Hedy West

Hedy West (April 6, 1938 - July 3, 2005) was an American folksinger and songwriter.

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. She was described by the great English folk musician AL Lloyd as "far and away the best of American girl singers in the [folk] revival", Born Hedwig Grace West in the mountains of northern Georgia, she had a darkly authentic folk tradition in her blood.

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.

Music career

Having won a prize for ballad singing when she was only 12, by her teens West was singing at folk festivals, both locally and in neighbouring states. In 1959, she moved to New York to study music at Mannes College and drama at Columbia University. She later attributed some of her ability to get 'inside' her songs to her early training as an actress. She was also absorbed by the folk revival in the city, was embraced by the Greenwich Village folk scene, and invited by Pete Seeger to sing alongside him at a Carnegie Hall concert. Her talents were quickly recognised and, after singing on a 1961 compilation album, New Folks, for the Vanguard Records label, she soon made two solo records for the company.

She moved to the west coast and Los Angeles in the early 1960s, where she continued singing and later married. By this time, she was making regular visits to England. She then lived in London for seven years, making tours of the country's folk clubs, and appearing at the Cambridge festival and the first Keele folk festival as well as regular visits to Europe, especially Germany. She recorded three albums for Bill Leader and AL Lloyd at Topic Records - Old Times and Hard Times (1965), Pretty Saro (1966) and Ballads (1967) - together with another for Fontana, entitled Serves 'em Fine (1967).

In the early 1970s, she lived in Germany, where, before returning to the US to study composition and devoting time to picking her elderly grandparents' brains for scraps of musical memory, she made two further recordings, one with fellow American Bill Clifton, Getting Folk out of the Country (1974), and another entitled Love, Hell and Biscuits (1980).

Cancer ruined her voice in her last years. A fine 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.

Her song "500 miles," was covered by Bobby Bare (a Billboard Top 10 hit in 1963), The Highwaymen, The Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, Peter & Gordon, and many others.

Discography

*"New Folks", Vanguard VRS 9096 (1961) [Hedy has 5 tracks on this LP, 3 of which were reissued on "The Original New Folks" Vanguard CD, VCD-143/144 (1993)]
*"Hedy West accompanying herself on the 5-string banjo", Vanguard VRS-9124 (1963)
*"Hedy West, Volume 2", Vanguard VRS-9162 (1964)
*"Old Times & Hard Times: Ballads and Songs from the Appalachians", Topic 12T117 (London, 1965); Folk-Legacy FSA-32 (1967), reissued CD-32 (2004)
*"Pretty Saro and other Appalachian Ballads", Topic 12T146 (1966)
*"Ballads", Topic 12T163 (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)