Special Guests: Hazel Dickens, Mimi Pickering, and Archie Green

California Premiere

Hazel Dickens may have left the hills of West Virginia for Baltimore, but she carried along the heart of the place. Her old-timey songs, feminist ballads, and union rousers evoke the struggles of working-class people, from the coalfields of Appalachia to the dusky factories of Chesapeake Bay. Though she is considered a pioneer in Bluegrass, Dickens's songs also point the way toward an engaged activist music with topical tunes performed at picket lines and rallies throughout the country. To establish her lineage and influence, It's Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song includes recollections from several generations of tunesmiths, Pete Seeger, Alison Krauss, and Naomi Judd among them. Her piercing, affecting songs are heard throughout: "Working Girl Blues," "My Better Years," "Black Lung," and "Don't Put Her Down, You Helped Put Her There," a startling tribute to fallen women. Singing hearty songs about harsh times, Hazel Dickens is all about the triumph of coal-hard persistence.

—Steve Seid

• Archie Green is a retired Professor of English and Folklore at the University of Texas. His books include Only a Miner and Wobblies, Pile Butts, and Other Heroes. Photographed by Peter Pearce. (Total running time: 97 mins, Beta SP, From Appalshop)

Preceded by:

Dreadful Memories: The Life of Sarah Ogan Gunning (Mimi Pickering, U.S., 1988). Born in the coalfields of eastern Kentucky, Gunning suffered a life of bitter poverty which became the fuel for dozens of moving songs about working people, the mines, and the great coal strikes of the twenties and thirties. Gunning's a cappella roots music is intercut throughout the interviews and archival footage. (38:20 mins)