AMG Review of Mountain Hearth & Home

Steve Leggett
All Music Guide

There is a good deal of the folklore scholar in Jean Ritchie, and she is much more concerned with preserving the often fascinating modal fragments of Appalachian melodies that make up her albums than she is in using them as signature performance pieces, the kind that could drive a musical career. She records them to ensure their continued existence, and in a sense, these old songs use her much more than she uses them. Ritchie has had a successful career singing these songs, of course, but what sets her apart from Joan Baez, say, is Ritchie's insistence on the song as the star. Born into a large and very musical family in the Cumberland region of southeastern Kentucky, Ritchie learned the largest part of her material from her own family, which is rumored to have over 300 traditional melodies in its collective memory, which makes her -- along with North Carolina's Doc Watson -- the last of a line of singers to learn these ancient songs from within the folk tradition, rather than replicating them from recordings. The fabled Appalachian songbook includes countless wisps and fragments of melodies dealing with timeless themes of true love, false love, jealousy, treachery, murder, redemption, joy, and grief, all with a healthy dose of supernatural mystery, and many of these tunes carry an ancient musical DNA that reaches back to Europe and beyond. All of this is understood by Jean Ritchie, and through her simple singing and dulcimer playing, she has quietly dedicated her life to burnishing and bringing this tradition alive.

Mountain Hearth & Home collects most of the material from her three albums for Elektra Records, which were released between 1952 and 1962, and the tracks are roughly chronological. There are lovely melodies here, like the opener, "O Love Is Teasin'," which carries a kind of time-tested wisdom in its lyrics, winnowed by who knows how many years of singers passing it down, tightening its message. Ritchie does two different versions of the false-hearted lover theme here, "The Cuckoo" and one of its variants, "O Johnnie's on the Water," and it is interesting to hear how the same melody, theme, and lyrics can be shaded in different ways. Another highlight is Ritchie's haunting version of the mysterious and upside-down riddle song known as "Nottamun Town," which is by turns familiar, alien, and ultimately unfathomable. Toward the end of the collection listeners get examples of Ritchie as a songwriter, and songs like "One More Mile," "The L and N Don't Stop Here Anymore," "Let the Sun Shine Down On Me," "Movin' On Down the River," "Wild Horses," and "Blue Diamond Mines" show a focused and intelligent composer who uses tradition as a backdrop for deceptively simple songs of hope and persistence. Jean Ritchie, like Doc Watson, is a true American treasure, and this Rhino Handmade limited-edition collection forms a perfect introduction to her world of Appalachian riddles, dances, whistle games, haunted hollows, murder ballads, and modal melodies that are as striking as they are mysterious and unforgettable.