By the Sweat of My Brow
As folk music became increasingly more polite and overly intellectual in the 1980s, Hazel Dickens continued to make honest, heartbreaking, piercing music that was anything but genteel. On 1983'sBy the Sweat of My Brow, the second of her three 1980s Rounder solo albums, she delivers six typically moving and plainspoken originals plus a variety of apt covers such asJohnny Cash's "Ballad of Ira Hayes" (done here in a positively jolly arrangement),James Talley's "Are They Gonna Make Us Outlaws Again?" and theBrowns' "Here Today and Gone Tomorrow," a tune that theLouvin Brothersonce recorded. Dickens's uncompromising voice is as real and sad and hopeful as the subject matter.--Marc Greilsamer