Photo by David Gahr

2001 NEA National Heritage Fellow Hazel Dickens Montcalm, WV and Washington, DC Appalachian singer-songwriter

The biography of Hazel Dickens would appear to follow the typical trajectory of many young rural Appalachian women from rural West Virginia raised in coal-mining communities in the 1950s. She grew up near Montcalm, West Virginia, one of 11 children, and moved away in her teens to work in the factories of Baltimore. What is different about Hazel Dickens is that she transformed this experience into the inspiration and material for a life-long musical career that has spoken of hard work, hard times, and hardy souls. Songs she has penned such as "Working Girl Blues," "Black Lung," "Don't Put Her Down, You Helped Put Her There," and "West Virginia, My Home," have provided the narrative storyline and emotional insight for many who have found themselves in similar circumstances. Marrying the songwriting abilities of Woody Guthrie with the straight-ahead singing skills of Kitty Wells, she has been an inspiration for a whole new generation of women singers in the bluegrass and country music fields. Her music became more widely known through the use of her songs in the movie Harlan County, U.S.A. and as a result of her live performance of songs in Matewan. Now a resident of Washington, D.C., Hazel Dickens' life and music are inextricably intertwined. As she says in the title song of a recent film documentary about her life produced by Appalshop, It's Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song.

 
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NEA Heritage Fellows
1982-2012: 
BY YEAR | ALPHA