NEW YORK (AP) — Folk singer Jean Ritchie never had a hit, but her claim to fame is keeping ballads that had been around for centuries from falling into obscurity. Ritchie sang songs she grew up with in Appalachia, including “Old Virginny,” ”One Morning in May,” ”Barbary Allen” and “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.” Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris and Judy Collins cited her as an influence. She worked with a then-unknown singer named Bob Dylan in the early 1960s and said in 2008 she found Dylan to be “friendly” but he had “a weird way of singing.” Ritchie died at her home in Berea, Kentucky, on Monday at the age of 92.
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