Jean Ritchie | Folk-music giant, 92

Jean Ritchie, 92, the Kentucky-born folksinger who brought the centuries-old ballads she grew up with to a wide audience from the 1950s onward, died Monday at her home in Berea, Ky., with family near.

The tall, red-haired Ms. Ritchie, who grew up in the Cumberland Mountains, the youngest of 14 children, sang ballads in a clear soprano. She accompanied herself on the guitar, autoharp, or mountain dulcimer, which she helped rescue from obscurity.

Ms. Ritchie had not performed in concert since she suffered a stroke in 2009 and moved back to Kentucky from the East Coast.

As part of the folk boom of the 1950s and '60s, she was a contemporary of such giants as Pete Seeger and Odetta. She influenced a generation of younger singers such as Emmylou Harris. Bob Dylan cited her as one of the folksingers he listened to.

"I see folk music as a river that never stopped flowing," she told the New York Times in 1980. "Sometimes a few people go to it and sometimes a lot of people do. But it's always there."

Last fall, she appeared on her last CD, Dear Jean: Artists Celebrate Jean Ritchie, a two-CD tribute.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard, she combined her authentic mountain musical background with a scholarly touch, traveling overseas on a Fulbright scholarship in the 1950s to trace the roots of her traditional music.

"Nobody in the music community will ever forget Jean," said Dan Schatz, who coproduced the CD. - AP