Hazel Dickens - bio

Content via the National Folk Festival website. note to reader - Hazel Dickens will appear at the National Folk Festival in Richmond, Virginia during the weekend of October 13 - 15, 2006.

Hazel Dickens grew up near Montcalm, West Virginia, one of 11 children, and moved away in her teens to work in the factories of Baltimore. Dickens transformed this experience into the inspiration and material for a lifelong 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's 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.” In 2001, she was honored with the prestigious National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts.

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