Obit: Alix Dobkin (1940-2021)

Subject: RE: Alix Dobkin
From: Thomas Stern
Date: 13 May 21 - 09:26 PM

Very sorry to hear of her death.
RIP, condolences to her family and friends.

The 1975 LP "Lavender Jane Loves Women" started an industry, and
had some lovely songs about love which could equally apply
to any love relationshop.

She wrote a memoir which anyone with an interest in the
"folk revival" should read.
MY RED BLOOD (2009, Alyson Books)

Thomas.

Subject: Alix Dobkin (1940-May 2021)
From: GUEST,Patty Crawford
Date: 14 May 21 - 02:19 PM

An amazing pioneer. An amazing woman not to be ignored or overlooked for her independence and strength in the fight for equality and especially for the struggles of Women. I am who I am because she was one of my teacher's of love and politics.

Subject: RE: Alix Dobkin
From: Jeri
Date: 15 May 21 - 08:48 AM

From Alix Dobkin's Facebook page:

May 13 at 11:58 AM ·
"Alix Dobkin, our revered Head Lesbian, who made the first (early 1970s) record album of music praising, encouraging, leading us to feel pride and joy in Feminism and particularly Lesbian Feminism.   She suffered a stroke two weeks ago and the global community has been pouring love and appreciation to her, her family and close friends. She changed the world for us and we adore her."

I'm taking the word "Obit:" and the dates out of the thread title, and hope it quits coming up on internet searches for her.

Thank you, GUEST

Subject: RE: Alix Dobkin
From: GUEST,#
Date: 15 May 21 - 09:10 AM

She had a brain aneurism on May 3 and was/is hospitalized.

Subject: Alix Dobkin
From: Jeri
Date: 15 May 21 - 09:21 AM

I deleted a previous thread with some wrong info that was being picked up by search engines.
So.
From her Facebook page:

From Alix Dobkin's Facebook page:
May 13 at 11:58 AM ·
"Alix Dobkin, our revered Head Lesbian, who made the first (early 1970s) record album of music praising, encouraging, leading us to feel pride and joy in Feminism and particularly Lesbian Feminism.   She suffered a stroke two weeks ago and the global community has been pouring love and appreciation to her, her family and close friends. She changed the world for us and we adore her."

Someone later said it had been a brain aneurism.
In any event, we wish her well.

Subject: RE: Alix Dobkin
From: Helen
Date: 15 May 21 - 02:45 PM

Thanks Jeri. I was Googling for more information about her and the only page coming up with information about her was Mudcat so I thought maybe the information was incorrect.

I did have one of her vinyl albums back in the '70's when I was involved with a feminist group at Uni but I only listened to it a few times and gave it to one of my friends. I admire her commitment to changing the world. Her passion for that was very striking in her music.

Subject: RE: Alix Dobkin
From: GUEST,Felipa
Date: 15 May 21 - 05:10 PM

yes, Alix Dobkin is very ill. You can get detailed information at https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/alixdobkin

On 11 May, her family wrote that her recovery is unlikely and she is now only receiving "comfort" care. They talk with Alix and would welcome messages at the Caring Bridge page which they can read to her.

Subject: RE: Alix Dobkin-Illness May 2021
From: GUEST,Felipa
Date: 17 May 21 - 02:57 PM

CARING BRIDGE May 17, 2021 Home
Journal Entry by Loren Dobkin —
Alix came home from the hospital to her place in Woodstock late Saturday night. She is calm and comfortable in her own living room with lilacs, her own familiar pictures, photos and artwork around her. Family and dear friends are with her.
With love,
Carl (her brother)

Subject: OBIT: Alix Dobkin-Illness May 2021
From: Felipa
Date: 20 May 21 - 07:50 AM

Alix Dobkin died on 19 May 2021. An announcement was made on her page at https://www.caringbridge.org/

Obituary by Liza Cowan.

“There are only two responses to freedom. One is trying to control everything. The other is to be creative and take risks.”                                                                                              (Alix Dobkin, 1994)


Alix Dobkin, singer, songwriter, and the face of the iconic “The Future is Female” t-shirt photo, died peacefully in her sleep, surrounded by family, on May 19th from a brain aneurysm and stroke. She was 80 years old.

Born in 1940 into a loving Jewish family in Philadelphia, Alix spent her early years listening to the music of Paul Robeson - who once visited her family - Pete and Peggy Seeger, Leadbelly, The Red Army Chorus, and her much- loved songs from Broadway musical theater. Alix’s parents were members of the American Communist Party until they quit while she was a teen, but from them she gained a passion for civil rights and social justice.

