Hazel Dickens – Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People
Hazel Dickens (1925 – 2011) was an extraordinary singer-songwriter, who grew up in the coal fields of Mercer County, West Virginia. As a young woman she moved to Baltimore where she worked in factories during the day and played music at night. She started performing with Mike Seeger, and then with Alice Gerrard.
Hazel’s music was pro-union and pro-women and had an honesty and sincerity that influenced singers such as Emmylou Harris, Allison Krauss, the Judds. She appeared in the films Matewan and Harlan County, USA. She received the Merit Award from the International Bluegrass Music Association and a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
In 2003 the Labor Heritage Foundation gave Hazel Dickens the Joe Hill lifetime achievement Award for her work in the field of labor culture.
Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People has many of her wonderful songs as well as Si Kahn’s Aragon Mill and Harlan Howard’s Busted. Hazel sang They’ll Never Keep Us Down in Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County, USA and her beautiful a cappella version of Beautiful Hills of Galilee opens the John Sayles movie Matewan.
1. Busted
2. Aragon Mill
3. Old Calloused Hands
4. Scraps From Your Table
5. Out Among the Stars
6. West Virginia – My Home
7. Tomorrow is Already Lost
8. Lonesome Pine Special
9. Lost Patterns
10. Beautiful Hills of Galilee
11. Rocking Chair Blues
12. They’ll Never Keep Us Down
