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Northern California Bluegrass Society provides this CD review. You can find our most current reviews on our Message Board, where you can comment or query the author directly. Our monthly magazine, Bluegrass By the Bay also publishes them. Return to CD Reviews. |
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| Hazel Dickens | It’s Hard To tell The Singer From The Song |
| Review by Brenda Hough | |
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Songs: |
Rounder 82161-0226-2 Personnel: |
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This is a collection of classic songs from Hazel Dickens. It was first recorded in 1987 and featured many of the top musicians in bluegrass at the time: Russ Barenburg, Jerry Douglas, Glen Duncan and Roy Huskey Jr. In her many solo albums and duo albums with Alice Gerrard, Hazel Dickens has touched the themes of hard working, hard living folks living in the “hills of home.” She has been classified as a bluegrass singer, old-time, traditional and protest singer, but she is first and foremost a singer with a message and story in everyone of her songs. The album cover shows Hazel at a kitchen table surrounded by the kitchen sink with clean dishes, on the sideboard, a pantry of knick-knacks, a fresh cup of coffee and an old dial radio possibly tuned to an old country station. Perhaps the listener is invited to join Hazel as she spins stories of home and the past. Indeed, the title song, “It’s Hard To Tell The Singer From The Song,” hints that this song collection has songs close to the singer’s heart and mind. These are the songs of a “hurting woman who lives the songs she sings.” “You’ll Get No More From Me,” written by Hazel and “Don’t Bother To Cry,” are uptempo affirmations of the singer’s independence from the manipulations of loved ones. Teardrops will not change the singer’s mind and she will survive the ruined relationships and carry on. There are songs of memories- “Another Place In Time,” with love letters and an old “faded picture turned upside down,” a faster tempo “Do Memories Haunt You?” from a 1955 Jim Ed Brown record. The “Hills of Home” beckons to scattered families, and the accompanying dobro echos the call to those who have gone away from home. There are songs of loss - “Here Today and Gone Tomorrow” and the promise of a better life in the “California Cottenfields” as a family leaves home to travel to a dream of paradise. The last songs on the album focus on the needless loss of life from war and indifference. Hazel’s “Will Jesus Wash The Bloodstains From Your Hands?” is her war protest song and it follows Bob Dylan’s “Only A Hobo,” the 1963 classic song of the man left alone on the street. The closing song, a waltz in the style of last song at the dance is the bittersweet musings of the old folks in the home with no one to love and no who comes to visit. The closing chorus might well be a message to all Hazel Dickens fans: “Play us a waltz, play us a tune...say you’ll remember my darling young one.” The tunes are well worth remembering. The musical arrangements highlight Hazel’s strong solo voice and the moods of the songs are highlighted with high, lonesome dobro and standard bluegrass banjo, guitar and mandolin rhythms and licks. |
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Additions or comments: fiddler@best.com |
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