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Pure country sound Shirley Robertson sings traditional acoustic music Paul Robertson noticed that his wife, Shirley, seemed to wander toward anything musical when they went into a store. Whether it was musical instruments or musical toys, Shirley seemed to enjoy them. “My brother had a guitar and I borrowed it and told her that if she could learn to play one song by the time I got home from work I would buy her one,” Paul says. Well, she was determined to succeed and she did. When he got home, she played and sang a song. “I went out the next day and bought her a Harmony guitar,” Paul says. “So I guess it’s my fault,” he adds with a grin. Thanks to her husband’s encouragement, Shirley went on to record six albums and front a traditional country/bluegrass band that performed a Saturday night show for several years and raised thousands of dollars for community causes at numerous benefit concerts. All she really wanted, at first, was to play songs for the couple’s four children. “I played 15 or 16 years for just the kids,” Shirley says. “I was shy, painfully shy, and there was no way I was going to get out in front of people.” Her
sister-in-law persuaded her to play a couple of songs at a bridal
shower. The women at the shower were
impressed, and Robertson discovered she liked performing. “After performing at the shower I started going to local music shows and people started asking if I had any tapes so I recorded one, and as time went on people wanted me to record some of the other songs that I sang,” Robertson says. “I was in my early 40s when I started playing in public.” Robertson’s
childhood was filled with music. Born in the Bootheel to a migrant farm
family, Robertson lived in the Then at cotton harvest time, they would go to White Oak in the Bootheel where the family would work. This continued until she was about 11 years old, when mechanized cotton-pickers took over what had been manual labor. “Dad liked to sing. He was 55 years old when I was born. He was born in 1895, so he knew a lot of old songs, and he taught me a bunch of them,” Robertson says. “We sang all the time, a capella.” When singing for her children and later for the public, Robertson called on that vast repertoire of traditional ballads, gospel songs, folk songs and country music. Robertson
worked at the Brown Shoe Factory in “I
started my own show at The Wild Rose Music Show attracted 40-80 listeners each week. The name for the band and the show came from the attributes of the wild rose. “You don’t know where it’s going to grow, and with the band, you don’t know who’s going to show up and be playing,” she says, laughing. A couple who plays with the Wild Rose Band fairly regularly are Dewayne and Carolyn Price, of the Rolla area. Robertson
became well-known in the A
couple of area radio stations, including KUMR-FM in Rolla, play her
music from time to time. A station in “When I write, my songs come in spurts. The melody usually comes when I’m not even playing music,” she says. “One night I was sitting at the table, making out a show list, and we had an old clock that ticked loud. I started listening to that tick-tock, and the song ‘Billy Bleu’ just came to me. I wrote it down right then.” That is one of her two Civil War songs, so far. Robertson
recorded three of her albums in a studio in “I like acoustic music, because I like for people to be able to hear the words,” she says. In
addition to her own weekly show, Robertson sang for many benefits,
including the Relay for Life and the Share Your Christmas in “About have my music show was gospel music,” she says. “I love to touch people in their hearts and strive to please the Lord in all that I do.” After
the shoe factory closed, as shoe factories have done all across the
Ozarks, Robertson’s determination continued. She went to college as a
nontraditional student, earning a degree in teaching. When she finished
that, she took a job as a social studies teacher at Because of those changes in her life required by the closing of the shoe factory, Robertson’s music took a back row while she went to college and started teaching. “I’m
settled in teaching now, and finished with my master’s, so I’m
trying to get back into performing,” she says. She and Paul now live a
few miles outside Then she adds, with the determination that she has shown all her life, “I’m going to start a winter show.” For
bookings contact: Shirley
Robertson 10577
Hwy C 573-885-ROSE
(7673) |
