Hazel Dickens
Hazel Dickens was born in Mercer County, West Virginia. Her father carried timber for the
local coal mines and played the banjo. Her brothers played guitar and mandolin, and Hazel
sang in the church choir and listened to the Grand Ole Opry. Hazel was 16 when two of her
brothers moved to Baltimore. She soon followed them, becoming part of the migration of
young people away from the grim and often dangerous life faced by coal mining families.
Baltimore was just one of many cities where a local scene was emerging among young people
around the groundswell of enthusiasm for folk and bluegrass music, and Hazel found herself
swapping songs she had brought with her from the mountains with many other singers and
musicians, one of whom was classically trained singer Alice Gerrard. During the 1960s and
early 1970s Hazel performed as a member of the Strange Creek Singers and in a duo with
Alice Gerrard. The duo of Hazel and Alice was one of the first bluegrass-style groups to
feature women in lead roles. Hazel and Alice recorded albums for Folkways and Rounder
during the 1960s and 1970s. The duo's gorgeous country harmonies would touch and
influence such artists as Emmylou Harris, the Judds, and many others, and several of the
album's songs became folk, country, and women's favorites.
After their duo parted ways in the mid-1970s, Hazel continued her solo career, singing
out against sexism and the exploitation of workers. Dickens' began writing more and more
of her own material. Her tough, uncompromising songs about coal mine workers caught the
attention of Barbara Kopple, who in 1976 was producing what would become the award-winning
documentary Harlan County, USA. Four of Hazel's songs were heard in the film and the
film's success allowed her to become a full-time musician. During the 1980s she recorded
several albums for Rounder Records. In 1986, Hazel appeared and sang in John Sayles'
Matewan, a film about the massacre of striking coal miners in 1920, and more recently
she appeared in Songcatcher, a fictionalized account of early folkloric song collecting
in the mountains. Her songs, including "Don't Put Her Down, You Helped Put Her There,"
"Working Girl Blues," and "Mama's Hand," have become standards in the folk and bluegrass
repertoire, "Mama's Hands," performed by Lynn Morris, won the Song of the Year Award from
the International Bluegrass Music Association in 1996.
Hazel Dickens is an influential role model for young singers, especially women. A pioneer
woman in all-male fields, she has broken down barriers and writes powerful music about
both mountain and city life. Hazel continues to write, record, and perform, and to
inspire young singers. Her values are reflected in her songs of love of family and home
and respect for honest toil. Her voice has an immediacy, a directness, which belies its
artfulness; it is a voice of strength, conviction and raw honesty.
Harold Levanthal
For nearly 50 years, Harold Leventhal has served the folk music community as a personal
manager, music publisher, theatrical and film producer, and concert promoter. He has
worked to further the careers and maintain the legacies of dozens of folk music's greatest
figures including Pete Seeger, Judy Collins and the Woody Guthrie family. Widely respected
for his integrity, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Folk Alliance in 2002.
Leventhal began his career in the music business in 1939 working as a "song plugger" for
the Irving Berlin Music Company. Having met Pete Seeger while working on the Henry
Wallace presidential campaign, Leventhal soon fell in with the New York folk scene and
began working with Pete, Woody Guthrie, and The Weavers. Artists trusted Leventhal
because he was an active leftist and they appreciated his not-so-left-wing instincts for
the business side of the music world. In 1950 he became personal manager for Pete Seeger
and The Weavers, negotiating their recording contract with Decca records. Soon after, he
began working with Woody Guthrie, negotiating a lucrative publishing deal on Guthrie's
behalf. As Woody Guthrie fell ill, Leventhal helped to establish and manage a trust for
Woody's estate, a project that took years owing to the chaotic state of Guthrie's personal
records. He continues to this day to oversee the Guthrie estate.
Leventhal also took on the role of organizing concerts and events. In 1955, when the
Weavers were commercial pariahs due to the blacklist, Leventhal organized a Christmas
concert for the group, booking the show into Carnegie Hall. The concert rejuvenated the
group's career and led to a recording contract with Vanguard records. Leventhal was among
the first to bring folk music artists to the stages of New York's great concert halls,
presenting The Weavers, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, and
Joni Mitchell. He can be considered New York's first world music promoter, introducing
Ravi Shankar in concert at Carnegie Hall, and many other artists from all over the world
as well.
