Dobkin, Alix, 1940-2021

Lesbian singer, songwriter, and activist, Alix Cecil Dobkin was born in New York City on August 16, 1940, to Bill and Martha Kunstlich Dobkin. She lived in Washington, D.C., New York City, Philadelphia, and Kansas City, Missouri, before returning to Philadelphia at age 16. There she graduated in 1958 from Germantown High School and in 1962 from the Tyler School of Fine Arts at Temple University, where she studied painting. Dobkin's parents were members of the Communist Party, and she was exposed to folk music at home and at summer camp. Dobkin herself was a member of the Party from 1956 until 1962, several years after her parents had renounced it. After graduating from college, Dobkin went to Greenwich Village in New York City, where she sang folk music in coffeehouses. She traveled the folk music circuit for several years, and married Sam Hood, the manager of the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village, where she had been based. Together they opened the Gaslight South in Miami in 1965 that featured well-known folk singers. The club failed financially and they returned to New York City in 1968. Their daughter Adrian was born in 1970, and the marriage dissolved a year later.

In 1972, Dobkin fell in love with Liza Cowan, a writer who had a radio show on WBAI, and the couple came out publicly as lesbians. Dobkin decided to focus on writing and singing music about and for women; in 1973 she released Lavender Jane Loves Women, the first album specifically made by and for lesbians. That same year Dobkin founded a record label, Women's Wax Works, to produce her own albums. In 1974 Dobkin and Cowan moved to Preston Hollow, New York and in 1978, Dobkin moved to Woodstock, New York, where her daughter and three grandchildren also live.

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