Music
Shirley Stewart Burns has been writing songs and singing since she was a child.
Gathered around the family piano, Shirley joined in with family and friends singing southern gospel and traditional songs. Leading the singing was her father, Neely Stewart. Blessed with a strong, beautiful singing voice, he was the lead singer for various southern gospel groups. Shirley loved accompanying her father all over the southern states as he performed his orginal material interspersed with a few southern gospel standards.
Shirley began singing along, and it was evident soon thereafter that she had inherited her daddy's passion for music and singing. Shirley wrote her first song at age 10, and since the 1990s she has been writing and singing ballads inspired by the current struggles in her beloved southern West Virginia coalfields. Coalfield A Cappela represents a sampling of those endeavors. Hear Shirley sing Leave Those Mountains Down (Ode to the Mountains) at the 2008 Appalachian Studies Association Conference.
CoalField A CapPela
Artist: Shirley Stewart Burns
Release Date: 21 December 2009
Price: $12.00 (Free Shipping in the United States).
The debut album of Shirley Stewart Burns, Coalfield A Cappela is a collection of songs based in the southern West Virginia coalfields. Rooted in family stories and the history of the region, these songs offer a unique perspective in the daily lives of coalfield residents. Topics covered on this CD range from Black Lung disease, the coming of strip mining, to the most recent tragic event to transform the mountains, mountaintop removal.
To sample songs on Coalfield A Cappela, please click on the page titled, "Coalfield A Cappela" or by clicking here.
Track Listing
Track 1: Leave Those Mountains Down
Track 2: No Friend of Coal
Track 3: There Goes Another Mountain
Track 4: Pretty Mountains
Track 5: Ode to a Miner
Track 6: Ode to a Miner's Wife
Track 7: Long Time on this Mountain
Track 8: Coalfield Blues
Track 9: The Drunkard's Lament
Track 10: Amazing Grace
- $
- In stock
COAL cOUNTRY MUSIC
Coal Country Music is a compilation produced by Andy Mahler and Jason Wilber for Heartwood®. Coal Country Music is a companion to the film Coal Country, which documents the devastation wrought by mountaintop removal and the cycle of coal mining and combustion.
It was both an honor and a privilege to have my song, Leave Those Mountains Down (Ode to the Mountains), included on Coal Country Music.
100% of the net proceeds from the sale of the CD go to the Alliance for Appalachia to STOP MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL.
We encourage you to purchase Coal Country Music at www.coalcountrymusic.com.
- $
- Not in stock
- $
