Biographical Note
Jean Ritchie
Jean Ritchie was born on December 8, 1922 in Viper, Kentucky, the youngest of 14 in a family of singers and musicians. She attended Cumberland Junior College and later the University of Kentucky; at the latter she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1946, with a B.A. in social work. She taught children music at Henry Street Settlement in New York City, and it was there that she met Alan Lomax, who recorded her for the Archive of American Folk Song in 1951. Jean Ritchie was involved in the folk music scene, performing with numerous others including Woody Guthrie and Oscar Brand. She married George Pickow in 1950, and together they built her career. They traveled together during Jean's Fulbright award year abroad in 1952-1953, as she recorded folk singers in Great Britain and Ireland, such as Seamus Ennis; and documented folk customs such as the May Day hobby horse (Obby Oss) in Padstow, Cornwall. Jean was a published author (among her best known works is her memoir and songbook Singing Family of the Cumberlands), about her own family and their musical legacy. She recorded over thirty albums, performed with countless individuals and groups over the span of a 50-plus year career, popularized the dulcimer (she and George had a dulcimer-manufacturing business), served on the board for the Newport Folk Festival (circa 1963), and received a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship (2002). She earned high regard and praise both in the U.S. and abroad as an authentic representative of Appalachian music traditions. She died June 1, 2015 in Berea, Kentucky.
George Pickow
George Pickow, born in Los Angeles, California, in 1922 and raised in Brooklyn, New York, began his career in photography in the 1940s, after studying painting at Cooper Union, in New York. He built his career working for the Three Lions photo agency, publishing stock photos for magazines as varied as Look, National Geographic, The Rotarian, Today's Health, and various "true stories"-styled detective magazines. He worked as a documentary filmmaker in various roles (both in front of the camera and behind it, as a director), most notably for Festival (1967) and documentaries on the British May Day and Padstow Obby Oss traditions. In the 1950s he worked with Paddy Clancy and Lou Gordon as presenters of Swapping Song Fair, which began as rent-raising midnight shows at Cherry Lane Theatre. With Jean he ran the dulcimer-making business (his uncle made the dulcimers) and the recording label Greenhays. He photographed Jean as well as many of her contemporaries (Woody Guthrie, Doc Watson, and Mary Travers, among others), and his photos also illustrated many of Jean's books. He photographed dozens of album covers for the popular stereophonic albums of the 1950s, as well as for Jean's albums. He died in 2010.