On The Late Singer From The Sorrowed Hills And Hollows Of Appalachia-Hazel Dickens-An Appreciation By Fritz Taylor (and rightly so since himself before Vietnam tore at his soul was a good old boy from the sliver of Appalachia that passes through Georgia)

On The Late Singer From The Sorrowed Hills And Hollows Of Appalachia-Hazel Dickens-An Appreciation

By Fritz Taylor (and rightly so since himself before Vietnam tore at his soul was a good old boy from the sliver of Appalachia that passes through Georgia)     

Jack Callahan caught the folk minute bug when he was in high school in his hometown of Carver after having heard some songs that held him in thrall over a fugitive radio station from Rhode Island, a college station, that every Sunday night would have a two hour show called Bill Marlowe’s Hootenanny where he, Bill Marlowe, would play all kinds of songs from the latest protest songs of the likes of Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs to old country blues to Western Swing and everything in between, a fast paced glance at a very different part of the American songbook. What got to Jack, what caused him to pay attention though was the mountain music that he heard, things like East Virginia, Pretty Polly and his favorite the mournful Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies sung by Linda Lane, a forgotten treasure of a singer from deep in the Tennessee hills now.

Now this adhesion to folk minute was quite by accident since most Sunday nights if Jack was listening to anything it was Be-Bop Benny’s Blues Hour out of WNAC in Chicago. Usually in those days something had gone awry or some ghost was in the air in radio wave land and he had caught that station and then the Rhode Island Station, WAFJ. Although he was becoming something of an aficionado of blues just then and would become something of a folk one as well his real love then was the be-bop classic rock and roll music that was a signature genre for his generation. He never lost the love of rock or the blues but he never went all out to discover material he had never heard before like he did with mountain music. 

One summer while he was in college he had decided rather than a summer job he would head south down to mountain country, you know West Virginia, Kentucky maybe rural Virginia and see if he could find some tunes that he had not heard before. (That “no job” decision did not set well with his parents, his poor parents who both worked in the local industry, the cranberry bogs, when that staple was the town’s claim to fame so he could go to college but that is a story for another day). Now it was not strange in those days for all kinds of people, mostly college students with time on their hands, archivists, or musicians to travel down to the southern mountains and elsewhere in search of authentic American music by the “folk.” Not professional archivists like Pete Seeger’s father, Charles, or the Lomaxes, father and son, or inspired amateurs like Harry Smith but young people looking for roots which was a great occupation of the generation that came of age in the 1960s in reaction to their parents’ generation trying might and main to favor vanilla Americanization.      

A lot of the young, and that included Jack who read the book in high school, had first been tuned into Appalachia through Michael Harrington’s The Other America which prompted them to volunteer to help their poor brethren. Jack was somewhat animated by that desire to help but his real purpose was to be a gadfly who found some hidden trove of music that others had not found. In this he was following the trail started by the Lally Brothers, a local Boston folk group who were dedicated to the preservation of mountain music and having headed south had “discovered” Buell Hobart, the lonesome fiddler and had brought him north to do shows and be acclaimed as the “max daddy” of the mountain world.     

Jack had spent a couple of weeks down in Kentucky after having spent a couple of weeks striking out West Virginia where, for a fact, most of the rural folk were either rude or suspicious of his motives when he inquired about the whereabouts of some old-time red barn musicians he had read about from outside Wheeling. Then one night, one Saturday night he found himself in Prestonsburg, down in southeast Kentucky, down in coal country where the hills and hollows extent for miles around. He had been brought to that town by a girl, a cousin of Sam Lowell’s on his father’s side from back home in Carver. Sam had told Jack to look her up if he ever got to Hazard where his father had hailed from and had lived before World War had driven him to the Marines and later to love of his mother from Carver.   

This girl, a pretty girl to boot, Nadine, had told Jack that mountain music had been played out in Hazard, that whatever legends about the coal wars and about the music had long gone from that town. She suggested that he accompany her to an old-fashioned red barn dance that was being held weekly at Fred Brown’s place on Saturday nights on the outskirts of Prestonsburg if he wanted to hear the “real deal” (Jack’s term). That night when they arrived and paid their dollar apiece jack saw a motley crew of fiddlers, guitar player, and a few what Nadine called mountain harps.

The first half of the dance went uneventfully enough but the second half, after he had been fortified with what the locals called white lightning, illegal whiskey, this woman came up to the stage after being introduced although he did not for some reason, maybe the sting of the booze and began to play the mountain harp and sing a song, The Hills of Home, that had everybody mesmerized. She sang a few other songs that night and Jack marveled at her style. When Jack asked Nadine who that woman singer was she told him a gal from “around those parts” (her expression) Hazel Dickens and wasn’t she good. When Jack got back to Boston a few weeks later (after spending more time with friendly Nadine that searching for mountain music he contacted the Lally Brothers to see if they could coax her north for college audiences to hear. And that was Jack Callahan’s small contribution to keeping the mountain music tradition alive. For her part Hazel Dickens did before she dies several years ago did much, much more to keep the flame burning.           

The Hills And Hollas Of Home- In Honor Of The Late Hazel Dickens

The Hills And Hollas Of Home- In Honor Of The Late Hazel Dickens

By Lance Lawrence 

Kenny Jackman heard the late Hazel Dickens (d. 2011) for the very first time on her CD album It’s Hard To Tell The Singer From The Song some years back, maybe 2005, when he was in thrall to mountain music after being hit hard by Reese Witherspoon’s role as June Carter in the film Walk The Line. At that time he got into all things Carter Family unto the nth generation. A friend, a Vermont mountain boy, hipped him to Hazel during his frenzy and he picked up the CD second-hand in Harvard Square. (Really at Sandy’s located between Harvard and Central Squares, a folk institution around town where until recently Sandy had held forth since the early 1960s folk minute when everybody was desperately looking for roots music and that was the place to look first. Hazel’s You’ll Get No More Of Me, A Few Old Memories and the classic Hills of Home knocked him out. The latter, moreover, seemed kind of familiar and later, a couple of months later, he finally figured out why. He had really first heard Hazel back in 1970 when he was down in the those very hills and hollows that are a constant theme in her work, and that of the mountain mist winds music coming down the crevices. What was going on though? Was it 2005 when he first heard Hazel or that 1970 time? Let me go back and tell that 1970 story.

Kenny Jackman like many of his generation of ’68 was feeling foot loose and fancy free, especially after he had been mercifully declared 4-F by his friendly neighbors at the local draft board in old hometown North Adamsville (declared 4-F in those high draft days because he had a seriously abnormal foot problem which precluded walking very far, a skill that the army likes its soldiers to be able to do). So Kenny, every now and again, took to the hitchhike road, not like his mad man friend Peter Paul Markin with some heavy message purpose a la Jack Kerouac and his beat brothers (and a few sisters) but just to see the country while he, and it, were still in one piece no pun intended Kenny told me since the country was in about fifteen pieces then).

On one of these trips he found himself stranded just outside Norfolk, Virginia at a road-side campsite. Feeling kind of hungry one afternoon, and tired, tired unto death of camp-side gruel and stews he stopped at a diner, Billy Bob McGee’s, an old-time truck stop diner a few hundred yards up the road from his camp for some real food, maybe meatloaf or some pot roast like grandma used to make or that was how it was advertised. When he entered the mid-afternoon half-empty diner he sat down at one of the single stool counter seats that always accompany the vinyl-covered side booths in such places. But all of this was so much descriptive noise that could describe a million, maybe more, such eateries. What really caught his attention though was a waitress serving them “off the arm” that he knew immediately he had to “hit” on (although that is not the word used in those days but “hit on” conveys what he was up to in the universal boy meets girl world). As it turned out she, sweetly named Fiona Fay, and, well let’s just call her fetching, Kenny weary-eyed fetching, was young, footloose and fancy free herself and had drawn a bead on him as he entered the place, and, …well this story is about Hazel, so let us just leave it as one thing led to another and let it go at that.

Well, not quite let’s let it go at that because when Kenny left Norfolk a few days later one ex-waitress Fiona Fay was standing by his side on the road south. And the road south was leading nowhere, nowhere at all except to Podunk, really Prestonsburg, Kentucky, and really, really a dink town named Pottsville, just down the road from big town Prestonsburg, down in the hills and hollows of Appalachia, wind-swept green, green, mountain mist, time forgotten . And the reason two footloose and fancy free young people were heading to Podunk is that a close cousin of Fiona’s lived there with her husband and child and wanted Fiona to come visit (visit “for a spell” is how she put it but I will spare the reader the localisms). So they were on that hell-bend road but Kenny, Kenny was dreading this trip and only doing it because, well because Fiona was the kind of young woman, footloose and fancy free or not, that you followed, at least you followed if you were Kenny Jackson and hoped things would work out okay.

What Kenny dreaded that day was that he was afraid to confront his past. And that past just then entailed having to go to his father’s home territory just up the road in Hazard. See Kenny saw himself as strictly a Yankee, a hard “we fought to free the slaves and incidentally save the union” Yankee for one and all to see back in old North Adamsville. And denied, denied to the high heavens, that he had any connection with the south, especially the hillbilly south that everybody was making a fuse about trying to bring into the 20th century around that time. And here he was with a father with Hazard, Kentucky, the poorest of the poor hillbillies, right on his birth certificate although Kenny had never been there before. Yeah, Fiona had better be worth it.

Kenny had to admit, as they picked up one lonely truck driver ride after another (it did not hurt in those days to have a comely lass standing on the road with you in the back road South, or anywhere else, especially if you had longish hair and a wisp of a beard), that the country was beautiful. As they entered coal country though and the shacks got crummier and crummier he got caught up in that 1960s Michael Harrington Other America no running water, outhouse, open door, one window and a million kids and dogs running around half-naked, the kids that is vision. But they got to Pottsville okay and Fiona’s cousin and husband (Laura and Stu) turned out to be good hosts. So good that they made sure that Kenny and Fiona stayed in town long enough to attend the weekly dance at the old town barn (red of course, run down and in need of paint to keep red of course) that had seen such dances going back to the 1920s when the Carter Family had actually come through Pottsville on their way back to Clinch Mountain.

Kenny buckled at the thought, the mere thought, of going to some Podunk Saturday night “hoe-down” and tried to convince Fiona that they should leave before Saturday. Fiona would have none of it and so Kenny was stuck. Actually the dance started out pretty well, helped tremendously by some local “white lightning” that Stu provided and which he failed to mention should be sipped, sipped sparingly. Not only that but the several fiddles, mandolins, guitars, washboards and whatnot made pretty good music. Music like Anchored in Love and Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies, stuff that he had heard in the folk clubs in Harvard Square when he used to hang out there in the early 1960s. And music that even Kenny, old two left-feet, one way out of whack, draft-free out of whack, Kenny, could dance to with Fiona.

So Kenny was sipping, well more than sipping, and dancing and all until maybe about midnight when this woman, this local woman came out of nowhere and began to sing, sing like some quick, rushing wind sound coming down from the hills and hollas (hollows for Yankees, okay, please). Kenny began to toss and turn a little, not from the liquor but from some strange feeling, some strange womb-like feeling that this woman’s voice was a call from up on top of these deep green hills, now mist-filled awaiting day. And then she started into a long, mournful version of Hills of Home, and he sensed, sensed strongly if not anything he could articulate that he was home. Yes, Kenny Jackson, Yankee, city boy, corner boy-bred was “home,” hillbilly home. So Kenny did really hear Hazel Dickens for first time in 1970, see.

[As for Fiona Fay she stayed on the road with Kenny until they headed toward the Midwest where she veered off home to Valparaiso in Indiana, her hometown as Kenny headed west to California, to Big Sur and a different mountain ethos. They were supposed to meet out there a couple of months later after she finished up some family business. They never did, a not unusual occurrence of the time when people met and faded along the way, but Kenny thought about her and that wind-swept mountain dance night for a long time after that.]    

The Hills And Hollas Of Home- In Honor Of The Late Hazel Dickens-The “Queen” Of The Appalachia Hills And Saturday Night Red Barn Dance

The Hills And Hollas Of Home- In Honor Of The Late Hazel Dickens-The “Queen” Of The Appalachia Hills And Saturday Night Red Barn Dance

By Sam Lowell

This is the fourth and final installment (the first dated January 13, 2018, the second dated January 19, 2018, and the third January 24, 2018) set as an introduction to the history of the American Left History blog. Initially I believed that this would be a several part series and now it looks like with this final section about the massive internal in-fighting and resultant shake-up that brought the original leader of all of these publications down, brought in a new regime with my help and whatever direction the new leadership is heading we are finally done with a task a lot harder than I thought it would be. For a final time as I have been at pains to mention before this task came to me because I am one of the few people, more importantly one of the few writers, who has taken part in almost all of the key junctures in this forty something year history including the latest flare-up which has brought about a new regime, again partially with my help, so I am well-placed to tell the tale.

As part of the “truce” arranged with current site manager Greg Green I will tell the story and will elicit comments from a couple of other Editorial Board members. The first installment dealt with the genesis of this blog with hard copy predecessors going back to the late 1960s when a number of the older writers still standing came on board, many through long friendships with the previous site manager going back to high school days, those including myself. The second dealt with the dog days of the hard copy version of this blog and the greying of its staff. The third dealt with the transfer to the on-line version and some preliminary observations about how the just completed internal struggle came to such a fiery conclusion and explain how I became a member of the opposition. This final section as I said will deal with the food fight of 2017.

All four parts of the now completed project will appear as one unit on February 10^th.

*********

In a sense this last section is a bit anti-climactic since I have laid out the history leading up to the split, my part in it, and the result with the removal of the former site manager Alan Jackson in what I have described truly as a purge. (Some “fragile” types on both sides have backed off from that designation saying it is too rough but Allan knows, just as well as I do both of us veterans of many old-time political struggles in radical circles, that he had been purged.) That elevated Greg Green who had originally come over from the American Film Gazette to run the day to day operations to site manager. As part of the post-Allan regime Greg decided that he would create an Editorial Board to oversee everything and back up his decisions. For transparency reasons I should note that I sit on that board. I should also note that although it has only been in existence the past few months that there has been gripping about it being a rubber-stamp, a group of Greg toadies, and other derogatory remarks from young and older writers alike. Greg has also hired a couple of younger writers, really twenty something out of journalism schools and English majors. Brought on Josh Breslin’s former companion, Leslie Dumont, who many years ago worked here as a stringer but getting nowhere with Alan’s regime left and finally wound up with a big by-line at New York Monthly. Brought on my long-time companion Laura Perkins who also worked as a stringer and got nowhere with Alan and left for an academic and high tech career. Still no soap on getting any black writers, or more generically “writers of color.”

Those are the results thus far not without controversy and some hard feelings especially by the older writers who have been stripped of their titles, younger writers too who had worked for titles. Worse and which almost caused another explosion every writer now can be assigned any topic on any subject to as Greg says “broaden their horizons.” But enough of the current doings and back to the spring of 2017 and the genesis of the in-fighting that has brought these changes.

It almost seems like some twisted kiss of fate that Alex James, Zack’s oldest brother (who by the way is about ten years older than Zack showing a good example of the relative sense of “younger” writers Allan was bringing in. Certainly nobody as young as twenty something Kenny Jacobs), an old friend of ours from the old neighborhood, who went on to become a successful lawyer, went on a business trip to San Francisco last spring (2017). While there out of the blue Alex saw an advertisement on the side of a bus for something called The Summer of Love Experience, 1967 at the de Young Museum in famous Golden Gate Park. Sneaking (according to Alex) out one afternoon he saw the exhibition and was positively floored by the experience. See, he, we, under the “guidance” of the late Peter Paul Markin had been in the thick of the “drugs, sex, and rock and roll” mantra which all of that experience went under. When he got back to Boston Alex called or e-mailed everybody he knew from back in the days who was still standing and who had gone out there to see what was happening, to see as Markin had called it “the world turned upside down.” He gathered a number of us, including Zack who had gone to journalism school and was a veteran of various workshop programs, together in order to propose that in honor of our fallen brother Markin each write our “memoirs” of those times with Zack as editor and publisher. Those who agreed included old friend Allan Jackson who had also gone out there with us. The venture was a great success and various portions were posted last summer on the ALH blog as well as in booklet form.     

That seemingly small exercise in 1960s nostalgia apparently snapped something in Allan’s head. I have already mentioned the drift of the blog on the part of the older writers who were allowed by Allan to pick whatever subject they wanted (with the left-overs to the younger writers). Last summer right after the memorial booklet was published and articles posted Allan decided to do a massive blanket coverage of the 50^th anniversary of the Summer of Love by assigning a million topics related to that time. If you couldn’t link the Summer of Love, or the 1960s “hippie” experience, into your article he would red-pencil what you had written. (Allan liked to use a red pencil to “edit” something about his radical red youth he said when asked why he didn’t use the usual blue pencil.) This was no joke on Allan’s part. I was doing a little piece on figure skating after reviewing a Sonja Henny 1930s film. Allan asked me why I didn’t bring up the ice skating rink at Fillmore and Pacific where “hippies” would go to skate during 1967 when we were out there. WTF.

All of this came to a head when young Alden Riley, a new hire for the film department to help Sandy Salmon out with the increased load of films that were projected by Greg on the site. He was “assigned” by Allan, over Sandy’s head, to do a review on a bio/pic about Janis Joplin, a key musical figure in the heady days of the Monterey Pops Festival. Reason? After Sandy had done a review of D. A Pennebaker’s documentary about the first Monterey Festival he mentioned Ms. Joplin’s name and Alan said he did not know who she was. Allan heard about that blunder and ordered the assignment as “punishment’ is what he told Si Lannon, another of our old friends. Things only got worse from there as Allan double-downed on the Summer of Love connection for each article.

I am not quite sure who called the first meeting of essentially the whole rank of younger writers (average age somebody figured out about forty-five years old) to see what they would do about Allan’s manic behavior and their dubious assignments which to a man they could give f - -k about to quote Zack. Maybe it was Zack since he Lance Lawrence and Bradley Fox were the three ringleaders of the uprising who in water cooler legend were dubbed the “Young Turks.” They decided to go to Allan and put their cards on the table. He rebuffed them out of hand. That is when I came in, came to one of their meetings being invited by Alden, to see if I could reason with Allan. I proposed to Allan that we get Greg Green from American Film Gazette to come in to do the day to day operations leaving Allan time to write some stuff on his own or think about future assignments. He bought my argument once I explained that we might lose the whole cohort if things didn’t change. They didn’t as Allan pressed Greg to hand out these never-ending freaking 1960s world assignments.

To make a long story short the “Young Turks” (and me) had another meeting, an ultimatum meeting with me as the emissary to Allan again. The proposal of the group was either Allan “retire” or they collectively would quit. The decision to be determined by a majority vote-for or against. For some reason even I don’t understand to this day Allan agreed. You know the rest including my “traitorous” vote with the “Young Turks.” My decisive vote since we won by one vote. What you may not know is that while the split was almost directly along generational lines there were several abstentions among the older writers from the tallies. Any one of them casting a vote for Allan would have shifted the totals the other way and I would have been the one “purged” and working in Kansas someplace. So some of the older guys had also doubts about the wisdom of going back to the past. Now that you have the whole story this episode should be at rest. (With the exception of any articles still in the pipeline before the truce with Greg was negotiated.)          

 

Kenny Jackman heard the late Hazel Dickens (d. 2011) for the very first time on her CD album It’s Hard To Tell The Singer From The Song some years back, maybe 2005, when he was in thrall to mountain music after being hit hard by Reese Witherspoon’s role as June Carter in the film Walk The Line. At that time he got into all things Carter Family unto the nth generation. A friend, a Vermont mountain boy, hipped him to Hazel during his frenzy and he picked up the CD second-hand in Harvard Square. (Really at Sandy’s located between Harvard and Central Squares, a folk institution around town where until recently Sandy had held forth since the early 1960s folk minute when everybody was desperately looking for roots music and that was the place to look first. Hazel’s You’ll Get No More Of Me, A Few Old Memories and the classic Hills of Home knocked him out. The latter, moreover, seemed kind of familiar and later, a couple of months later, he finally figured out why. He had really first heard Hazel back in 1970 when he was down in the those very hills and hollows that are a constant theme in her work, and that of the mountain mist winds music coming down the crevices. What was going on though? Was it 2005 when he first heard Hazel or that 1970 time? Let me go back and tell that 1970 story.

Kenny Jackman like many of his generation of ’68 was feeling foot loose and fancy free, especially after he had been mercifully declared 4-F by his friendly neighbors at the local draft board in old hometown North Adamsville (declared 4-F in those high draft days because he had a seriously abnormal foot problem which precluded walking very far, a skill that the army likes its soldiers to be able to do). So Kenny, every now and again, took to the hitchhike road, not like his mad man friend Peter Paul Markin with some heavy message purpose a la Jack Kerouac and his beat brothers (and a few sisters) but just to see the country while he, and it, were still in one piece no pun intended Kenny told me since the country was in about fifteen pieces then).

On one of these trips he found himself stranded just outside Norfolk, Virginia at a road-side campsite. Feeling kind of hungry one afternoon, and tired, tired unto death of camp-side gruel and stews he stopped at a diner, Billy Bob McGee’s, an old-time truck stop diner a few hundred yards up the road from his camp for some real food, maybe meatloaf or some pot roast like grandma used to make or that was how it was advertised. When he entered the mid-afternoon half-empty diner he sat down at one of the single stool counter seats that always accompany the vinyl-covered side booths in such places. But all of this was so much descriptive noise that could describe a million, maybe more, such eateries. What really caught his attention though was a waitress serving them “off the arm” that he knew immediately he had to “hit” on (although that is not the word used in those days but “hit on” conveys what he was up to in the universal boy meets girl world). As it turned out she, sweetly named Fiona Fay, and, well let’s just call her fetching, Kenny weary-eyed fetching, was young, footloose and fancy free herself and had drawn a bead on him as he entered the place, and, …well this story is about Hazel, so let us just leave it as one thing led to another and let it go at that.

Well, not quite let’s let it go at that because when Kenny left Norfolk a few days later one ex-waitress Fiona Fay was standing by his side on the road south. And the road south was leading nowhere, nowhere at all except to Podunk, really Prestonsburg, Kentucky, and really, really a dink town named Pottsville, just down the road from big town Prestonsburg, down in the hills and hollows of Appalachia, wind-swept green, green, mountain mist, time forgotten . And the reason two footloose and fancy free young people were heading to Podunk is that a close cousin of Fiona’s lived there with her husband and child and wanted Fiona to come visit (visit “for a spell” is how she put it but I will spare the reader the localisms). So they were on that hell-bend road but Kenny, Kenny was dreading this trip and only doing it because, well because Fiona was the kind of young woman, footloose and fancy free or not, that you followed, at least you followed if you were Kenny Jackson and hoped things would work out okay.

What Kenny dreaded that day was that he was afraid to confront his past. And that past just then entailed having to go to his father’s home territory just up the road in Hazard. See Kenny saw himself as strictly a Yankee, a hard “we fought to free the slaves and incidentally save the union” Yankee for one and all to see back in old North Adamsville. And denied, denied to the high heavens, that he had any connection with the south, especially the hillbilly south that everybody was making a fuse about trying to bring into the 20th century around that time. And here he was with a father with Hazard, Kentucky, the poorest of the poor hillbillies, right on his birth certificate although Kenny had never been there before. Yeah, Fiona had better be worth it.

Kenny had to admit, as they picked up one lonely truck driver ride after another (it did not hurt in those days to have a comely lass standing on the road with you in the back road South, or anywhere else, especially if you had longish hair and a wisp of a beard), that the country was beautiful. As they entered coal country though and the shacks got crummier and crummier he got caught up in that 1960s Michael Harrington Other America no running water, outhouse, open door, one window and a million kids and dogs running around half-naked, the kids that is vision. But they got to Pottsville okay and Fiona’s cousin and husband (Laura and Stu) turned out to be good hosts. So good that they made sure that Kenny and Fiona stayed in town long enough to attend the weekly dance at the old town barn (red of course, run down and in need of paint to keep red of course) that had seen such dances going back to the 1920s when the Carter Family had actually come through Pottsville on their way back to Clinch Mountain.

Kenny buckled at the thought, the mere thought, of going to some Podunk Saturday night “hoe-down” and tried to convince Fiona that they should leave before Saturday. Fiona would have none of it and so Kenny was stuck. Actually the dance started out pretty well, helped tremendously by some local “white lightning” that Stu provided and which he failed to mention should be sipped, sipped sparingly. Not only that but the several fiddles, mandolins, guitars, washboards and whatnot made pretty good music. Music like Anchored in Love and Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies, stuff that he had heard in the folk clubs in Harvard Square when he used to hang out there in the early 1960s. And music that even Kenny, old two left-feet, one way out of whack, draft-free out of whack, Kenny, could dance to with Fiona.

So Kenny was sipping, well more than sipping, and dancing and all until maybe about midnight when this woman, this local woman came out of nowhere and began to sing, sing like some quick, rushing wind sound coming down from the hills and hollas (hollows for Yankees, okay, please). Kenny began to toss and turn a little, not from the liquor but from some strange feeling, some strange womb-like feeling that this woman’s voice was a call from up on top of these deep green hills, now mist-filled awaiting day. And then she started into a long, mournful version of Hills of Home, and he sensed, sensed strongly if not anything he could articulate that he was home. Yes, Kenny Jackson, Yankee, city boy, corner boy-bred was “home,” hillbilly home. So Kenny did really hear Hazel Dickens for first time in 1970, see.

[As for Fiona Fay she stayed on the road with Kenny until they headed toward the Midwest where she veered off home to Valparaiso in Indiana, her hometown as Kenny headed west to California, to Big Sur and a different mountain ethos. They were supposed to meet out there a couple of months later after she finished up some family business. They never did, a not unusual occurrence of the time when people met and faded along the way, but Kenny thought about her and that wind-swept mountain dance night for a long time after that.]    

The Hills And Hollas Of Home- In Honor Of The Late Hazel Dickens

The Hills And Hollas Of Home- In Honor Of The Late Hazel Dickens

By Lance Lawrence 

Kenny Jackman heard the late Hazel Dickens (d. 2011) for the very first time on her CD album It’s Hard To Tell The Singer From The Song some years back, maybe 2005, when he was in thrall to mountain music after being hit hard by Reese Witherspoon’s role as June Carter in the film Walk The Line. At that time he got into all things Carter Family unto the nth generation. A friend, a Vermont mountain boy, hipped him to Hazel during his frenzy and he picked up the CD second-hand in Harvard Square. (Really at Sandy’s located between Harvard and Central Squares, a folk institution around town where until recently Sandy had held forth since the early 1960s folk minute when everybody was desperately looking for roots music and that was the place to look first. Hazel’s You’ll Get No More Of Me, A Few Old Memories and the classic Hills of Home knocked him out. The latter, moreover, seemed kind of familiar and later, a couple of months later, he finally figured out why. He had really first heard Hazel back in 1970 when he was down in the those very hills and hollows that are a constant theme in her work, and that of the mountain mist winds music coming down the crevices. What was going on though? Was it 2005 when he first heard Hazel or that 1970 time? Let me go back and tell that 1970 story.

Kenny Jackman like many of his generation of ’68 was feeling foot loose and fancy free, especially after he had been mercifully declared 4-F by his friendly neighbors at the local draft board in old hometown North Adamsville (declared 4-F in those high draft days because he had a seriously abnormal foot problem which precluded walking very far, a skill that the army likes its soldiers to be able to do). So Kenny, every now and again, took to the hitchhike road, not like his mad man friend Peter Paul Markin with some heavy message purpose a la Jack Kerouac and his beat brothers (and a few sisters) but just to see the country while he, and it, were still in one piece no pun intended Kenny told me since the country was in about fifteen pieces then).

On one of these trips he found himself stranded just outside Norfolk, Virginia at a road-side campsite. Feeling kind of hungry one afternoon, and tired, tired unto death of camp-side gruel and stews he stopped at a diner, Billy Bob McGee’s, an old-time truck stop diner a few hundred yards up the road from his camp for some real food, maybe meatloaf or some pot roast like grandma used to make or that was how it was advertised. When he entered the mid-afternoon half-empty diner he sat down at one of the single stool counter seats that always accompany the vinyl-covered side booths in such places. But all of this was so much descriptive noise that could describe a million, maybe more, such eateries. What really caught his attention though was a waitress serving them “off the arm” that he knew immediately he had to “hit” on (although that is not the word used in those days but “hit on” conveys what he was up to in the universal boy meets girl world). As it turned out she, sweetly named Fiona Fay, and, well let’s just call her fetching, Kenny weary-eyed fetching, was young, footloose and fancy free herself and had drawn a bead on him as he entered the place, and, …well this story is about Hazel, so let us just leave it as one thing led to another and let it go at that.

Well, not quite let’s let it go at that because when Kenny left Norfolk a few days later one ex-waitress Fiona Fay was standing by his side on the road south. And the road south was leading nowhere, nowhere at all except to Podunk, really Prestonsburg, Kentucky, and really, really a dink town named Pottsville, just down the road from big town Prestonsburg, down in the hills and hollows of Appalachia, wind-swept green, green, mountain mist, time forgotten . And the reason two footloose and fancy free young people were heading to Podunk is that a close cousin of Fiona’s lived there with her husband and child and wanted Fiona to come visit (visit “for a spell” is how she put it but I will spare the reader the localisms). So they were on that hell-bend road but Kenny, Kenny was dreading this trip and only doing it because, well because Fiona was the kind of young woman, footloose and fancy free or not, that you followed, at least you followed if you were Kenny Jackson and hoped things would work out okay.

What Kenny dreaded that day was that he was afraid to confront his past. And that past just then entailed having to go to his father’s home territory just up the road in Hazard. See Kenny saw himself as strictly a Yankee, a hard “we fought to free the slaves and incidentally save the union” Yankee for one and all to see back in old North Adamsville. And denied, denied to the high heavens, that he had any connection with the south, especially the hillbilly south that everybody was making a fuse about trying to bring into the 20th century around that time. And here he was with a father with Hazard, Kentucky, the poorest of the poor hillbillies, right on his birth certificate although Kenny had never been there before. Yeah, Fiona had better be worth it.

