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Hazel Dickens

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Hazel Dickens
Hazel Jane Dickens (June 1, 1925 – April 22, 2011) was an American bluegrass singer, songwriter, double bassist and guitarist. 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.
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Born
1925-06-01
Birth Place
Mercer_County,_West_Virginia
Place Of Death
Washington,_D.C.
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folkworks.org

Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard

In 1996, I attended a conference of the North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance in Washington, DC. In the basement of the conference hotel, there was a wonderful jam with Hazel Dickens, Alice Gerrard, Ginny Hawker, and Kay Justice, all singing, and Ginny’s husband, Tracy Schwarz on fiddle. There were probably about 40 people listening. On my left was Kate Long, the author of a great song called “Who Will Watch the Home Place.” On my right was Peter Siegel, who recorded Hazel and Alice’s first recordings on Folkways records. I remember that singer-songwriters would walk by the jam and obviously wonder who these women were that we were watching and listening to so raptly.
WASHINGTON, DC
Picture for Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard
wortfm.org

Coulee Creek Celebrates Bluegrass Pioneers Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard

In the summer of 2020, a group of musicians met in an open-air pavilion in a small town along the banks of the Mississippi. The musicians, of the band Coulee Creek, represented a variety of musical influences and training in jazz, blues, country, classical, and bluegrass that would all come together over a period of five months. They brought in a poet to write and record four original poems for the project, providing new connections for the old-time music and the lyrics of two bluegrass pioneers.
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Picture for Coulee Creek Celebrates Bluegrass Pioneers Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard
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A CELEBRATION OF HAZEL DICKENS AND ALICE GERRARD

Sprouts shares the stage with a band who made a tribute album to Bluegrass pioneers, Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard. In the summer of 2020, a group of musicians met in an open-air pavilion in a small town along the banks of the Mississippi. The musicians represented a variety of musical influences and training in “jazz, blues, country, classical,and bluegrass” that would all come together over a period of five months. They brought in a poet to write and record four original poems for the project, providing new connections for the old-time music and the lyrics of Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard. The band would become known as Coulee Creek.
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