Traditional music standouts Dickens, Gerrard to perform

By RANDI DAVENPORT
James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence

CHAPEL HILL -- Bluegrass and folk music legends Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard will perform Oct. 28 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  The concert is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Frank Porter Graham Student Union Auditorium. Tickets are on sale for $12 each at the Carolina Union Box Office (962-1449) from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.

Dickens and Gerrard produced four classic albums during the 1960s and '70s (recently reissued by Rounder on compact disc) and influenced major female vocalists including Emmy Lou Harris, Dolly Parton, The Judds and Linda Rondstadt.

Dickens was born in Mercer County, Va., one of 11 children, whose banjo-picking father hauled timber for local coal mines. Her coal-mining brothers played guitar and mandolin. She learned to accompany herself on guitar and followed her brothers to Baltimore, determined to make a better life for herself.

Gerrard, the daughter of classical musicians, became a classically trained singer. She and Dickens met on the Baltimore folk music scene during the 1950s and soon developed a repertoire of old-time and bluegrass harmonies.

On their recordings, they were backed by some of the finest players in bluegrass, including Chubby Wise on fiddle, David Grisman on mandolin, and banjoist Lamar Grier.

Dickens and Gerrard began performing as solo vocalists in the mid-'70s.

Dickens' repertoire includes songs from the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, the Blue Sky Boys, the Louvin Brothers, Wilma Lee Cooper and Bill Monroe. In her original songs, she complains of sexism and the exploitation of workers and sings about the love of family, home and honest toil.

Her songs about coal mine workers caught the attention of Barbara Kopple, who included four of them in the award-winning documentary "Harlan County, USA." In 1986, Dickens appeared and sang in John Sayles' "Matewan," a film about the massacre of striking coal miners in 1920.

Gerrard released her first solo album, "Pieces of My Heart," on the Copper Creek label in 1995 to critical acclaim in Billboard, Bluegrass Unlimited, New Country and other publications. She has appeared on more than 20 recordings, including projects with traditional musicians Tommy Jarrell, Enoch Rutherford, Otis Burris and Matokie Slaughter. She also co-produced and appeared in two documentary films.

A tireless advocate of traditional music, Gerrard has won honors including an International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) Distinguished Achievement Award, a Virginia Arts Commission Award, the North Carolina Folklore Society's Tommy Jarrell Award and an Indy Award. In 1987, she founded the Old-Time Music Group, a non-profit organization that oversees publication of the Old-Time Herald to encourage old-time traditional music.

The concert is sponsored by the UNC James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence's "Thursdays on the Terrace" series and the Center for the Study of the American South.  For more information, call 919-966-5110 or visit the Johnston Center web site, www.johnstoncenter.unc.edu.

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Contact: Dr. Randi Davenport, Associate Director, James M. Johnston Center for  Undergraduate Excellence, 919-843-7765, rdavenpo@email.unc.edu.
News Services contact: L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589