Michael Roux, publicist at the University Of Illinois Press, recently shared some exciting information about the forthcoming book about Hazel Dickens that is due to be published in June.Working Girl Blues: The Life And Music Of Hazel Dickens is a new volume in the University Of Illinois Press Music in American Life series.

The book is co-written by singer-songwriter Hazel Dickens and country music historian Bill C Malone, a professor emeritus of history at Tulane University and author of Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’: Country Music And The Southern Working Class, Southern Music/American Music and Country Music USA, as well as the writer of the biography and detailed notes for The Blue Sky Boys: The Sunny Side Of Life, the Bear Family Records 5-CD box-set.

Malone discusses briefly Hazel’s life, her musical career, and her development as a songwriter in the first written biographical study of the West Virginia native.

The core part of the 120 page book comprises a section, entitled Songs And Memories, in which Hazel Dickens comments about 40 of her original songs, explains how she came to write them and tells what they meant and continue to mean to her.

The songs in question are ………………..

Our UK correspondent, Richard F. Thompson, put together this report on an important event we missed last fall.

In November the legendary folk/bluegrass singer, songwriter and activist Hazel Dickens was honored as one of the inaugural inductees into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame at a ceremony at The Cultural Center in Charleston, West Virginia.

Belatedly, I submit this tribute and report of the evening’s activities ……….

Considered one of the most influential and powerful artists, male or female, in the world of Americana music, Ms. Dickens was presented with her award by her longtime admirer, Alison Krauss.

Born in the coal-mining region of West Virginia (Mercer County), Ms. Dickens moved to the Baltimore area while in her late teens. There she found friendship and musical compatibility with local area musicians like Mike Seeger and Alice Gerrard. Dickens, Gerrard and Seeger along with Tracy Schwarz and Lamar Grier recorded an album released an LP under the name of the Strange Creek Singers. Later, Hazel and Alice worked together as a duo. They recorded four ground-breaking albums before they went their separate ways in 1976.

Subsequently, Ms. Dickens has released several solo albums that have presented what has been described as “her uniquely personal amalgam of old-time string band sounds, bluegrass, protest songs, and classic country.”

Her music is renowned for the way in which she has spoken up for the impoverished, like the coalminers of her own and nearby states. Songs such as Working Girl Blues, Black Lung, and Don’t Put Her Down, You Helped Put Her There speak typically of her feelings for the cause of those who have suffered or are suffering hardship in their lives, like many of the Dickens’ family members themselves.

Her music was featured in the Oscar-winning documentary Harlan County, U.S.A., which depicted the tensions surrounding a coal miners’ strike in rural Kentucky. Her poignant songs, such as Mama’s Hand, Few Old Memories, West Virginia, My Home and You’ll Get No More Of Me, have been widely recorded by other artists.

In 1993 Ms. Dickens was presented with the International Bluegrass Music Association [IBMA] Award of Merit. Three years later she won the IBMA Song Of The Year award after Lynn Morris recorded a superb version of Mama’s Hand.

In 2001 Hazel Dickens was awarded a Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest official honor bestowed on traditional musicians by the U.S. Government. (more…)