Her mother knew many Scots songs and passed them on to Jean and her brother, and her father played the hammered dulcimer.
[2] To help pay her way through her studies, she sang for beer money and undertook part-time work as a driving instructor and undertaker's assistant.
The natural warmth and power of her voice brought her to perform at Gerde's Folk City.
Between 1974 and 1987, Redpath appeared regularly on Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" APM radio show.
[4] Redpath toured throughout the U.S. and Canada, played venues in South America, Hong Kong, and Australia, including the Sydney Opera House, and performed often at the Edinburgh Folk Festival.
[8] She gave courses for ten years in Scottish Song at the Heritage of Scotland Summer School at the University of Stirling.
[citation needed] In 2011, she returned to her alma mater to become artist-in-residence at the University of Edinburgh’s Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies.