Ella Hanshaw

When Ella Hanshaw (1934-2020) first picked up the guitar as a 12-year-old girl in Procious, West Virginia, she dreamed of being a country star.

But over the next 74 years, as she wrote hundreds of songs, her artistic goals slowly ascended to a higher realm.

Ella Hanshaw's 'Black Book', lovingly compiled by her granddaughter from home and church recordings, features a selection of Ella's original gospel songs (Side A: 'Big Black Book'), performed solo and with her Hallelujah Hill Quartet, and her broken-hearted country songs (Side B: 'Little Black Book') recorded in a back bedroom during quiet moments at home. Despite differences in style and intent, common themes remain the same across the sacred and secular sides of the record: love and longing for what we cannot quite touch—not yet, anyway—and the physical pages of possibility that we can hold in the meantime.