Eulogy for Hazel Dickens by Ron Thomason
Ron Thomason, founder and leader of The Dry Branch Fire Squad, like Hazel was a product of the Appalachian mining region during his formative years. Like Hazel, he too ventured away but took a huge part of the region with him in the form of sometimes humorous and sometimes bone-chilling but always pure stories about the area and it's folk. Thomason said in a 2007 interview, "I will only do songs that get to me down deep inside." Hazel Dickens wrote such songs.
"Oh, Hazel…….
She never held back, even at the end. Her voice above all others had the power to flay, and when combined with her words, did just that.
She was a writer more of phrases than of words. She expressed herself in aphorisms you could live by. The one I chose was, “Just playing bluegrass is political.”
We were from identical places, she and I; where the words “Old King Coal” did not evoke a nursery rhyme, John L. Lewis was the “greatest man that ever lived and the ‘goodest’”, and Edward Berwind was the “most powerful and the viliest.” We had both experienced violence, physical and spiritual, and we spoke of it only once and then but briefly. I never knew her to explain anything, and this was no exception. She modeled; (isn’t that what every obituary about her really says?) And with respect to the harsh life she had experienced, she lived in a way that taught us all that it is far better to have choices as to how that harshness forms you than to have no choice at all.
No epithets accurately describe her voice—even when used in tandem. The best that can be said is that it projected the sounds of deep pit mining itself…at once shrill with the screech of steel, plaintive as an underground stream, enraged as a disenfranchished striker, and lonesome as a single pick against a poor seam. But for those who were schooled and ready that voice and her words broke open pores and called the night wind in and made you live for a few precious moments deep in your core. It was that voice which caused her to be known by just one name, Hazel; like, Dolly, Janis, Emmylou or Elvis, Ray, and Jones—all of whom she admired.
I suspect that she had many friends, but I’m not so sure that they knew each other very well. They were a varied group, many of whom seemed to have little in common; folks like Ken Irwin, Lynn Morris, and Warren Hellman. She let them in one at a time, kept them forever, and gave them…fidelity. Her heart was filled with love and empathy, and she was loved by countless fans who surely sensed that. She was rather shy, often isolated herself, and yet she when the call to perform arose, she never, never ever, held back.
It was impossible for her to sing the same song the same way twice. Every time she sang, it poured forth as from a new dug, unlined well. She always dug deep. Her performances were at once filled with power and vulnerability, empathy and lecture, agnosticism and Baptist, but never restraint. In her prime she gave her audiences strength and meaning, and in her later years she got that back from them. I’m not aware of anyone who left the bargain dissatisfied.
Early on I mistakenly thought of her as a Feminist. She was, in fact, a Humanist. When once I brought up an incident where women were being degraded, she kindly pointed out to me that the men responsible were “degrading themselves as well.” She enlisted her compatriots to play music at the Women Coal Mining College, and thus exposed some of “us ‘hillbilly’ men” to the experience of being in the minority amongst strong, capable, and indomitable women. It was not lost on most of us that up till then we didn’t even know there was such a place. Once I was “catching up” a Nashville lady friend of hers on Hazel’s most recent political activities, and I must have brandished a little too enthusiastically which prompted her to say, “Ron, she’s only a woman.” And I remember well that was the one time in my life I had the appropriate response right when I needed it (the kind I usually only think of after it’s way too late): “Oh, I know that; like a diamond is only a stone.” I have a picture that a friend took of us sitting in conversation on the steps of the original Birchmere stage after a gig several decades ago which that friend inscribed: “sitting with the world’s greatest woman.”
Hazel seemingly never forgot. When I bought my good mandolin back in the late ‘70s, she had some advice: “Don’t get that thing. You’ll never take it out with you, because you’ll always worry about it too much.” Over a quarter of a century later she pointed at the instrument and said, “You know, you never would have gotten any good out of that expensive thing if I hadn’t put the dare on you right from the start.” In fact, she among all others expressed herself so memorably that her terse words unfailingly come back to me. I particularly remember having to present what was to me a very important speech at IBMA for which I had bought the best suit I had ever owned. Hazel surprised me just before the event with an elbow to the back and said, “You’re a long way from Honacre now, Boy.”
The last time I saw her was at the Hardly, Strictly Bluegrass “cast party.” Warren Hellman, ever the watchful host, had made sure that Hazel and Beth Weil were at his table. The stage as always was alternately filled with the stars from the day’s show performing for their peers. Hazel was frail and weak and, I believe, in some pain. But she said, “Why don’t you and me get up there and sing these folks a song.” Sure, of course, and it was no surprise to me that she out-sang everyone in the room. Everyone. And they knew it. I hope she did, too. But I’ll never know. No one ever knew her mind.
Oh, Hazel, hard times come again.
No more. RT"
Ron Thomason Sings Hazel Dicken's "Black Lung"
Ron Thomason played mandolin on two of Hazel Dickens' recordings:
- "Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People"
- "Few Old Memories"
Read About: The Hazel Dickens Radio Special
Ron Thomason's words used by permission
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