Biography
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Born
16 August 1940
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Born In
New York, New York, United States
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Died
19 May 2021 (aged 80)
Alix Dobkin (born Alix Cecil Dobkin on 16 August 1940; died 19 May 2021) was an American folk singer-songwriter, memoirist, and lesbian feminist activist. In 1979, she was the first American lesbian feminist musician to do a European concert tour.
Dobkin was born in New York City and raised in Philadelphia. She graduated from Germantown High School in 1958, and the Tyler School of Art, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, in 1962. She began performing the Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene in the early '60s. She played with greats like Bob Dylan and Buffy Sainte-Marie.
Dobkin briefly married a man in the late 1960s, the marriage producing a daughter. In 1972, Dobkin came out as a lesbian, something very uncommon for a public personality to do at the time.
Starting in 1973, she released a number of albums as well as a songbook and toured throughout the U.S., Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand promoting lesbian culture and community through women's music.
Dobkin garnered a small but devoted cult audience. She gained some unexpected (and not entirely welcome) fame in the Eighties when comedians like David Letterman and Howard Stern tracked down the "Lavender Jane Loves Women" album, and began playing it on the air. Her warbling vocal style and oh-so-earnest ("Lesbian, lesbian, any woman can be a lesbian") lyrics made her a somewhat easy target for satire.
By the 21st century, Dobkin had ceased writing and recording new material but continued to tour until her death.
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