Alix spent her college years studying painting at The Tyler School of Fine Arts / Temple University, but her love for music was paramount. After graduation she picked up her guitar and headed for the folk music clubs of Philadelphia and New York. As “Miss Alix Dobkin” she performed with a very young Bill Cosby, and became Bob Dylan’s favorite “girl singer.”

At the New York City folk club The Gaslight Cafe, Alix met her husband, Sam Hood, who ran the club with his father. They soon left New York to start the Florida branch of the club; later, in 1970, they opened The Elephant, a folk venue in Woodstock, New York. That summer Alix and Sam’s daughter, Adrian Hood, was born. Soon they left for New York City, where Sam produced the shows at Max’s Kansas City, while Alix stayed home to take care of the baby.

Later that year Alix’s life pivoted when she became aware of the nascent Women’s Liberation Movement. As she lay in bed one night, listening to a radio interview with Germaine Greer on WBAI-FM, she realized that this would be the cause of her lifetime. She joined a Consciousness Raising Group, separated from her husband, and struck out on her own. She picked up the guitar once more, and wrote a letter to the producer who had done the interview which had so inspired her, asking if she could perform on her program. The night they did the live on-air broadcast, Alix and the producer, Liza Cowan, fell in love, and soon moved in together, along with 11 month old baby Adrian. Alix was now a capital L Lesbian.

Alix’s genius was in realizing that she could perform her music for audiences of women, and she became the founder of the genre now known as Women’s Music. She soon met classical musician Kay Gardner, and together they started the group Lavender Jane. No record label was interested in investing in someone who wanted to perform only for women, so Alix formed her own production company, Women’s Wax Works, and produced the first recorded album of Lesbian music, Lavender Jane Loves Women, in 1973, with an all woman team, from performers, to the sound engineer, and even record pressing. The cover was an illustration Alix drew, which a group of friends spent several evenings gluing to the cardboard sleeves.

Inspired by her decision to write for women, Alix wrote many dozens of songs, now known for their rousing and often humorous lyrics and engaging rhyme schemes. Calling on her roots in folk music, Broadway musicals, and the vocal traditions of Balkan songs, Alix’s compositions were based on storytelling, recalling moments not just in her own life, but accounts from stories told to her on her travels. One of her most famous, and most popular, is “Lesbian Code” in which she recites the code words that Lesbians use to name their own. She collected the many code words during her world travels, often in the middle of a concert, to the amusement of her audiences, who would call out their favorite words while Alix took notes in a small spiral notebook. She said she was doing Lesbian Anthropology.

Another famous song is her reworking of A-- You’re Adorable (The Alphabet Song) to A --You’re An Amazon. When a fan told Alix at a concert that her uncle had written the original, and that he was gay, Alix was thrilled. She closed every show with Amazon ABC, and always told that story.

As Alix’s music evolved in the 1970s and 1980s, so did the Women’s Music genre, with feminist coffee houses, clubs, music distribution companies, women’s bookstores, publishers, recording companies, and festivals created throughout the United States. Alix appeared at all of them, and became beloved as “The Head Lesbian.” She recorded five more albums over the next several years, and regularly toured the US, Canada, Australia, England, Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Italy, Denmark, and Germany, always performing to large audiences of women. She was known not just for her songs, but as a humorous raconteuse (which she pronounced, tongue in cheek, as “racontoozie.”) Although folk music was her default genre, Alix was always eager to explore other musical forms, from Yiddish tunes, to Pop, to Disco to Rap.

As the women’s movement changed, and as Alix aged, she continued to perform, but devoted much of her time as a steering committee member and co-director of Old Lesbians Organizing For Change (OLOC), an advocacy group. In 2009 Alyson Books published her memoir, My Red Blood, recounting her early years growing up as a Red Diaper Baby in a communist family, and the early days of her folk music career.

Alix spent the last half of her life living in Woodstock, New York, raising her daughter along with former husband Sam, leaving only to tour. In her later years, she spent her days working for OLOC, performing rarely, and helping care for her three beloved grandchildren.

While living in Woodstock Alix was well known as Grandma Alix. Her local Woodstock community cherished Grandma Alix and will miss seeing her walking through town listening to her walkman, singing, playing guitar and slinging pizza as the favorite Lunch Grandma at the Woodstock Day School. Some fortunate few were even lucky enough to see her perform Boogie Oogie Oogie at a recent school event.

She leaves behind her daughter, Adrian Hood, son-in law Chris Lofaro, grandchildren Lucca, Marly and Sammy, as well as her brother Carl Dobkin, sister-in -law Pat Dobkin, her sister Julie Dobkin, two nieces, as well as her former partners, and a host of friends and fans.

