shapenote group is having a sing this Sunday and we will definitely follow Guest David's lead and sing Wondrous Love for Jean. Carter B |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: maeve Date: 21 Feb 10 - 06:54 PM This thread may be of interest to Jean and family Singing helps stroke recovery |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: GUEST,David Date: 18 Feb 10 - 05:02 PM Dear Jean, Tuesday night I led "Wondrous Love" at our shape-note singing here in upstate New York in the hope that somehow our voices might reach you where you are now. I gave the singers the latest news that Jon has posted here. Given the distance, you should be hearing us about the time you get this message. I first sang this tune with you at your home about twenty-five years ago. All my best wishes for your recovery. David |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: wysiwyg Date: 15 Feb 10 - 10:23 AM ... as well as at the top of this thread. (refresh) ~S~ |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: wysiwyg Date: 14 Feb 10 - 08:36 AM DPB, And some of us have been singing for/with her (in my case and some others' it's a part of how I/we pray). There's a link to that thread at the top of the one Kat just gave. ~Susan |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: katlaughing Date: 14 Feb 10 - 12:46 AM DPB, Thank you for thinking of us at the Mudcat. I see are a member, too. That's great. We have a couple of other older threads about Jean's troubles starting with THIS ONE. You will find a lot more stories there. All the best, kat |
Subject: RE: KYTrad (Jean Ritchie) update on illness From: Donald Bauer (DPB) Date: 14 Feb 10 - 12:24 AM I started a thread on Jean's illness and am very greatful to find it redirected to this one posted by Jon. Thanks, Jon, for sharing whatever news you have. It's really great to read all these comments. |
Subject: Jean Ritchie Illness From: Donald Bauer (DPB) Date: 14 Feb 10 - 12:14 AM As most of you know, Jean Ritchie had a stroke last December and I believe has been hospitalized since. I have no further information on this but I've started this thread so that readers can share whatever news they have. I know that her husband, George Pickow, has been ill as well. The e-mail address on the Jean Ritchie website is not operational and I'm not comfortable giving out the contact information I have for her, but I know she is a member of the Mudcat community and someone in her family may be checking up on messages here. So let's all keep her in our thoughts and send our best wishes for her full recovery. |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: GUEST,Susan Brumfield Date: 13 Feb 10 - 11:01 PM Thanks for sharing this news, Jon. I had a beautiful visit with your Mom about two weeks ago, and it was incredible to see her strength and spirit in tact. She was able to point to pictures on a communication sheet, and whispered a few sweet words, too! And when your Dad came in to the room, she lit up and smiled . . . what a happy sight! Please know that my prayers, and so many others, will continue . . . for you, your brother and your Dad, as well as for your Mom. I'm sure you've got your hands full; if there's anything we can do to help, please don't hesitate to ask. Best wishes, and love to your folks, Susan B. |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: frogprince Date: 13 Feb 10 - 01:23 PM There is still some good news in this ol' world! The lovely lady's spirit is obviously intact, and she is still able to find joy in life. Wishing continued healing and strength to her and the family. Dean |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: wysiwyg Date: 13 Feb 10 - 01:03 PM Thanks SRS. What a role model. (I'm adding an excerpt to my home office wall of inspirational women/role models.) ~S~ |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: GUEST,Conrad Shiba Date: 13 Feb 10 - 11:31 AM Jean was on people's minds at the Dulcibrrr festival in Kentucky last weekend. Several of us sang some of her songs, and the group finale was "Goin' to Boston." She's such a great lady and inspiration! |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: Severn Date: 12 Feb 10 - 04:41 PM Thanks, Stilly and Becky. One of my musical heroes. A lady of astounding eloquence, whether in singing, playing, in writing or in speech. Best of luck in your recovery and thanks for your continued inspiration through the years. I will continue to follow her progress. |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: Stilly River Sage Date: 12 Feb 10 - 04:21 PM This is the text of the article at Becky's link. We like to keep the full text when there is a possibility that the thread will stick around longer than the online article: Jean Ritchie: DAMSEL WITH A DULCIMER By Ross Altman link Her Kentucky mountain ballad voice stilled by a major stroke last December 4, Jean Ritchie is no longer able to communicate. But her inestimable recorded legacy of traditional and original songs will continue to sing and speak for her for as long as time will allow. When the soundtrack album for the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? became a hit the movie's music producer T. Bone Burnett seized the moment to record a follow-up studio