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Hazel Dickens

Recording Artist · Active 1965–2011 · Mercer County · Also a musician
Classic Bluegrass

Hazel Dickens was a singer, bass player, and songwriter whose high, unvarnished mountain voice and coal-country songs made her one of the defining musical presences in traditional bluegrass and old-time country. She played a foundational role in opening bluegrass to women performers and in putting working-class labor themes at the center of the music.

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  • Born June 1, 1925, in Montcalm, Mercer County, West Virginia, the eighth of eleven children in a coal-country family.
  • Moved to Baltimore in the early 1950s, fell into the city’s bluegrass bar circuit, and met Mike Seeger while visiting a brother at a tuberculosis sanitarium.
  • Formed a duo with Alice Gerrard in the 1960s; the pair recorded Who’s That Knocking (1965) and Won’t You Come & Sing for Me (1973) for Folkways — among the first bluegrass albums led by women.
  • Contributed four songs to the Oscar-winning 1976 documentary Harlan County, USA, including her own “Black Lung.”
  • Signed to Rounder in 1980; solo albums include Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People (1981), By the Sweat of My Brow (1984), and It’s Hard to Tell the Singer From the Song (1986).
  • Wrote enduring labor and coal-country standards including “Working Girl Blues,” “They’ll Never Keep Us Down,” “Mama’s Hands,” “A Few Old Memories,” and “West Virginia, My Home.”
  • Received the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship in 2001 and an honorary doctorate from Shepherd College in 1998.
  • Posthumously inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2017 alongside Alice Gerrard.
  • Died April 22, 2011, in Washington, D.C.

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