“You’re really good for a girl” – renowned banjo player Alison Brown recalled that reaction to her playing when she was growing up in the 1970s. Grammy-winning Molly Tuttle describes being in a session in the late 2000s when a man leant past her to give the break to the next man.
Bluegrass is now home to more and more brilliant women who are great musicians, band leaders, producers and record label execs. From Rhonda Vincent to Sierra Hull, Alison Kraus to Melody Walker, Laurie Lewis to Dale Ann Bradley and Missie Raines. One of the pioneers was Hazel Dickens (pictured)
She grew up in the coal mining villages of West Virginia during the depression in the 1930s. Her trailblazing album Who’s That Knocking was released in 1965 with musical partner Alice Gerrard. It is credited as one of the first female bluegrass records. She wrote great songs often on themes that were uncomfortable for the times such as the searing Don’t Put Her Down, You Helped Put Her There and was the first woman to lead her own bluegrass band at a time when the founding fathers were exactly that.
Dickens was a committed political activist and advocate for workers rights, particularly coal miners. I first came across her music from the singing of Laurie Lewis who recorded a selection of her songs in The Hazel and Alice Sessions but nothing prepared me for the raw power of Hazel Dickens’ own voice singing Fire in the Hole over the opening credits to the 1987 film Matewan about the brutal fight for trades union recognition in the Kentucky mines of the 1920s.
There is fire in her words and melodies and she excelled within an industry dominated by men. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Listen to our interpretation of Fire in the Hole
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