Hedy West

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Hedy West (April 6, 1938 - July 3, 2005) was an American folksinger and songwriter, and also the name of two of her eponymous albums (see below).

She was of the same generation as Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and others of the American folk music revival. Musically she was the equal of any of her peers. Her stylistic range was far narrower, but arguably far deeper. Born Hedwig Grace West in the mountains of northern Georgia, she had a darkly authentic folk tradition in her blood.

[edit] Early life

Her father, Don West, was a coal mine labor organizer in the 1930s; his bitter experiences included seeing a close friend machine-gunned on the street by company goons in the presence of a young daughter. Later, he operated the Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem, West Virginia. Many of Hedy's songs, including the raw materials for "500 Miles", came from her paternal grand mother Lily West,who passed on the songs she had learned as a child.

Her family's politics were also a life-long influence. Her liner notes for 1967's "Old Times and Hard Times", written from self-imposed exile in London, are an eloquent personal statement on the corrosive effect of the Vietnam War, with the prescient insight, "We'll be controlled by manipulated fear". (See Folk-Legacy Records.) While living in Stony Brook, New York, in the late 1970s, she donated her time and talents in unforgettable benefit concerts for unfashionable causes - as did with her fellow Appalachian-on-Long-Island, Jean Ritchie.

Her songs were rarely if ever overt, topical protests. But her working-class mountain roots were in her voice and ran through everything she sang, giving life and meaning to her laments for beaten-down factory girls and knocked-up servant girls.

[edit] Music career

She moved to New York in the late 1950s to study drama, and later attributed some of her ability to get 'inside' her songs to her early training as an actress. There, she soon encountered and was embraced by the Greenwich Village folk scene, and before long cut two solo albums for Vanguard Records. Throughout a long, but increasingly marginalized, career, she made many albums for other labels, large and small, often in Europe, until cancer ruined her voice in her last years. Perhaps her finest musical legacy is in unreleased recordings, such as a live concert from the 1978 Chicago Folk Festival, broadcast in her memory by a local radio station. It was her fate to reach the height of her powers long after popular tastes and the music industry had moved on.

She could play the guitar and the banjo. For the latter she favored the clawhammer technique.

In the 1960s Hedy moved to London and widely performed in Europe. On returning to the US in the 1970s she devoted much of her time to picking her elderly grandparents' brains for scraps of musical memory. After 1980, she was mainly based in Germany, where her kind of music still found enthusiastic audiences.

Her song "500 miles," was covered by The Highwaymen, The Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, Peter & Gordon, and many others.

[edit] Discography

• Hedy West, Vanguard VRS 9124 (1963)
• Hedy West, Vol. 2, Vanguard VRS 9162 (1964)
• Old Times and Hard Times, Topic (London, 1965); Folk-Legacy FSA-32 (1967), reissued CD-32 (2004)
• Pretty Saro, Topic 12T146 (1966)
• Ballads, Topic (1967)
• Serves 'em Fine, Fontana U.K. STL 5432(London, 1967)
• with Bill Clifton, Getting Folk Out of the Country, Folk Variety FV12008 / Bear Family BF15008 (1974)
• Love, Hell and Biscuits, Bear Family BF15003 (1980)

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