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Rosalie Sorrels (June 24, 1933 – June 11, 2017) was an American Folk music singer-songwriter. She began her public career as a singer and collector of traditional folksongs in the late 1950s. During the early 1960s she left her husband and began traveling and performing at music festivals and clubs throughout the United States. She and her five children traveled across the country as she worked to support her family and establish herself as a performer. Along the way she made many lifelong friends among the folk and Beat generation. Her career of Social change activism, storytelling, teaching, learning, songwriting, collecting folk songs, performing, and recording spanned six decades.
Throughout her career, she performed and recorded with other notable folk musicians, including Utah Phillips, Dave Van Ronk, Peggy Seeger and Pete Seeger. Oscar Zeta Acosta, Hunter S. Thompson and Studs Terkel wrote introductory notes for her albums. She was strongly influenced by Malvina Reynolds and went on to record several of her songs on the album What does it mean to love? She credits Reynolds with helping turn rebelliousness from a destructive force into an artistic one.
Her father's parents were Robert Stanton Stringfellow and Rosalie Cope who settled near Idaho City, Idaho, on the Grimes Creek property. Robert was an Episcopal missionary working with various tribes and rural churches in Idaho and Montana. His wife, Rosalie Cope, was a photographer and journalist. The Cope family were journalists in Salt Lake City. Rosalie developed a love of the outdoors while spending summers on Grimes Creek. Her mother's parents were James Madison Kelly and Arabel Beaire who married and settled on a farm in Twin Falls, Idaho, where Rosalie was a frequent visitor.
In interviews for a biography of Rosalie, Nancy Stringfellow explained
"She finds something ... in a piece of poetry ... that shines out like a precious jewel, and you can see her cupping her hands and holding it. We all have a streak of that ... We are delighted with words. We're drunk with words."
During high school Rosalie acted and sang in theatrical productions, garnering praise for her performances in the local media. During this period Rosalie became pregnant and had an illegal abortion. The experience would influence her poetry and song. She earned a scholarship to the University of Idaho, but as a result of a rape, she became pregnant and went to a home for unwed mothers in California to await the birth of her child, a daughter. Again, the experience of making the difficult choice of adoption shows in her later writings and music.
Sorrels did not go to college as planned, but returned to Boise after the birth of her child. She acted in local theater and partied with her friends. She recounted that her parents loved her and did not judge her.
Reviewing Sorrels's 1971 Sire Records LP Travelin' Lady, Robert Christgau wrote in (1981): "Though it's reminiscent of many I-gotta-move-babe male precedents, this is the most independent female persona yet to emerge, but that plaintive country quaver begins to wear after a while."Robert Christgau (1981). 089919026X, Ticknor & Fields. 089919026X
Sorrels was awarded the Kate Wolf Memorial Award by the World Folk Music Association in 1990.
Song was a natural extension of this interest in words, and her love of music began early in life as she listened to her father, Walter Pendleton Stringfellow, sing. She had access to a scrapbook of folk songs collected by her grandmother, Rosalie Cope Stringfellow. She began her music career collecting folksongs and performing them, first with her husband Jim in the late 1950s, then later on her own. It was during this time that the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage recorded Rosalie and Jim performing her collection of traditional songs. Many of these have been released by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings in various compilation albums throughout the last fifty years.
Sorrels was a regular in the Utah folk scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s when she and her husband taught folk guitar classes at the University of Utah. She participated in workshops and Folk music Music festival in the area, such as the Utah Folklore Workshop and Festival (1959). In this way she met other folklorists and performers at "song swaps"; as well as formal sessions. Sorrels also was a concert promoter and brought Joan Baez to Salt Lake City the first time in 1963.
Sorrels was a long-established figure on the national folk singer-song writer scene. She was well known for her story telling. In its 2017 announcement of her death, the Idaho Statesman proclaimed "The legendary folksinger also was known for her ability to spin a yarn and hold an audience in the palm of her hand." Strongly identified with her native state, she held a prominent place in Idaho cultural life.
In 2005, health considerations were slowing her pace. By the end of the decade, she had mostly retired to her home on Grimes Creek outside of Boise. Sorrels died on June 11, 2017, at a daughter's home in Reno, Nevada. The Idaho Statesman closes its announcement of Sorrels's passing with her own lyrics from My Last Go Round, a 2004 album.
When my wandering soul shall rest, and my last song gets sung, I'll find the brightest and the best; On my way back home, all my long lost friends and lovers, once again they will be found; And I'll kiss all their shining faces on my last go round.
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