Rosalie Sorrels

Rosalie Sorrels gathered and sang traditional American folk songs, yet every performance, whether drawn from inherited material or freshly composed, carried an intimate thread rooted in her own experience. Her work consistently circled themes of loss and endurance. At sixteen she underwent an illegal abortion; the following year she relinquished an infant for adoption. Later she married, bore five children, separated from her husband, and managed the household single-handedly, only to endure the suicide of her oldest child. In 1988 she survived a cerebral aneurysm. Music supplied continuing refuge amid these events and held listeners spellbound across decades.

Her professional path opened in the 1950s in Salt Lake City, where enrollment in a course on American folk songs offered relief from household routine. Material prepared for that class became her debut recording, Folksongs of Idaho and Utah. Later releases blended inherited pieces with new compositions, each delivered with intense conviction and growing autobiographical focus. Two such projects, Be Careful, There's a Baby in the House (1990) and Report from Grimes Creek (1991), appeared on the Green Linnet label. Renowned equally for narrative skill and vocal delivery, she appeared at nearly every prominent American folk festival. She maintained an active schedule of concerts and recordings through the 2000s until her death in 2017 at the age of 83.