Hazel Dickens was an Appalachian singer and songwriter known for her superb musicianship, feminist country songs, union anthems, and blue-collar laments. Growing up in a West Virginia coal mining community, she drew on the mountain music and repertoire of her family and neighbors when establishing her own vibrant and powerful vocal style that is a trademark in old-time, bluegrass, and traditional country circles. Working Girl Blues presents forty original songs that Hazel Dickens wrote about coal mining, labor issues, personal relationships, and her life and family in Appalachia. Conveying sensitivity, determination, and feistiness, Dickens comments on each song, explaining how she came to write them and what they meant and continue to mean to her. Bill C. Malone's introduction traces Dickens's life, musical career, and development as a songwriter, In addition, Working Girl Blues features forty-one illustrations and a detailed discography of Dickens's commercial recordings.| Contents Acknowledgments Hazel Dickens: A Brief Biography by Bill C. Malone Songs and Memories by Hazel Dickens Mama's Hand A Few Old Memories You'll Get No More of Me West Virginia My Home My Better Years Working Girl Blues Scars from an Old Love Lost Patterns Scraps from Your Table Beyond the River Bend Won't You Come and Sing for Me Only the Lonely Rambling Woman Your Greedy Heart Don't Put Her Down, You Helped Put Her There It's Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song I Love to Sing the Old Songs Old Calloused Hands Rocking Chair Blues Pretty Bird Mount Zion's Lofty Heights 6 Cowboy Jim Little Lenaldo Tomorrow's Already Lost I Can't Find Your Love Anymore Hills of Home Old River Will Jesus Wash the Bloodstains from Your Hands They'll Never Keep Us Down Mannington Mine Disaster Coal Miner's Grave Black Lung Coal Mining Woman The Yablonski Murder Clay County Miner My Heart's Own Love America's Poor Freedom's Disciple (Working-Class Heroes) The Homeless My Love Has Left Me A Hazel Dickens Discography Index Illustrations follow pages 000 and 000 | Winner of a Certificate of Merit for the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research, 2009. — Association for Recorded Sound
|Hazel Dickens (1925-2011) was a bluegrass and folk music singer and guitarist. She was the first woman to receive the Merit Award from the International Bluegrass Music Association. Bill C. Malone is a professor emeritus of history at Tulane University. His books include Country Music U.S.A. and Don't Get above Your Raisin': Country Music and the Southern Working Class.