“Hurricane” Hazel Dickens

She’s not an angel, so don’t look for her wings
She’s a hurtin’ woman who lives the song she sings
She learned them all the hard way on the streets all alone
That’s why it’s hard to tell the singer from the song
–Hazel Dickens, from,
“It’s Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song”

Hazel Jane Dickens (b. 6/1/1925 – d. 4/22/2011) was an American bluegrass singer, songwriter, double bassist, guitarist and banjo player. Her music was characterized not only by her high, lonesome singing style, but also by her provocative pro-union, feminist songs. Cultural blogger John Pietaro noted that “Dickens didn’t just sing the anthems of labor, she lived them and her place on many a picket line, staring down gunfire and goon squads, embedded her into the cause.” The New York Times extolled her as “a clarion-voiced advocate for coal miners and working people and a pioneer among women in bluegrass music.” With Alice Gerrard, Dickens was one of the first women to record a bluegrass album. She was posthumously inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame alongside Gerrard in 2017.

Early Life
Hazel was born in Montcalm, WV, the eighth of eleven siblings in a mining family of 6 boys and 5 girls. Many of Hazel’s relatives were miners, including her brothers, cousins, and, eventually, her brothers-in-law. Her father worked as a minister at a Primitive Baptist church and played the banjo. After Hazel’s oldest sister moved to Baltimore in the 1940s, Hazel and her parents decided to follow suit. They arrived in Baltimore in the 1950s at different times—Hazel earlier—where she got a job working in a factory.  

Musical Beginnings
Hazel met Mike Seeger, younger half-brother of Pete Seeger and founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers, through her brother Robert, who had met him at a TB (Tuberculosis) hospital where Seeger was working at the time. Dickens and Seeger became active in the Baltimore-Washington area bluegrass and folk music scene during the 1960s, playing in living rooms and later on in bars with Bob Baker’s bluegrass band as the area’s folk movement began to gain traction. The group played a mixture of traditional tunes Hazel had learned over the course of her childhood in Mercer County as well as contemporary bluegrass music popularized by groups such as The Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, and Bill Monroe. Dickens and Seeger left Baker’s group around 1958.

Collaborations
During this time she also established a collaborative relationship with Alice Gerrard, who married Mike Seeger in 1970, and as “Hazel & Alice” recorded two albums for the Folkways label: Who’s That Knocking (And Other Bluegrass Country Music) (1965) and Won’t You Come & Sing for Me (1973). Dickens and Gerrard were bluegrass bandleaders at a time when the vast majority of bluegrass bands were led by men. Together, they recorded two additional albums on Rounder Records, but Hazel & Alice broke up in 1976 and Dickens pursued a solo career where her music and songwriting became more political. Hazel and Alice’s band, Strange Creek Singers, recorded for the Arhoolie label. Mike Seeger, Tracy Schwarz, and Lamar Grier were also in the band.

Activism
Dickens used her music to try and make a difference in the lives of non-unionized mine workers and feminists. Dickens started to write more about the lives of miners and wrote a song titled “Black Lung” about her brother, Thurman, who died from the disease. She wrote a song titled “Coal Mining Women” about the hardships women faced in the coal mining world. In 1978, Dickens performed at the Vandalia Gathering in Charleston, West Virginia, both solo and then with the former coal-miner turned musician, Carl Rutherford. Dickens began to be seen as an activist and a voice for the working people.

She appeared in the Oscar-winning documentary Harlan County, USA, which centers on the struggle of the county’s miners union against scab workers, wage rights, and health conditions; she contributed four songs to the film’s soundtrack. She also appeared in the films Matewan and Songcatcher.

In 2011, Dickens died in a Washington, D.C. hospice from complications of pneumonia. She was buried in Princeton, West Virginia at Roselawn Memorial Gardens.

Stating that “music saves mountains,” fans and supporters of Dickens’ activism announced a special memorial, Tribute to West Virginia Music Legend Hazel Dickens at the Charleston, West Virginia, Cultural Center on June 5, 2011.

Discography, Bibliography, and Filmography
Singles and EPs = 2
Solo albums = 4
albums with Alice Gerrard = 7
albums with Elizabeth Jones and Ginny Hawker = 1
Other recordings = 7
Books = 1
Films in which she appears = 5
Films in which she contributes to the soundtrack = 6

Find out more about Hazel Dickens at Smithsonian Folkways

Source: wikipedia