album with the same musicians. It was entitled, Down From the Mountain and became a hit as well. But despite Ralph Stanley's welcome presence I kept looking at its roster of contemporary musical talent, and despite their earnest efforts to sound traditional, I kept asking myself the same question: Where is Jean Ritchie? She didn't have to make an effort to sound traditional; she was to the cabin born, in 1922, in Viper, Kentucky, and had just turned 87 when she suffered the stroke. She was hospitalized in St. Francis Hospital near her home in Port Washington, New York, where she had moved in 1946 to pursue a living in music. Not to put too fine a point on it, Jean Ritchie was first down the mountain. The youngest of 14 children, she became the standard bearer of her entire family's amazing repertoire of Appalachian Ballads, many inherited from England in just the way that Cecil Sharp described, an ideal living embodiment of a folklorist's dream-songs passed on through oral tradition and aural memory. She learned to play the mountain dulcimer by imitating her father, who forbade her and everyone else in the family from playing it. She was allowed to sing, however, and by the age of five was already able to sing songs she had picked up from her mother. It was at that tender age that her rebellious streak first manifested itself; she disobeyed her father's orders and started accompanying herself on the lap dulcimer, first singing Go Tell Aunt Rhody. When she moved to New York she met her future husband photographer George Pickow and he recognized the full significance of what she was doing, the only folk singer in New York's then burgeoning folk renaissance to play the dulcimer. They set up shop beneath a bridge and started their own workshop, handcrafting dulcimers for the growing numbers of her fans who wished to learn to play for themselves. They sold over 300 dulcimers in their first year of operation, and a dulcimer revival was born. In 1952 she recorded her first album for Elektra Records, quickly followed by two others, which laid the groundwork for her rock solid folk music heritage. To take but one example of what makes her traditional song-bag both definitive and revelatory, consider the classic lyric ballad, Black Is the Color. You may have heard the popular version of the song, as performed by Joan Baez on her second album in 1963. It is credited to John Jacob Niles, the great ballad singer and dulcimer player who like Jean Ritchie came from Kentucky. It starts with the haunting and distinctive repetition that ascends up the scale, Black, black, black is the color of my true love's hair. Did John Jacob Niles write this song, as Joan Baez songbook indicates? Well, yes and no. If you spend some time researching this you will discover the original sheet music for his version, published by Schirmer's Music around 1912-1915. Niles name is on it, all right, but he is credited as the arranger, for a piano accompaniment and melody, not the author of the song. Then if you go to Niles' web site you will discover his own notes to the song, as well as his own recordings of it. He didn't like the traditional melody, he said, perhaps influenced by his own father, from whom he learned it. It needed something, more grandeur, to fit Niles quite dramatic way of singing and presenting these songs. His original melody provides exactly that, and Joan Baez's version is evidence enough that a great soprano could do justice to the way he had re-imagined the song. But what about the traditional version, the one that you will find in Alan Lomax's, Folk Songs of the United States. To hear that version you will need to go back to the source, and that would be Jean Ritchie's recording, Songs of the Kentucky Mountains. While Jean Ritchie's version lacks the grandeur of John Jacob Niles and Joan Baez, it more than makes up for it in her simple honesty of telling the story. That simple honesty is the hallmark of Jean Ritchie's singing and performing style, through more than fifty years of recording and live concerts. One of the most charming stories I have heard from her demonstrates this core quality to perfection. Twenty-five years ago Elaine and Clark Weissman's California Traditional Music Society presented Jean Ritchie with a lifetime achievement award, presented at what was then called simply The Summer Solstice Dulcimer Festival. It was their first lifetime achievement award, and they wanted to acknowledge Jean's pioneering role in creating an audience for this instrument across the country, even to the point of naming their festival after it. During her concert performance at the festival Jean Ritchie told the story of the time she asked guitar virtuoso Doc Watson to accompany her at the Newport Folk Festival, hoping to impress the audience with some fancy picking that went beyond what she could do by herself. Doc took on the assignment all right, but then proceeded to vastly disappoint Jean Ritchie by toning down his guitar playing so that it fit her style, rather than displaying what he could do on top of it. When Jean Ritchie complained to Doc about not having taken any breaks, or indulged in any fancy guitar work, Doc replied, "But Jean, I did just what the song called for." In that one brief anecdote, told