Laurie Lewis & The Right Hands-The Hazel and Alice Sessions-Spruce & Maple Music CD SMM1013
Every once in awhile, you get wind of an album–a title, a concept, an unusual mating of artists, that seems so obvious one you’ve heard of it, that your first response is to kick yourself for not thinking of it yourself. Then you hope it’s as good as the idea sounds. Well, here’s exhibit A for that proposition, and early in the year. Laurie Lewis –and her crack band The Right Hands (Tom Rozum, Patrick Sauber, and Andrew Conklin)–perform music from the repertoire of Hazel and Alice on this album, and I don’t expect to hear anything better in the near future.
Back when I worked for him, Chris Strachwitz was fond–when asked what kind of music he liked–of quoting clarinetist George Lewis, an early hero of his, who evidently said that his music needed to be “rough but sweet.” That description could just as well have been written to describe the music of Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard as well.The musical legacy of that pioneering duo doesn’t have any bark on it, and is all the more compelling for that.
Laurie Lewis, living in the Bay Area in the ’70s, was already deeply into the hard core by the time Hazel and Alice became icons of a sort to a growing cult of forward thinking musical revivalists like herself and her musical friends through their duet albums for Folkways and Rounder. Those albums, which featured a goodly amount of traditional old time country string band music and bluegrass–along with acoustic blues and gospel–also featured the early original compositions of both women. And–as Laurie explains in her remarks in her notes–they “sang in the more hard edged, gritty style of their male counterparts, (as opposed to sounding high,warble-y and sweet.).” Laurie had already by then been exposed to northern California heroes Vern and Ray, and had performed with fellow young pioneers in the Bay Area scene as Pat Enright, Paul Shelasky, and many others, and was herself a founding member of the great and influential Good Ol’ Persons. Hazel and Alice’s songs prove definitively here, as they have in performance for years, just how well suited they are for Laurie’s rich, evocative vocal style, powers of lyric interpretation, and fiddlistic (sounds like a Woody Guthrie word) and guitar prowess. More simply put, these songs are in Laurie’s wheel house.
Hazel, without setting out to be, early on became a champion for the downtrodden, the dispossessed, and the undervalued, reflecting her working class West Virginia roots–and both women have by now become iconic figures in the struggles for women’s and worker’s rights as well. Hazel left us a few years ago, leaving a catalogue of many of the finest compositions in the traditional vein of any American songwriter, along with her many great recordings with Alice and as a solo artist. Alice continues to perform at festivals and in concert;the power and beauty of her vocals is unabated, and her songwriting has, in my humble opinion, continued to grow. She joins Laurie and the Right Hands on their version of Hazel’s “Working Girl Blues” here, and contributes one of her post-Hazel and Alice compositions, “Farewell My Home,” a composition co-written by the great Tony Ellis that recalls her youth on a California Ranch, as well as “Mama’s Gonna Stay,” which appeared on a Hazel and Alice album.
“Cowboy Jim” is a Hazel song that sounds like one of those traditional bunkhouse numbers many remember from youth, perhaps because it’s genesis is a fragmentary scrap of a song Hazel remembered her dad singing. “James Alley Blues” is an acoustic blues from Rabbit Brown, gleaned by H & A from a 78.”Who’s That Knocking,” “Walking In My Sleep,” “Darling Nellie,” and “Train On The Island,” are all beloved numbers from the tradition and are widely associated with Hazel & Alice from their active days of performing, as is Emry Arthur’s “Let That Liar Alone,” and Bill Monroe’s”I Hear A Sweet Voice Calling,” sung wonderfully well here by Laurie’s longtime partner and musical cohort–and ace mandolinist–Tom Rozum, with Laurie harmonizing on the chorus.Hazel’s “Pretty Bird” is a special treat, as on it Laurie is joined–a cappella–by Linda Ronstadt.The track was cut as part of a proposed Rounder All Star Tribute which has to date failed to materialize, I’m told, due to some intransigence on the part of The Judds’ management–not the Judds themselves, I should hasten to add. The richness nd diversity of this tribute is heightened further by the Hazel Dickens classics “Won’t You Come And Sing For Me,””You’ll Get No More Of Me,” sung by the multi-talented Patrick Sauber, and “Working Girl Blues.”If you like your music rough but sweet, you need this outstanding new album.
You can get it from Laurie A Lewis, I bet.