In the 1960s Leventhal moved into the realm of movie production, producing the Arthur
Penn film Alice's Restaurant starring Arlo Guthrie. In 1976 he produced Bound For
Glory
from the book by Woody Guthrie. The film received two Academy Awards. Harold also
co-produced the film about The Weavers' 1980 reunion concert, Wasn't That A Time, and in
1989 received an Emmy Award for the television film We Shall Overcome. Also in 1989,
Leventhal received a Grammy award as producer of the Columbia record A Vision Shared: A
Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly.
Leventhal continues to work with Pete Seeger and the Guthrie estate, and he is active
with many production and publishing projects. He has been tireless in his half-century
devotion to folk music and the people who create and perform it, while setting an example
through his ethical treatment of them and their creative endeavors.
Bill Monroe
Born in 1911, Bill Monroe grew up in the hills of Western Kentucky, listening to the
fiddling of his Uncle Pen, the blues guitar playing of Arnold Schultz, and the singing of
his mother and of his neighbors in church. Self-taught on the mandolin, he was in his
twenties when his musical career began as he teamed up with his brothers Birch and
Charlie to form the Monroe Brothers, playing throughout the Midwest and Southeast. In
1935, Bill and Charlie made their first RCA recording, Birch having previously left the
band. But it was in 1939 that Bill hit it big on the Grand Ole Opry, with a band of his
own, The Blue Grass Boys.
That success began his run as a fixture on the Opry stage. In late 1940, The Blue Grass
Boys made their debut RCA Bluebird recordings in Atlanta. The band's characteristic mandolin-fiddle-guitar-bass instrumentation was in place, and the line-up included: Clyde
Moody on guitar and vocals, who at twenty-five was already a veteran of a number of
groups, including the Happy-Go-Lucky Boys (with J. Hugh Hall) and Wade Mainer's Sons of
the Mountaineers; Tommy Magness on fiddle and Bill "Cousin Wilbur" Westbrook, a medicine
show and carnival comedian from Gibson County, Tennessee, on bass. Monroe and his band
became regulars on the Grand Old Opry and performed throughout the south and midwest.
Though wartime restrictions and the American Federation of Musicians recording ban limited
Monroe's recordings, he maintained a solid professional career throughout World War II.
But Monroe was not truly satisfied with the sound of his band until he added Lester Flatt
on guitar and Earl Scruggs on banjo in 1945. Scruggs had a powerful, unique three-finger
style of banjo playing that meshed well with Monroe's driving, modern sound. The
recordings made by this version of the Blue Grass Boys, including "Blue Moon of Kentucky"
and "Molly and Tenbrooks" among others, are recognized classics in bluegrass and are
essential learning for just about every bluegrass musician.
Monroe performed on the Opry and around the country throughout the 1950s, continuing to
maintain his band and to record even as the rise of Elvis and Rock and Roll made working
in older country music styles more difficult. In the early 1960s Ralph
Rinzler began working with Monroe as his manager. Rinzler began steering Monroe towards
the folk revival and argued, in Sing Out! and other publications, that Monroe was an
important figure in American music, the founder of a new style of American folk music
called Bluegrass.
Monroe drew on the folk revival in many ways. He began taking gigs at folk festivals and
folk venues in addition to his regular bluegrass and country performances. He filled his
band with urban "Citybilly" musicians including Bill Keith, Gene Lowinger and Richard
Greene. Finally, he began to see and present himself as the patriarch of bluegrass music,
making peace with old rivals while training future generations of bluegrass players.
Monroe set high standards for singing and playing, requiring his band members to be able
to play quickly and energetically in difficult keys. The Blue Grass Boys became a school
for performers including Carter Stanley, Don Reno, Chubby Wise, Vassar Clements, Kenny
Baker, Bill Keith, Del McCoury, Peter Rowan, Byron Berline, and Richard Greene, all of
whom went on to contribute to bluegrass history. Bill also wrote much of what has become
the classic bluegrass repertoire including "Uncle Pen", "Blue Moon of Kentucky", "Roanoke",
and "Walls of Time."
In 1967, Monroe created the Bean Blossom festival on his property in Indiana. The event
has grown to be one of the largest and most popular bluegrass festivals in the country,
now taking place over seven days every June. In 1969 Bill and his brothers Charlie and
Birch performed together for the first time in decades at the Smithsonian's Festival of
American Folklife. In 1970 Monroe was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 1982
Monroe became one of the first recipients of A National Heritage Fellowship and in 1995
he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Monroe remained a vital and innovative
musician until his death on September 9, 1996.
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