Biography

FOR A FULL DOWNLOAD, Contact:radio@si.edu

The soaring harmonies and driving string-band sound of Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard shattered the glass ceiling of male-dominated bluegrass in the 1960s. Hazel and Alice’s influence on music – and not just roots music – is hard to overstate. They’ve been acknowledged by artists as diverse as country superstars Naomi and Wynonna Judd, champion flat-picker Molly Tuttle, and proto-feminist punk rocker Kathleen Hanna. Their steadfast devotion to their own hard-hitting style inspired generations of women in bluegrass.
Pioneering Women of Bluegrass: The Definitive Edition collects all the songs from Hazel and Alice’s two groundbreaking Folkways albums, and a previously unreleased bonus track, all remastered by their original producer Peter Siegel. They are joined on these recordings by such bluegrass legends as Chubby Wise and David Grisman. The CD booklet includes an expanded set of essays by Hazel, Alice, Laurie Lewis, and Peter Siegel, as well as iconic photographs by John Cohen and Carl Fleischhauer.