Free Working Girl Blues by Hazel Dickens Page A

ramblin’ woman
    Is no good for a home-lovin’ man
    Repeat Chorus

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Your Greedy Heart
    Here’s another one of those “relationship” songs that I wrote in 1980. It’s about people that aren’t suited for one another. You often see people in relationships where one person does most of the giving, and the other one does all the taking. There’s no one to blame; they chose each other.
Your Greedy Heart
    I have waited long in silence, while you realized your dreams
    But you take and take and take love, never turn a hand for me
    Like a teardrop in an ocean, grain of sand upon a beach
    I could journey on forever to a heart that’s out of reach
    Chorus:
    Oh what more can I give you than I’ve not already give
    I have only one heart, one life to live
    You take while I go wanting unmindful of your greed
    One lifetime is too short to give you all that you need
    The walls of love have tumbled ’round me, left me standing by myself
    As I search among the ruins for a trace that might be left
    And if all the love I’ve given was just wasted on your greed
    I can’t stand another moment trying to satisfy your need
    The flame of love so warm and tender, could never melt your selfish heart
    The Gods of love could all surrender, but from tears you’d never part
    When a flower blooms for loving oh it needs such tender care
    I have grown so tired of reaching, for a love that’s never there
    Repeat Chorus

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Don’t Put Her Down, You Helped Put Her There
    This song was written in the early’70s when times and attitudes were very different from what they are today. Now women front their own bands and make their own decisions; they compete in the marketplace alongside the men. Does that mean we’ve had a complete turnaround in men’s attitudes toward women? I’m afraid not, but there have been some nice changes. Some of the younger male musicians who have come along in the past few years did not all grow up under the Good Old Boy regime. So they tend to be more open and sensitive in their working relationships with women. There are bonds of friendship and trust that never existed before with those from “the old school of thought.” And I should know, being one of the first women in bluegrass, that kind of mind-set was predominant. There were few choices open to women in those days and working conditions left a lot to be desired, when and if you did work. If I was working, I was generally the only female in the band. So I got hit on all the time, and they got mad when I turned them down. That made working conditions even more tense. One guy started hitting on me right on the bandstand in the middle of a song, with his wife sitting in front of the stage! On another occasion I’d just been hired to play bass behind this band who had all worked with well-known people and they considered themselves professionals. My first night on the job every single member of the band made a trip over to my table when I was on a break to hit on me. They all accepted “No” and went on, except one. He kept trying night after night. He finally got so angry I thought he might strike me. And he yelled at me, what is wrong with you? It never once entered his “good old boy” brain that the problem was
him
and not me. I only mention these incidents (which only scratch the surface) to give some insight into the mind-set of those people and what the early days were like for women who loved the music.
    When they weren’t flirting with me, they would talk about the women they ran around with like they were dogs. They were mostly country boyswho had moved to the city to find work, but they still had the same old attitudes they had grown up with. Women, to them, tended to be either wives or whores. One of my sisters had the bad luck of falling for the sweet talk of a guy like that who married her, kept her pregnant, and treated her like dirt. I wrote this song