Bob Dylan and his contemporaries wove the folk music traditioninto rock ‘n’ roll — and they did it by standing on the shoulders of giants like Jean Ritchie, the singer and musician whose tireless efforts to preserve traditional song helped shape modern American music.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Ritchie passed away June 1 at the age of 92, surrounded by family at her home in Berea, Ky., where she moved after enduring a stroke in 2009. Fittingly, given her strong focus on tradition, Ritchie ended up roughly 100 miles from Viper, the town where she was born in 1922.