April 28, 2008
Still churning out songs "that challenge the easy complacency and corporate arrogance of our time," influential Appalachian singer-songwriter Hazel Dickens has devoted her life to writing music not just about "the predictable themes of bluegrass-mama, the old home place, the distant but cherished past," but "questions of estrangement, survival, human dignity, and social and economic justice that concern us all." This slim biography, which includes many black and white photographs, lyrics and personal notes from Dickens, as well as a complete discography, chronicles her personal and professional life. Malone, an author and Tulane University history professor, illuminates the life of a "sensitive and discerning child of the poor" who overcame "a society that discouraged women from expressing themselves," and, over the decades, ended up speaking out for many. Dickens's stories, accompanying her song lyrics, provide additional insight into her heritage ( "Coal Miner's Grave," "West Virginia My Home"), personal experience and eccentric voice: "Scraps from Your Table," she says, is "one of those nasty smart-alecky songs that I like to write." This tribute to Dickens's life and work will interest bluegrass fans and activists.
June 23, 2008
Still churning out songs "that challenge the easy complacency and corporate arrogance of our time," influential Appalachian singer-songwriter Hazel Dickens has devoted her life to writing music not just about "the predictable themes of bluegrass-mama, the old home place, the distant but cherished past," but "questions of estrangement, survival, human dignity, and social and economic justice that concern us all." This slim biography, which includes many black and white photographs, lyrics and personal notes from Dickens, as well as a complete discography, chronicles her personal and professional life. Malone, an author and Tulane University history professor, illuminates the life of a "sensitive and discerning child of the poor" who overcame "a society that discouraged women from expressing themselves," and, over the decades, ended up speaking out for many. Dickens's stories, accompanying her song lyrics, provide additional insight into her heritage ( "Coal Miner's Grave," "West Virginia My Home"), personal experience and eccentric voice: "Scraps from Your Table," she says, is "one of those nasty smart-alecky songs that I like to write." This tribute to Dickens's life and work will interest bluegrass fans and activists.
Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
June 1, 2008
Hazel Dickens singing voice is impossible to ignore. Like bluegrass patriarch Ralph Stanleys, it is the quintessence of the high, lonesome sound of Appalachian traditional music: senza vibrato, as much call as song, as compelling as a siren. In the 1970s, Dickens unaccompanied rendition of "Black Lung," an angry elegy for her coal-miner brother, Thurman, heralded the rebirth of the grassroots protest music that first blew out of her region during the textile-mill strikes of the 1920s. That songs lyrics are here, along with the words of 39 others Dickens has written about the plight of mine workers and also about those country-music staples, the travails and perils of love (especially for an independent woman such as Dickens) and the good, if not easier, old days. Dickens comments generously on each song, revealing her strong personality as country-music historian Malones biographical essay cant, even though it is a fine profile of a roots musician who has been a pioneering woman in bluegrass as well as the foremost American protest singer of the later twentieth century.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)