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Hedy West (April 6, 1938 – July 3, 2005) was an American folksinger and songwriter. West was of the same generation as Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and others of the American folk music revival. Her most famous song "500 Miles" is one of America's best loved and best known folk songs. She was described by the English folk musician AL Lloyd as "far and away the best of American girl singers in the () revival."〔 Hedy West played the guitar and the banjo. She played both clawhammer style and a unique type of three finger picking that wasn't quite bluegrass, and wasn't quite old-time, exhibiting influences from blues and jazz. ==Early life and family influences== She was born Hedwig Grace West in Cartersville in the mountains of northern Georgia in 1938.〔 Her father, Don West, was a southern poet and 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.〔In this interview, Don West states he was the preacher at Barney Graham's funeral: Oral History Interview with Don West, January 22, 1975. Interview E-0016. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. url=http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/E-0016/excerpts/excerpt_7866.html〕 Later, he operated the Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem, West Virginia and co-founded the Highlander Folk School in New Market, Tennessee. Her great-uncle Augustus Mulkey played the fiddle; her paternal grandmother Lillie Mulkey West played the banjo. By her teens West was singing at folk festivals, both locally and in neighboring states. In the mid-50s she won a prize for ballad-singing in Nashville, TN. Many of her songs, including the raw materials for "500 Miles", came from Lillie, who passed on the songs she had learned as a child.〔Ken Hurt, "Obituary: Hedy West, ''The Independent'' (London), Aug. 3, 2005.〕 She used her father's poetry in several songs, such as ''Anger in the Land''.〔 Her family's politics were also a lifelong 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hedy West」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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