Hard Hitting Songs For Hard Hit People
Few singers have fused lonesome beauty and political passion in the way Hazel Dickens has, though with her voice she could deliver a speech by Newt Gingrich and still break your heart. She writes like a bluegrass-trained Woody Guthrie and sings with the high, sparkling vulnerability of Loretta Lynn--but with even more grit, more pain--relaying the stories, past and present, of the "hard-working people" she grew up with and lived with her whole life. This 1980 album is Dickens's best and most radical. She shines an intense, honest light on the plight of the mining communities--men and women, old and young--of her native West Virginia, and her version of "Aragon Mill," a gorgeous hymn to workers' despair, is sung the way the song should be. A great group of musicians backs her, including Norman and Nancy Blake, Lloyd Green, Buddy Spicher, and Tony Trischka, but Dickens's brilliance is most clear on the wailing a cappella gospel "Beautiful Hills of Galilee": in every note, her strong, authentic character is undeniable.--Roy Kasten