Kenny had to admit, as they picked up one lonely truck driver ride after another (it did not hurt in those days to have a comely lass standing on the road with you in the back road South, or anywhere else, especially if you had longish hair and a wisp of a beard), that the country was beautiful. As they entered coal country though and the shacks got crummier and crummier he got caught up in that 1960s Michael Harrington Other America no running water, outhouse, open door, one window and a million kids and dogs running around half-naked, the kids that is vision. But they got to Pottsville okay and Fiona’s cousin and husband (Laura and Stu) turned out to be good hosts. So good that they made sure that Kenny and Fiona stayed in town long enough to attend the weekly dance at the old town barn (red of course, run down and in need of paint to keep red of course) that had seen such dances going back to the 1920s when the Carter Family had actually come through Pottsville on their way back to Clinch Mountain.

Kenny buckled at the thought, the mere thought, of going to some Podunk Saturday night “hoe-down” and tried to convince Fiona that they should leave before Saturday. Fiona would have none of it and so Kenny was stuck. Actually the dance started out pretty well, helped tremendously by some local “white lightning” that Stu provided and which he failed to mention should be sipped, sipped sparingly. Not only that but the several fiddles, mandolins, guitars, washboards and whatnot made pretty good music. Music like Anchored in Love and Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies, stuff that he had heard in the folk clubs in Harvard Square when he used to hang out there in the early 1960s. And music that even Kenny, old two left-feet, one way out of whack, draft-free out of whack, Kenny, could dance to with Fiona.

So Kenny was sipping, well more than sipping, and dancing and all until maybe about midnight when this woman, this local woman came out of nowhere and began to sing, sing like some quick, rushing wind sound coming down from the hills and hollas (hollows for Yankees, okay, please). Kenny began to toss and turn a little, not from the liquor but from some strange feeling, some strange womb-like feeling that this woman’s voice was a call from up on top of these deep green hills, now mist-filled awaiting day. And then she started into a long, mournful version of Hills of Home, and he sensed, sensed strongly if not anything he could articulate that he was home. Yes, Kenny Jackson, Yankee, city boy, corner boy-bred was “home,” hillbilly home. So Kenny did really hear Hazel Dickens for first time in 1970, see.

[As for Fiona Fay she stayed on the road with Kenny until they headed toward the Midwest where she veered off home to Valparaiso in Indiana, her hometown as Kenny headed west to California, to Big Sur and a different mountain ethos. They were supposed to meet out there a couple of months later after she finished up some family business. They never did, a not unusual occurrence of the time when people met and faded along the way, but Kenny thought about her and that wind-swept mountain dance night for a long time after that.]    

For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-Labor’s Untold Story- A Personal View Of The Class Wars In The Kentucky Hills And Hollows-"The Children Of The Coal"-The Music Of Kathy Mattea

For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-Labor’s Untold Story- A Personal View Of The Class Wars In The Kentucky Hills And Hollows-"The Children Of The Coal"-The Music Of Kathy Mattea

The Children Of The Coal- The Music Of Kathy Mattea

CD REVIEW

By Fritz Taylor


Coal, Kathy Mattea, Captain Potato Records, 2008


Several time over the past year or so I have mentioned in this space, as part of my remembrances of my youth and of my political and familial background, that my father was a coal miner and the son of a coal miner in the hills of Hazard, Kentucky in the heart of Appalachia. I have also mentioned that he was a child of the Great Depression and of World War II. He often joked that in a choice between digging the coal and taking his chances in war he much preferred the latter. Thus, it was no accident that when war came he volunteered for the Marines and, as fate would have it despite a hard, hard life after the war, he never looked back to the mines.

All of this is by way of an introduction to this unusual tribute album. Of all the subjects that one could think of in the year 2008 fit for a full exposition the unsung life, trials and tribulations, and grit of those who, for generations, mined the coal (and other minerals) and passed unnoticed in the hollows and hills of Appalachia (and the West) does not readily come to mind. Even for this long time labor militant. But Ms. Mattea, who has her own roots to the coal, has done a great service here. Kudos are in order.

Now politically the coal story is today a very disturbing one. For one, the strip-mining of significant portions of places like Kentucky and West Virginia goes on unabated and essentially unchecked. For another, the number of miners has dwindled to a very few and are getting fewer. As a labor militant I have feasted on the heroics of the Harlan and Hazard miners, the exploits of Big Big Haywood and the Western Federation of Miners, and the class-war battles from any number of isolated locales where men (mainly) dug the coal and fought for some sense of dignity. The dignity and sense of social solidarity may still remain but the virtues of the lessons of the class struggle- picket lines mean don’t cross and class solidarity is essential- have clearly been eroded. That is the political part that cannot be separated from the musical part of this story. Why?

The songs selected for inclusion here spell out the condition of life for the miners, in short, as the English political theorist Thomas Hobbes put it centuries ago- life is "short, nasty and brutish" in the mines and the mining communities. The songs like You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive and the choice of material by well-known mountain music songwriters Jean Ritchie, Billy Edd Wheeler, and Hazel Dickens reflect that. Theses simple mountain tunes, as performed by Ms. Mattea and her fellow musicians, spell out the story with soft guitar, fiddle, mandolin and other instruments that create the proper mood. Probably it is very hard for those not familiar with the coal, the isolated communities, and the sorrow of the mountains to listen to this compilation in one sitting. For that it probably takes the children of the coal. For the rest please bear with it and learn about an important part of American history and music.

“You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive”

In the deep dark hills of eastern Kentucky
That's the place where I trace my bloodline
And it's there I read on a hillside gravestone
You will never leave Harlan alive

Oh, my granddad's dad walked down
Katahrins Mountain
And he asked Tillie Helton to be his bride
Said, won't you walk with me out of the mouth
Of this holler
Or we'll never leave Harlan alive

Where the sun comes up about ten in the morning
And the sun goes down about three in the day
And you fill your cup with whatever bitter brew you're drinking
And you spend your life just thinkin' of how to get away

No one ever knew there was coal in them mountains
'Til a man from the Northeast arrived
Waving hundred dollar bills he said I'll pay ya for your minerals
But he never left Harlan alive

Granny sold out cheap and they moved out west
Of Pineville
To a farm where big Richland River winds
I bet they danced them a jig, laughed and sang a new song
Who said we'd never leave Harlan alive

But the times got hard and tobacco wasn't selling
And ole granddad knew what he'd do to survive
He went and dug for Harlan coal
And sent the money back to granny
But he never left Harlan alive

Where the sun comes up about ten in the morning
And the sun goes down about three in the day
And you fill your cup with whatever bitter brew you're drinking
And you spend your life just thinkin' of how to get away

Where the sun comes up about ten in the morning
And the sun goes down about three in the day
And you fill your cup with whatever bitter brew you're drinking
And you spend your life digging coal from the bottom of your grave

In the deep dark hills of eastern Kentucky
That's the place where I trace my bloodline
And it's there I read on a hillside gravestone
You will never leave Harlan alive

"The L & N Don't Stop Here Anymore"

When I was a curly headed baby
My daddy sat me down on his knee
He said, "son, go to school and get your letters,
Don't you be a dusty coal miner, boy, like me."

