Hedy West was the daughter of Don West, a poet and labor organizer throughout the south. In the 1930's, he learned songs from coal miners during his work as a relief worker - these make up the most recent songs to appear on Old Times and Hard Times, while other songs were passed down from the longstanding musical tradition of her family in the mountains of northern Georgia. Initially a student of classical music at the Mannes School, West participated in the Greenwich Village scene during the Folk Revival, performing alongside Pete Seeger in the early 1960's. In the liner notes, West explains that she makes music "neither for diversion nor escape. Not for irrelevant play. But because music is one part of the creative activity of man that gives vital evidence that he has value and is worth continuing".

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