On October 21, 2022, Smithsonian Folkways reissued Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard’s first two albums, Who’s That Knocking? and Won’t You Come and Sing For Me? on vinyl for the first time in over 40 years.
The original sequences of these two albums are also be available on streaming and to download for the first time ever. On the same day, Folkways released Pioneering Women of Bluegrass: The Definitive Edition on streaming and CD, which collects every track recorded by Dickens and Gerrard for Folkways, as well as “Childish Love,”, a previously unheard bonus track.
The music that Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard recorded together beginning in 1965 has influenced generations of musicians across genres, primarily women, from Emmylou Harris and the Judds up through Kathleen Hanna, Alison Krauss and Rhiannon Giddens.
“The harmony was so bold,” Naomi Judd told the Washington Post years ago. “They were unabashedly just who they were — it was really like looking in the mirror of truth. We felt like we knew them, and when we listened to the songs, it crystallized the possibility that two women could sing together.”
Bluegrass icon Claire Lynch says that “Hazel and Alice were the first ‘voices’ I heard in bluegrass music that sang on women’s behalf” and young guitar-slinging singer-songwriter Molly Tuttle says, “I first heard Hazel and Alice when I was 12 years old, and their music changed my life.”
After Hazel and Alice entered the picture, bluegrass would never be the same. “I think this is one of the all-time historic records,” Hazel Dickens wrote of Who’s That Knocking?. “To my knowledge, it was the first time that two women sat down and picked out a bunch of songs and had guts enough to stand behind what they picked out and say, ‘We’re not changing anything; you have to do it or else.’”
Author: World Music Central News Room
World music news from the editors at World Music Central