1. the L&N Don't Stop Here Anymore
2. Blue Diamond Mines
3. Red-Winged Black Bird
4. Lawrence Jones
5. Green Rolling Hills
6. Coal Tattoo
7. Sally in the Garden
8. You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive
9. Dark as a Dungeon
10. Coming Of the Roads
11. Black Lung
Product Description
Grammy winner and environmental activist Kathy MAttea, known for such classic hits as "18 Wheels and a Dozen Roses," has dreamed quietly about one day recording an album like COAL. Raised near Charleston, West Virginia, her childhood was steeped in the Appalachian culture and her mining heritage is thick: bother her parents grew up in coal camps, her grandfathers were miners, and her mother worked for the local UMWA. But the songs on COAL are more than just mining songs. Mattea says she wanted to pay tribute to "my place and my people."
The idea for COAL began to gel during the Sago Mine Disaster, which killed twelve WV miners in 2006. "I knew the time was right," says Mattea. COAL forced her to dig really deep to find the power to let these songs come forth. Co-producer Marty Stuart understood her core relationship to these songs, that they were "in her blood." As Mattea says, "I think there's a mystery there. Somewhere in my DNA, there's my great grandmother singing, my grandma, and my people singing through me, with me." Singer, songs, producer, and pickers have come together flawlessly to form COAL, a career record for Mattea and a great gift for music lovers.
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Coal
- Audio CD: 0 pages (2008-04-01)
- Publisher: R.E.D. Distribution
- Label: R.E.D. Distribution
- Studio: R.E.D. Distribution
- Average Customer Review:
 based on 21 reviews
- Sales Rank in Music: #2333
Avg. Customer Review:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A TRUE COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER 2008-10-22
Comment: I was first introduced to Kathy Mattea nearly 20 years ago, when she was more of a Country-style singer. I have liked her voice from the start, as it reminded me a little of a cross between Anne Murray and Lori Lieberman (two of my other favorite female singers!). As time has passed, however, Kathy has been delving more into folk, bluegrass and Celtic music -- and I have enjoyed her voice even more.
"Coal" is one of her best albums to date. These are all songs that are about and dedicated to the coal-mining lifestyle. As someone whose grandfathers were both coal miners -- and to whom Kathy has dedicated this album -- she has experienced much of what she sings about on this album, which also explains why she sings these songs with such pathos, passion and feeling.
Another thing which strikes me is the simplicity of this album, from the acoustic-only instrumentation (fiddles, mandolin, banjo, piano and guitars -- the acoustic guitar of which Kathy plays in a couple of tracks -- to the eco-friendly packaging (a cardboard rather than jewel case), which is also fitting with Kathy's environmental concerns.
Among the standouts on this album are "Red-Winged Blackbird," "Green Rolling Hills" (Kathy's tribute to Virginia), the fast-paced "Coal Tattoo," "Sally in the Garden" (a banjo solo by Stuart Duncan, represented by the love that coal miners had for Celtic music), "Dark as a Dungeon" (describing the life inside the coal mines), and the environmental cry in "Coming of the Roads."
Probably the biggest standout is "Black Lung/Coal." It starts out as a mandolin solo, and then segues into Kathy Mattea's beautiful a capella rendition of "Black Lung," describing a disease which has taken many a coal miner's life. After Kathy's solo, the acoustic instruments fade in to "Coal."
Just as black coal is transformed into diamonds, Kathy Mattea's "Coal" has transformed into a "gem" to be treasured!
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Summary: The Children Of The Coal 2008-10-13
Comment: Several time over the past year or so I have mentioned in this space, as part of my remembrances of my youth and of my political and familial background, that my father was a coal miner and the son of a coal miner in the hills of Hazard, Kentucky in the heart of Appalachia. I have also mentioned that he was a child of the Great Depression and of World War II. He often joked that in a choice between digging the coal and taking his chances in war he much preferred the latter. Thus, it was no accident that when war came he volunteered for the Marines and, as fate would have it despite a hard, hard life after the war, he never looked back to the mines.
All of this is by way of an introduction to this unusual tribute album. Of all the subjects that one could think of in the year 2008 fit for a full exposition the unsung life, trials and tribulations and grit of those who, for generations, mined the coal (and other minerals) and passed unnoticed in the hollows and hills of Appalachia (and the West) does not readily come to mind. Even for this long time labor militant. But Ms. Mattea, who has her own roots to the coal, has done a great service here. Kudos are in order.
Now politically the coal story is today a very disturbing one. For one, the strip mining of significant portions of places like Kentucky and West Virginia go on unabated and essentially unchecked. For another, the number of miners had dwindled to a very few and are getting fewer. As a labor militant I have feasted on the heroics of the Harlan and Hazard miners, the exploits of Big Big Haywood and the Western Federation of Miners and the class war battles from any number of isolated locales where men (mainly) dug the coal and fought for some sense of dignity. The dignity and sense of social solidarity may still remain but the virtues of the lessons of the class struggle- picket lines mean don't cross and class solidarity is essential- have clearly been eroded. That is the political part that cannot be separated from the musical part of this story. Why?
The songs selected for inclusion here spell out the condition of live for the miners, in short, as the political theorist Thomas Hobbes put it centuries ago- life is short, nasty and brutish in the mines and the mining communities. The songs like You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive and the choice of material by well-known mountain music songwriters Jean Ritchie, Billy Edd Wheeler and Hazel Dickens reflect that. Theses simple mountain tunes, as performed by Ms. Mattea and her fellow musicians, spell out the story with soft guitar, fiddle, mandolin and other instruments that create the proper mood. Probably it is very hard for those not familiar with the coal, the isolated communities and the sorrow of the mountains to listen to this compilation in one sitting. For that it probably takes the children of the coal. For the rest please bear with it and learn about an important part of American history and music.
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Summary: Coal 2008-09-25
Comment: Kathy Mattea has led us listeners back in time into the coal mines of West Virginia and Kentucky, her voice more a laser beam than a headlamp, guiding us through tunnels of love and birth, poverty and affuency, and finally, death itself in her acapella version of BLACK LUNG. We become haunted by the era, both in time and place, each track a corridor revealing ghostly familiar faces; simple people whose dreams and survival were inextricably tied. To say this album is overwhelmingly nostalgic or a definitive track of (her) interpretive tunes would be a gross understatement: it is itself, a breath of coal dust, a gasp for life, and then...nothing. May this collection be interred in that cemetery in Harlan County where the tombstone reads "you'll never leave alive".
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Summary: Way to go Kathy! 2008-07-14
Comment: We hadn't heard much of Mattea's music since her more "commercial" Nashville days. What a joy to come across this recording! Beautifully chosen classic coal-ming and "coal town" songs, beautifully sung, gorgeously produced by Marty Stuart. I could write reams of positive copy about every track here, but what's the point? It is just so gratifying to see an artist at the top of her game, really creating something "from the heart, to the heart" as Beethoven once said.
(This means I strongly recommend it.)
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: VERY GOOD MUSICALLY / BUYER BEWARE OF PACKAGING 2008-07-14
Comment: I have nothing musically to carp about with this recording, as they other reviewers have so wonderfully written.
My complaint is with the packaging. True, no plastic involved with this
CD, except for the disc itself. HOWEVER, the disc slid in and out of its cardboard slot will soon be scratched - my copy had some sort of mung, maybe some extra sleeve glue inside which adhered to the disc causing a nasty smear on the surface. Perhaps an additional paper sleeve would be more appropriate. I've slid mine into the pages of the accompanying booklet to try to protect it.
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Coal
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