The word ‘legend’ is overused in the world of music writing; too often applied as a lazy label to someone who is merely well-known or a favourite of a particular scribe. In the case of Alice Gerrard, however, it’s entirely appropriate.
Whether as a performer, historian, publisher or just someone who was there at special times. Gerrard’s presence casts a long shadow over the world of old-time music in the American roots world. She’s mainly known for her collaborations with Hazel Dickens, but Gerrard’s story is intertwined with that of old-time music from the 1950s up to today.
“Custom Made Woman” is a deeply personal memoir in which Gerrard shares a lot of her personal life and doesn’t flinch in her assessment of herself throughout. Her story starts with her childhood in North California, raised by liberal parents in another of the conservative periods of US history. She tells of an extended European trip during her father’s sabbatical year when she and her half-brother were allowed to head off on their own, hitching and youth-hostelling.
Returning to the US, Gerrard went to college in Antioch, Ohio, where she met her future husband, Jeremy Foster, who introduced her to Harry Smith’s American Folk Music Anthology, after which she was hooked. She and Foster got to know many musicians, including Mike Seeger and Dickens. She and Foster both dropped out of college to pursue their musical interests. They married in 1956 and had four children. Tragically, Foster was killed in a car accident in 1962, leaving Gerrard to bring up four children single-handed.
Getting by on social security, she was determined to pursue her musical career, which required a lot of help with childcare. Gerrard also has a longstanding interest in photography. The book is packed with shots of her contemporaries and traditional musicians of earlier generations. These provide a lot of colour to her stories. Like many of her contemporaries, Gerrard was also a historian of American folk and old-time music. Her travels around the Appalachians and the South bring her into contact with a fascinating range of musicians. She writes of them with affection but without rose-coloured glasses. These are authentic portraits of real people and their world out of which their timeless music sprung.
Gerrard’s descriptions of recording sessions for the early records are similarly evocative. On her and Dickens’ album “Who’s That Knocking? And Other Bluegrass Music” (1965), she tells of being joined by a teenage David Grisman on mandolin. She and Dickens fell out in the 1970s and only got together later in life to perform shows from time to time.
Gerrard moved regularly but connected deeply with the communities in which she lived, networking with the local musicians and supporting and developing festivals. In the late 1980s, Gerrard founded “Old-Time Herald”, a magazine dedicated to old-time music. She tells of the struggles setting it up and keeping it going, including some amusing correspondence with early readers and subscribers. She ran the magazine until 2003 before handing it on to Gail Gillespie to allow her to spend more time on her music.
One of the sadder aspects to “Custom Made Woman” is the large number of those about whom she writes or has photographed who have died. Gerrard was born in 1934 and is now 91, so that’s not surprising but still leaves a sense of loss. Gerrard herself is still working, and this writer was lucky enough to see her at 2025’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival alongside Della Mae and Laurie Lewis performing a tribute to Dickens. You can see them below at Grey Fox playing ‘Who’s That Knocking On My Window?’
“Custom Made Woman” is a book that’s hard to put down. It also leaves the reader immersed in many places and times with many people, which is a tribute to the power of Gerrard’s writing.