Subject: RE: Obit: Alix Dobkin (1940-2021)
From: Felipa
Date: 03 May 26 - 08:13 AM

article re Alix Dobkin https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/dobkin-alix
Here is the section which concentrates on music:

In 1961, Dobkin met Herb Gart, a promoter and artist manager who played a key role in shaping the careers of popular musicians. Gart arranged gigs for her at folk clubs and bars in New York City. Upon graduating from Temple (Universiy, Pa.) in 1962, Dobkin moved to Manhattan and embarked on a career as a singer in folk clubs. Gart arranged work for her at the Gaslight Café, a coffeehouse in Greenwich Village managed by Clarence “Papa” Hood, the father-in-law of the owner, John Moyant. The Gaslight Café became a hub for Beat poets and folk musicians and an important gig for performers building reputations in the Manhattan folk scene. Dobkin also worked at several other venues, including Gerde’s Folk City, an even more influential folk music club in Manhattan that showcased a variety of popular music genres, including folk, rock, punk, and blues, and launched the careers of many music stars including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix. Possibly because of local ordinances, Gerde’s required that all its performers be union members in order to keep its liquor license. Dobkin was delighted to become a member of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians.

During this period, Dobkin took performance lessons, expanded her repertoire of global folk songs, and even experimented with songwriting. She became friends with many other folksingers, including Bob Dylan, who offered her the opportunity to sing his “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” Dobkin turned the song down, feeling that it did not fit her growing sense of her own personal musical style. She also drifted away from the Communist Party, as she lost touch with her college Party friends and focused on her musical career. By 1963, she was no longer an active member. She quit officially in 1964, though the FBI continued to take an interest in her until around 1970.

During her career in New York, Dobkin became close to Hood’s son Sam, and they married in 1965. They moved to Florida and opened a branch of the Gaslight Café, called the Gaslight South, in Coconut Grove, a neighborhood of Miami. However, the Miami area was not as welcoming to a mixed-race club as New York, and the Gaslight South closed in 1968. Dobkin and Sam moved back to New York. Their marriage began to falter, due in part to Sam’s growing alcoholism and Dobkin’s sense of rootlessness as an unemployed singer.

Dobkin became pregnant in 1970, partly in an effort to fill the void of a life without performances or a recording contract, and gave birth to her and Sam’s daughter Adrian Hood in late October of that year. Around this time, friends introduced Dobkin to all-women consciousness-raising groups, and Dobkin became a feminist. In 1971, she met Liza Cowan, the host of the feminist radio program “Electra Rewired,” and appeared on the show in December 1971. Dobkin and Cowan fell in love, and Dobkin began to investigate lesbian culture and the politics of lesbian feminism. She came out in 1972 as Cowan’s partner.
“Women’s Music”

In the early 1970s, Dobkin formed the band Lavender Jane with Kay Gardner and Pat Moschetta, known as Patches Attom. She also founded a record label called Women’s Wax Works, employing only women. Through Women’s Wax Works, Dobkin and Lavender Jane produced their first album, Lavender Jane Loves Women, in 1973. Although Maxine Feldman’s 1972 single “Angry Atthis” was the first commercially released lesbian feminist song, Lavender Jane Loves Women established “women’s music” as a genre. In a 1994 interview, Dobkin clarified that women’s music “is music which is by, for, and about women. It’s not a sound. It’s not any particular style. It’s all styles.” In 1975, she released a follow-up album entitled Living With Lesbians.

Lavender Jane Loves Women and Living With Lesbians showcase Dobkin’s folk-pop style. Dobkin sings and plays acoustic guitar, accompanied by Gardner on flute and Attom on bass. The first track on Lavender Jane Loves Women, “The Woman In Your Life,” became such an iconic signifier of the lesbian-feminist movement of the 1970s that cartoonist Alison Bechdel included both an image of the Lavender Jane Loves Women album cover and a snippet of the lyrics to “The Woman In Your Life” in a 1992 cartoon panel illustrating her own college years. The albums also included songs such as “Lesbian Code” and “Amazon ABC,” a parody of the 1948 hit “A–You’re Adorable.” Dobkin’s lyrics captured both the humor and the subversive code of lesbian life in the 1970s. Her musical influence and visibility in the growing women’s music community earned her the nickname “Head Lesbian,” a phrase that appeared in many of her obituaries.

Dobkin released four albums between 1973 and 1990 and toured extensively. At her live performances, she always made sure to include at least one song in Yiddish. That song was often “Ot Azoy Nayt A Shnayder” (This is how a tailor sews), a nineteenth-century folksong about overworked tailors that spoke to Dobkin’s interest in labor rights. Music festival archivist Bonnie Morris observes that Dobkin frequently introduced this song with the words “Jews, like lesbians, were never meant to survive, and it was harder for me to come out as a Jew than as a lesbian” (Lilith, 2025). Dobkin was one of only a few artists in the women’s music scene who openly and proudly identified as Jewish.