at her own expense, Jean Ritchie taught me what guitar accompaniment is all about, and why her style of performance has endured through so many changes of musical fashion, and even folk music instrumental mastery. In her work, whether a traditional song like Black Is the Color, or one of her own great protest songs about strip mining like Black Waters or The L. and N. Don't Stop Here Anymore, the song is always front and center. Her role as a great folk artist is to serve the song, both vocally and instrumentally, not to impress the audience. But in so doing, Jean Ritchie has continued to set the standard for traditional music performance, and to carry on her mountain legacy of songs inherited from the Ritchie Family and collected at home and abroad for over half a century. Because of Jean Ritchie there are now dulcimer festivals all over the country, and the Summer Solstice Festival of Traditional Music, Dance and Storytelling, inspired by one Kentucky ballad singer's childhood disobedience to her overbearing father, continues to flourish. Kubla Khan, Coleridge's unfinished masterpiece about a lost paradise, ends on this unforgettable image: In a vision once I saw a damsel with a dulcimer... I too saw a damsel with a dulcimer, and happily I wasn't dreaming. It was Jean Ritchie. Ross Altman has a Ph.D. in English. Before becoming a full-time folk singer he taught college English and Speech. He now sings around California for libraries, unions, schools, political groups and folk festivals. You can reach Ross at Greygoosemusic@aol.com |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: Lonesome EJ Date: 12 Feb 10 - 12:41 PM Great news, Jon! |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: YorkshireYankee Date: 12 Feb 10 - 12:36 PM Just came across this thread... I'm just one of many, many, many people Jean doesn't know, who has been touched by her music -- as well as by the warmth and wisdom of her posts on Mudcat. May she continue to recover and go on to thrive. As for the family, it's clear from your (and her past) posts that you all already have the most important "riches" that could be wished for, so I hope a simple, heartfelt wish of good and/or improving health to all of you will suffice. Vikki Fielden |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: katlaughing Date: 12 Feb 10 - 11:37 AM Thanks, Becky, that is really neat! |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: Desert Dancer Date: 12 Feb 10 - 11:31 AM Ross Altman has written a nice tribute to Jean in the L.A. area "Folkworks" online magazine, here. ~ Becky in Tucson (and often in L.A.) |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: mkebenn Date: 05 Feb 10 - 03:08 PM The best of news...Mike |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: GUEST,Joy & Bert Held Date: 05 Feb 10 - 02:51 PM So glad to hear that Jean is improving and able to make music again. Jean, you are one of the lights in our life; we wish you continuing improvement . You are in our thoughts and we send you best wishes and love. |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: VirginiaTam Date: 05 Feb 10 - 02:23 PM I am relatively new to mudcat, but have run into snippets of Jean's humour and knowledge in my random trawling through threads for information. For these I am grateful to have learned a tiny bit about the personality of this talented woman. Leaving here my thanks and wishes for the best possible recovery. |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: GUEST,Bob Coltman Date: 05 Feb 10 - 02:16 PM Jon, Amba and I are so glad to hear of your mother's progress. We send her and you our heartfelt love and wishes for strength and good cheer along every step of the way. Bob |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: Fortunato Date: 05 Feb 10 - 01:25 PM Jon, Great thanks for the update. It's good to hear of your mother singing with you. I picture that in my mind. It's hard to imagine anything more poignant that the music you bring her with each visit, and these times are infinitely precious. I'm honored to have read of them here. with great respect Chance Shiver |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: GUEST,Anne Price Date: 05 Feb 10 - 07:56 AM Wonderful news. Music has healing power. |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: GUEST,Lisa Null Date: 04 Feb 10 - 11:44 PM Hi Jon: This is uploifting news indeed! Jean has meant so much to me over the years-- it delights me that she is making good progress. I wish I were there to sing with her too! |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: GUEST,Arkie Date: 04 Feb 10 - 11:28 PM Glad to get this good news of Jean's progress. She has long been a tremendous inspiration because of her music and is now an inspiration for the manner in which faces a serious and difficult illness. |
Subject: RE: KYTrad update From: GUEST,Rosalie & Alan Friend Date: 04 Feb 10 - 10:19 PM Jon, Thanks for sharing this good news. It is heartening to learn that your mother is responding to your caring attention. We are thankful for the warmth and generosity of your entire family. We are thinking of you all and hoping that your mother continues to recover. Rosalie and Alan |
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