[MUSIC]

Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back. Happy Friday, everybody. I'm Brigid Bergin, filling in for Brian today. Beyonce's latest album, Act ll: Cowboy Carter, hit number one on the Billboard Country Albums charts this week, making her the first Black woman to ever top that chart.

With the news, came an outpouring of Black artists, writers, and historians, who are all saying that country music wouldn't be what it is without its roots in African American culture.

Joining us now to discuss the legacy of Black country music and trace its roots to today's historic achievement is novelist and songwriter Alice Randall. Her new book is titled My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music's Black Past, Present, and Future. Welcome to WNYC, Alice.

Alice Randall: Wonderful to be with you in this historic week.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, we can take your calls on two tracks here. If you're a Black fan of country music, call in and tell us what about it you love about country music and genre. Who are your favorite artists? What do you think of Beyonce's new album? If you're a fan of Black country music, we'll invite you to answer the same questions. The number 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692.

Of course, we'll invite Beyonce fans. How much of a departure do you think this genre-bending album is from Beyonce's previous work? What do you like about it? What's your favorite track? Or anything else you want to say about the news that Beyonce is the first Black woman to reach number one on Billboard's Country Albums Chart? 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can also text us at that number. Alice, 30 years ago in 1994, you actually became the first Black woman to co-write a number one country hit with Trisha Yearwood's X's and O's, and American Girl. How did you react when you heard the news that Beyonce hit number one this week?

Alice Randall: I was thrilled. I considered it a Juneteenth moment. Good news at long last. When I arrived in Nashville in 1983, to start that journey that ended at the top of the charts in 1994, Charley Pride had already been to the top of the charts 29 times, and we get to that number one space again, but for the 41 years, I've been Black and writing country music in Nashville, no Black woman had ever as an artist been at the top of the charts. It was good news at long last.

Brigid Bergin: At long last. You're from Detroit, Motown country, what made you decide to move to Nashville and become a Black songwriter and Black publisher?

Alice Randall: Well, I think it has everything to do with being born in Detroit City the very same year as Motown Records, 1959, because one, I knew about songwriters and publishers from the very early days of my life. My family were friends with a lot of the people in the music industry. I knew that Anna Records had been founded a year before Motown by two Black women.

After going to Harvard where I studied English, and knowing I also wanted to be a novelist, it occurred to me that my plan to support my serious novel writing was to be a country songwriter and publisher because I've also been told in that Black Riverside music town Motown, there was a lot of Black genius hidden in country. In Detroit, we never forgot that Lil Hardin Armstrong, a Black woman, played on Blue Yodel No. 9, the most iconic country song, perhaps of all time.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, I know that we have Beyonce fans listening. I know we have country music fans listening. I know we have Black country music fans listening. We want to hear from all of you. The number, 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can also text us at that number. We want to know what you think of this really amazing historic achievement, and what do you think of this new album.

Alice, before we get into Beyonce's new album, let's talk a little bit more about the genre of country music. You write, "Country music is three chords and four very particular truths: life is hard, God is real, whiskey and roads and family provide worthy compensations, and the past is better than the present." Can you talk more about these themes that make country music country?

Alice Randall: Well, first of all, I'd like to say, all those themes are present and work on Beyonce's new album, and on my album that dropped today, My Black Country - The Songs of Alice Randall. First thing is, life is hard. God is real. The road liquor and family are significant compensations. The past is better than the present. That's where the racial fault line often happens in country. In much of white country, the past that's better than the present can be a mythologized Dixie. In much of the best of Black country, the past that's better than the present is a longing for a lost Africa before colonization, often represented by nature, and/or it is a childhood, where a Black parent or aunt or grandparent protected the child's ego against all odds.

Also country music, I like to say, there's a little formula. It's Irish, English, Scottish ballot forms and storytelling, plus Black influences, plus evangelical Christianity. If you don't have evangelical Christianity, you may have a blues song. If you don't have the Black influences, you may have a folk song. To make country country, it actually requires those African influences be that the banjo and instrument, be that the roots of Black gospel, be that the sense of sacred nature.