[Chorus:]
I was born and raised at the mouth of hazard hollow
The coal cars rolled and rumbled past my door
But now they stand in a rusty row all empty
Because the l & n don't stop here anymore

I used to think my daddy was a black man
With script enough to buy the company store
But now he goes to town with empty pockets
And his face is white as a February snow

[Chorus]

I never thought I'd learn to love the coal dust
I never thought I'd pray to hear that whistle roar
Oh, god, I wish the grass would turn to money
And those green backs would fill my pockets once more

[Chorus]

Last night I dreamed I went down to the office
To get my pay like a had done before
But them ol' kudzu vines were coverin' the door
And there were leaves and grass growin' right up through the floor

[Chorus]
Labels: Big Bill Haywood, COALMINERS, HarLan County, Hazel Dickens, IWW, mountain music, United Mine Workers, UTAH PHILLIPS

For Rosalie Sorrels -"The Children Of The Coal"- The Music Of Kathy Mattea

For Rosalie Sorrels -"The Children Of The Coal"- The Music Of Kathy Mattea

If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go-Round At 83

By Music Critic Bart Webber

Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names, some small too which one time I made the subject of a series, or rather two series entitled respectively Not Bob Dylan and Not Joan Baez about those who for whatever reason did not make the show over the long haul, passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. Those are the places where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers, some who made it like Tom Rush and Joni Mitchell and others like Eric Saint Jean and Minnie Murphy who didn’t, like  who all sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute, that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze.

(I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing out of his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix  right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/Rockport Sunday, and about affairs with certain up and coming female folkies like the previously mentioned Minnie Murphy at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you dare go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important.)

Those urban locales were certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some of those names played previously mentioned but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.

Yeah, came barreling like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a different proposition. The West I am talking about is where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. A tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage. Tough too when your people landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes than lost loves and longings.  

Rosalie Sorrels could write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me at those moments)

Rosalie Sorrels as one would expect on such an occasion was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job banging out the blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember the crystal clarity and irony of her cover of her classic Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain and thoughts of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels 

A YouTube's film clip of Kathy Mattea performing the "L&N Don't Stop Here Anymore". Sound familiar?

CD REVIEW

Coal, Kathy Mattea, Captain Potato Records, 2008

Several time over the past year or so I have mentioned in this space, as part of my remembrances of my youth and of my political and familial background, that my father was a coal miner and the son of a coal miner in the hills of Hazard, Kentucky in the heart of Appalachia. I have also mentioned that he was a child of the Great Depression and of World War II. He often joked that in a choice between digging the coal and taking his chances in war he much preferred the latter. Thus, it was no accident that when war came he volunteered for the Marines and, as fate would have it despite a hard, hard life after the war, he never looked back to the mines.

All of this is by way of an introduction to this unusual tribute album. Of all the subjects that one could think of in the year 2008 fit for a full exposition the unsung life, trials and tribulations and grit of those who, for generations, mined the coal (and other minerals) and passed unnoticed in the hollows and hills of Appalachia (and the West) does not readily come to mind. Even for this long time labor militant. But Ms. Mattea, who has her own roots to the coal, has done a great service here. Kudos are in order.

Now politically the coal story is today a very disturbing one. For one, the strip mining of significant portions of places like Kentucky and West Virginia go on unabated and essentially unchecked. For another, the number of miners had dwindled to a very few and are getting fewer. As a labor militant I have feasted on the heroics of the Harlan and Hazard miners, the exploits of Big Big Haywood and the Western Federation of Miners and the class war battles from any number of isolated locales where men (mainly) dug the coal and fought for some sense of dignity. The dignity and sense of social solidarity may still remain but the virtues of the lessons of the class struggle- picket lines mean don’t cross and class solidarity is essential- have clearly been eroded. That is the political part that cannot be separated from the musical part of this story. Why?

The songs selected for inclusion here spell out the condition of live for the miners, in short, as the political theorist Thomas Hobbes put it centuries ago- life is 'short, nasty and brutish' in the mines and the mining communities. The songs like "You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive" and the choice of material by well-known mountain music songwriters Jean Ritchie, Billy Edd Wheeler and Hazel Dickens reflect that. Theses simple mountain tunes, as performed by Ms. Mattea and her fellow musicians, spell out the story with soft guitar, fiddle, mandolin and other instruments that create the proper mood. Probably it is very hard for those not familiar with the coal, the isolated communities and the sorrow of the mountains to listen to this compilation in one sitting. For that it probably takes the children of the coal. For the rest please bear with it and learn about an important part of American history and music.

“You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive”

In the deep dark hills of eastern Kentucky
That's the place where I trace my bloodline
And it's there I read on a hillside gravestone
You will never leave Harlan alive

Oh, my granddad's dad walked down
Katahrins Mountain
And he asked Tillie Helton to be his bride
Said, won't you walk with me out of the mouth
Of this holler
Or we'll never leave Harlan alive

Where the sun comes up about ten in the morning
And the sun goes down about three in the day
And you fill your cup with whatever bitter brew you're drinking
And you spend your life just thinkin' of how to get away

No one ever knew there was coal in them mountains
'Til a man from the Northeast arrived
Waving hundred dollar bills he said I'll pay ya for your minerals
But he never left Harlan alive

Granny sold out cheap and they moved out west
Of Pineville
To a farm where big Richland River winds
I bet they danced them a jig, laughed and sang a new song
Who said we'd never leave Harlan alive

But the times got hard and tobacco wasn't selling
And ole granddad knew what he'd do to survive
He went and dug for Harlan coal
And sent the money back to granny
But he never left Harlan alive

Where the sun comes up about ten in the morning
And the sun goes down about three in the day
And you fill your cup with whatever bitter brew you're drinking
And you spend your life just thinkin' of how to get away

Where the sun comes up about ten in the morning
And the sun goes down about three in the day
And you fill your cup with whatever bitter brew you're drinking
And you spend your life digging coal from the bottom of your grave

In the deep dark hills of eastern Kentucky
That's the place where I trace my bloodline
And it's there I read on a hillside gravestone
You will never leave Harlan alive

"The L & N Don't Stop Here Anymore"

When I was a curly headed baby
My daddy sat me down on his knee
He said, "son, go to school and get your letters,
Don't you be a dusty coal miner, boy, like me."

