Free Working Girl Blues by Hazel Dickens Page B

for my sister and the many women like her up and down the road of life who deserved a whole lot better than what they got!
Don’t Put Her Down, You Helped Put Her There
    You pull the string she’s your plaything
    You can make her or break her it’s true
    You abuse her, accuse her, turn around and use her
    Then forsake her anytime it suits you
    Chorus:
    Well there’s more to her than powder and paint
    Than her peroxided bleached-out hair
    If she acts that way it’s ’cause you’ve had your day
    Don’t put her down, you helped put here there
    She hangs around playing the clown
    While her soul is aching inside
    She’s heartbreaks child—she just lives for your smile
    To build her up in a world made by men
    At the house down the way, you sneak in—you pay
    For her love her body all her shame
    Then you call yourself a man, you say you just don’t understand
    How a woman could turn out that way
    Repeat Chorus

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It’s Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song
    When I wrote this song, in 1986, I was probably writing my autobiography and didn’t know it. I
thought
I was just writing about this person who experiences a lot in life, but loses some of herself along the way. A little piece of her is left behind in every relationship, job, or experience that she encountered, and can’t be retrieved. I imagine the reason that we all leave bits and pieces of ourselves scattered down the road of life is that we live and learn by experiences. So if we grow (and some of us do), we won’t be the same person when we leave a relationship or experience. Some of our old self is left behind. Sometimes it’s hard to tell how much we take away and how much we leave behind. I always hope I leave more good than bad.
It’s Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song
    She’s lost a lot of herself that time cannot replace
    Bits and pieces of herself gone, without a trace
    She’s been a-holding on to anything that happened to be there
    All used up and forgotten and scattered everywhere
    Chorus:
    Oh she is not an angel, so don’t look for her wings
    She’s a hurtin’ woman who lives the songs she sings
    She learned them all the hard way on the streets of life alone
    That is why it’s hard to tell the singer from the song
    One by one her young years were gone before she knew
    Wasted on some loser who was only walking through
    Each time her bruised and lonely heart tried to break the fall
    And gather up the pieces of a life that paid it all!
    Repeat Chorus

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I Love to Sing the Old Songs
    I wrote this song in 2001 after reading an article written in a Primitive Baptist newsletter—they call them “minutes.” My father gave it to me back in the 1960s. I read the piece he had written, as he asked me to do, but didn’t read the one that inspired this song until years later. It was written by an elderly lady named Julia Hollis who lived in Oklahoma. She said she had been singing since she was three years old. She dearly loved singing and listening to the other members of her church sing, and the old songs had been a blessing and comfort to her down through the years. What the minister got out of prayer, she seemed to get out of the singing and the old songs. She said that she would never forget the old singers and their songs. The more I read, the more I realized how much we had in common when it came to our love and passion for the old songs, even though we were years and miles apart in age and distance. We were kindred spirits. When I finished reading her article, I wrote a note to myself that included a few of her words to remind me to write a song about how the old songs had enhanced and enriched our lives down through the years. In joy and in sorrow they had stood by us, seeing us through it all.
I Love to Sing the Old Songs
    Oh I love to get my old book out, and sing the old songs again
    Like a dear old friend they comfort me
    Through my joy and