Hazel Dickens has been writing and singing songs at the intersection of country, bluegrass, old-time, and protest music since the 1950s. This slender book, a combination of biography, memoir, songbook, and discography, might be considered a first-draft study of her remarkable life. I don’t mean to imply that this is a slipshod work but rather that it offers a brief outline of a life and career still very much in progress.
Bill C. Malone opens the book with a brief biography. Dickens was born into a large coalmining family in Mercer County, West Virginia, in 1935. She sang in the Primitive Baptist churches where her father preached, and also absorbed music from the radio. Her father and brothers were also talented musicians. She was a witness to the mistreatment of miners by the coal companies from an early age. As a young adult she moved to Baltimore, Maryland, to work in the shops and factories there. It was here that Dickens met a young Mike Seeger and began playing music in public, first as a singer and guitar player, later as a bassist. She also made her first contact with Alice Gerrard at about this time. Hazel and Alice formed a duo that became one of the most popular acts on the new Rounder Records label. On the strength of their powerful harmony singing and their perseverance as women in the male-dominated world of bluegrass, they became role models to many in the women’s movement of the 1970s, though they did not consciously identify as feminists at the time. Dickens claims that her interest in women’s issues grew out of her experiences playing music in Baltimore’s working class taverns and her observations of the vicissitudes of her sisters’ marriages. Though she observed that working-class men were often disrespectful of women, she has maintained just as strong an interest in class issues as in women’s issues. She has often sung in support of striking miners in the Appalachian coal fields and has contributed songs to the pro-labor film projects “Harlan County, U.S.A.” and “Matewan.” The condensed format of the biography section means that many details of Dickens’ life must be only adumbrated; for example, her three-year marriage is dealt with in less than a single paragraph. This section does offer a solid and readable account of a career that crossed many boundaries and defied expectations.
The next section will be the heart of the book for some. The lyrics of forty of Hazel Dickens’ best-known songs are transcribed with introductions by the songwriter. These notes vary from personal reminiscences on her life and career to historical sketches of the coal-miners’ labor struggles. There is, as Dickens admits, only one “positive love song” in the lot, but there are songs on the tried and true country subjects of home and family (“Mama’s Hand,” “West Virginia My Home”), as well as several of the feminist songs that made Hazel and Alice into heroes of the womens’ movement (“Working Girl Blues,” “Don’t Put Her Down, You Helped Put Her There”). There are also several songs written for and about specific labor clashes (“Clay County Miner,” “The Yablonski Murders”) and about class struggle in America more generally (“America’s Poor,” “The Homeless”).
The book also contains a detailed discography and two selections of black and white photographs from Dickens’ life and career. This book will appeal mainly to fans of Hazel Dickens, but those interested in the process of songwriting, the folk revival, or gender and class issues in country and bluegrass music will find it rewarding as well.
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[Review length: 596 words • Review posted on July 23, 2008]