[Chorus:]
I was born and raised at the mouth of hazard hollow
The coal cars rolled and rumbled past my door
But now they stand in a rusty row all empty
Because the l & n don't stop here anymore

I used to think my daddy was a black man
With script enough to buy the company store
But now he goes to town with empty pockets
And his face is white as a February snow

[Chorus]

I never thought I'd learn to love the coal dust
I never thought I'd pray to hear that whistle roar
Oh, god, I wish the grass would turn to money
And those green backs would fill my pockets once more

[Chorus]

Last night I dreamed I went down to the office
To get my pay like a had done before
But them ol' kudzu vines were coverin' the door
And there were leaves and grass growin' right up through the floor

[Chorus]

Labor’s Untold Story- A Personal View Of The Class Wars In The Kentucky Hills And Hollows-"Our Lady Of The Mountains-The Music Of Hazel Dickens"

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Hazel Dickens performing the evocative, haunting Hills Of Home.

CD Review

It’s Hard To Tell The Singer From The Song, Hazel Dickens and other artists, Rounder Records, 1987

A few years ago I spent some time "running the table" on the mountain music genre. From the pioneer work of the venerable Carter Family, who leader A. P. Carter scoured the hills and patches of Appalachia, black tenet farmer, and hard-bitten coal miner, searching for material once RCA gave his trio their big break in 1927, or so through to Ralph Stanley, Doc Watson and other legendary figures and on to the “revival” brought forth in the early part of this decade by such movies as Brother, Where Art Thou? and Songcatcher I have paid more than passing tribute to this quintessential American musical form, complete with fiddle, mandolin and lonely Saturday nights gathering in the folk in some hardly built, or half- abandoned barn out in the hills and hollows of Appalachia and other rural environs. And, moreover, in the process ‘discovered’ that yankee boy I that I am, my roots are firmly steeped through my father down in the wind-swept hills and hollows. That said I have, thus, pretty much exhausted the milieu, right? Wrong. No homage to the modern mountain music scene can be complete without paying tribute to the work of singer/songwriter Hazel Dickens (and, at times, musical companion Alice Gerrard, among others).

There was time when, if one was given a choice, the name Hazel Dickens would be the first to come up when naming the most well known voice of the modern mountain music tradition. Her voice spoke of the hardships of the rural life and of ticky-tack, no window, hell, no door tar-paper cabins; the trials and tribulations of trying to eke out an existence on some hard- scrabble rocky farmland probably played out generations ago in the first treks west; or, more likely, sweated, underpaid labor in the coals mines or textiles factories that dominated that landscape for much of the second half of the 20th century. Hers was the pure, almost primordial voice that spoke of the sorrows of hill life, but also the joys of coming to terms with a very personal (and, apparently) angry god by way of singing away those working women blues, and you can add in a few tunes for those hard-bitten farmers and coals miners as well.

So, needless to say, this little Rounder CD from 1987 is filled with original work and covers on just those subjects mentioned above. From a cover of Bob Dylan's Only A Hobo to the classic haunting Hills Of Home that evokes, passionately, the roots in those hard life hills and on to the necessary religious- themed Will Jesus Wash The Bloodstains From Your Hands that has formed the underpinning for the mountain ethos for eons this is what mountain music is like when it is done right. Listen and see if you agree.
******
Hazel Dickens - A Few Old Memories lyrics

Lyrics to A Few Old Memories :
Just a few old memories
Slipped in through my door
Though I thought I had closed it
So tightly before
I can't understand it
Why it should bother my mind
For it all belongs to another place and time

Just a few old keep-sakes
Way back on the shelf
No, they don't mean nothin'
Well I'm surprised they're still left
Just a few old love letters
With the edges all brown
And an old faded picture
I keep turned upside-down

Just a few old memories
Going way back in time
Well I can hardly remember
I don't know why I'm cryin'
I can't understand it
Well I'm surprised myself
First thing tomorrow morning
I'll clean off that shelf

Just a few old keep-sakes
Way back on the shelf
No, they don't mean nothin'
Well I'm surprised that they're left
Just a few old love letters
With their edges all brown
And an old faded picture
I keep turned upside-down

Hazel Dickens, West Virginia My Home Tabs/Chords
Hazel Dickens is one of my favorite singers, and one of my favorite people. I
have had the pleasure of meeting and singing with her several times at
Augusta, and she is as genuine a person as you're likely to encounter. Her
testimonial to her home state is my all-time favorite song, one that I sing
every day. I learned it from her album entitled "Hard-Hitting Songs for Hard-
Hit People," and I am constantly amazed that a lifelong Illinoisan like myself
can identify so strongly with the bittersweet reverence with which she packs
this powerful ballad. Just as the Everly Brothers, Louvin Brothers, and Blue
Sky Boys did with "Kentucky," Hazel evokes a universal sentiment with this
geographically specific song.

John (a.k.a. "West Virginia Slim")
Chicago

WEST VIRGINIA MY HOME by Hazel Dickens

Chorus:
D G
West Virginia, oh my home.
D A
West Virginia, where I belong.
D
G
In the dead of the night, in the still and the quiet I slip away like a bird
in flight
D A D
Back to those hills, the place that I call home.

It's been years now since I left there
And this city life's about got the best of me.
I can't remember why I left so free what I wanted to do, what I wanted to see,
But I can sure remember where I come from.

Chorus-----

Well I paid the price for the leavin'
And this life I have is not one I thought I'd find.
Just let me live, love, let my cry, but when I go just let me die
Among the friends who'll remember when I'm gone.

Chorus-----

Bridge:
G A D A
Home, home, home. I can see it so clear in my mind.
G A D
A
Home, home, home. I can almost smell the honeysuckle vines.

[Repeat last two lines of chorus.]