Almeda Riddle
Almeda Riddle (November 21, 1898 – June 30, 1986) was an Ozark ballad singer from Cleburne County, Arkansas, sometimes known as Granny Riddle. She was born Almeda James in West Pangburn, the fifth of eight children. Her father, a timber worker and fiddler, taught summer singing schools and taught her to read both round notes and shape notes. She sang mostly unaccompanied and said she knew more than 500 songs, many of them old ballads, hymns, and children's songs. Folklorist John Quincy Wolf found her in Greers Ferry in 1952. Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins recorded 23 songs at her Heber Springs home in October 1959, and those recordings brought her invitations from colleges and festivals. She performed widely from the early 1960s, including at the Newport Folk Festival and at universities such as Yale, Harvard, and UCLA. Folklorist Roger D. Abrahams recorded more than 200 of her songs and co-wrote her autobiography, A Singer and Her Songs (1970). She received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1983. George West filmed her for the documentary Almeda Riddle: Now Let's Talk About Singing (1985).
In the newsletter
- No. 19 Spring 1999