Don’t Mourn—Organize! Songs of Labor Songwriter Joe Hill (1990)
14. “The Rebel Girl” (Joe Hill, arranged and adapted with additional original material by Hazel Dickens/ © 1990 Happy Valley Music, BMI)
Hazel Dickens – vocals
Dudley Connell – guitar
Tom Adams – banjo
Marshall Wilborn – bass
David McLaughlin – mandolin and fiddle
Recorded 1 March 1990 in Gypsy Studio, Falls Church, Virginia.
Engineered by Mike Rivers
Joe Hill adapted the melody of “The Rebel Girl,” at least in part, from a popular tune, and the words, though progressive at the time, reflect the attitude that the role of women was secondary and supportive to that of men. Joe Hill actually wrote a great deal about improving the conditions and recognition of women workers—he thought of “the rebel girl” as fighting together with “the fighting rebel boy.” Elizabeth Gurley Flynn said the song had not “the best of words or the best of music.” For current audiences, the song as Joe Hill wrote it, sung for the first time at his funeral, is outdated.
Hazel Dickens has updated “The Rebel Girl.” This “queer” world has become this “cruel” world, and gone is “We’ve had girls before, but we need some more in the Industrial Worlds of the World,” in favor of a more wide-reaching reference: “From Maine to George,” not unlike Woody Guthrie’s “From California to the New York Island” (“This Land Is Your Land”). Film producer Lorraine Gray commissioned Dickens to rewrite two verses for the soundtrack of With Banners and Babies, and she has since made other adjustments to the song. Dickens, a traditional Appalachian singer, works as an advocate for workers’ and women’s rights. She has two records on Folkways with Alice Gerrard (Won’t You Come and Sing for Me? FTS 31034 and Who’s that Knocking FTS 31055). She performs her new version of “The Rebel Girl” here in blue grass style with members of the Johnson Mountain Boys. Her version is printed here.
There are women of many descriptions
In this cruel world, as everyone knows
Some are living in beautiful mansions
And are wearing the finest of clothes
There’s the blue-blooded queen or the princess
Who have charms made of diamonds and pearls
But the only and thoroughbred lady
Is the rebel girl
She’s a rebel girl, a rebel girl
She’s workingclass,
The strength of this world
From Maine to Georgia you’ll see
Her fighting for you and for me
Yes, she’s there by your side
With her courage and pride
She’s unequalled anywhere
And I’m proud to fight for freedom
With a rebel girl
Though her hands may be hardened from labor
And her dress may not be very fine
But a heart in her bosom is beating
That is true to her class and her kind
And the bosses know that they can’t change her
She’d die to defend the workers’ world
And the only and thoroughbred lady
Is a rebel girl
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