Brigid Bergin: To stay on the issue of the instruments just for a second, the musician, Rhiannon Giddens, who actually plays banjo on that Beyonce song we heard in the beginning of this segment, has long been credited for bringing awareness to the banjo's history. Can you tell us more about that instrument's roots?

Alice Randall: Well, one, I want to say that Rhiannon has done a great job of spotlighting that. She does a spectacular job of playing on Texas Hold 'em. She dropped her second single, The Ballad of Sally Anne where she not only plays but sings on that record.

Precursors of the banjo were born in Africa. The banjo continued to evolve throughout the Caribbean, and then most profoundly and dramatically evolved in these United States by being played by African musicians, born in Africa musicians, and African Americans who ended up born here in the slavery period. It continued to evolve on these shores.

I love Rhiannon's work. There is another beautiful book called The Banjo, by a scholar, Dubois, that I also love. Gospel from California Black gospel will have a huge influence on shaping country, as does gospel that is coming up in the deep South. There are many multiple ways in which Black influences enter into country.

Brigid Bergin: Well, The Ballad of Sally Anne is what the song is called. We have a little bit of it. Let's hear a clip of it now.

[MUSIC - Rhiannon Giddens: The Ballad of Sally Anne]

Love in his heart and flowers in his hand

Johnny proposed to Sally Anne

Sally shivered as she said, "I′ll love you 'til the day I′m dead"

Brigid Bergin: That's a little bit of The Ballad Of Sally Anne from Alice's album that drops today. If you're just joining us, I'm Brigid Bergin from the WNYC newsroom, filling in for Brian. My guest is songwriter and novelist Alice Randall. Her new book is My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music's Black Past, Present, and Future. Part of our conversation is about the roots of country music and Black country music, and also some reaction to this history-making week where Beyonce topped the country music charts.

One of the themes obviously is, of Black country music, a theme is race and you write, "In the world of white country, the past that is better than the present exists in a longed for and lost mythical Dixie. In Black country, the past that is better than the present exists in a longed for and lost Africa before colonization." Can you take us one step further into that thought and how it changes the sound or lyrics or anything else in the music?

Alice Randall: Well, when you listen to Texas Hold 'Em, nature is there both in the tornadoes and it's also there in the sustaining honey. Al Green had amazing album, Belle, where we see nature celebrated over and over. This is a place where we find that African sense of sacred place present in country.

Another group of people that are going to bring in that influence strongly are, we forget about the 19th century, Black and brown cowboys of the American West. Cowboy music has a strong component of songwriting and songsinging.

People forget that 20 to 30% of cowboys were Black and brown and they were living very close to nature and reporting on it, but they were influenced by their own experiences with grandparents and parents, some of whom had come directly from Africa, which is a large continent with many religions, but many of them celebrate a sense of sacred nature and sacred place that impacts country.

Brigid Bergin: I want to bring in some of our listeners. Let's start with Sunny in New Mexico. Sunny, thanks for listening and thanks for calling.

Sunny: Good morning.

Brigid Bergin: Good morning.

Sunny: Can you hear me? Okay. Awesome. I'm a Navajo woman who used to love country music. Lately I've just noticed that the Nashville Music Machine, I think it's like an industrial complex now, has just produced music I cannot relate to anymore. It's really sad to hear the state of country music. It no longer reflects me and it just seems to grandiose and celebrate the alcohol industry, so to speak.

I'm really proud of Beyonce doing what she's doing. I listened to her music on YouTube and I thought it was about Jolene the song and how you know, it wasn't reflecting what Dolly Parton sang. Then I listened to it and then I just kind of said it's the same. This is the same kind of whatever Dolly was inflecting and Jolene is the same thing that Beyonce is redefining for this current age. I now listen to classic rock and roll because I think that's the new country music.

Brigid Bergin: [laughs] Sunny, thank you for your call and your perspective. A bit of a country music critique there. Alice, any reaction to that?

Alice Randall: Well, I think for example, that Allison Russell, who's on this album has a beautiful song called Persephone, which I consider and talk about my book as one of the new additions to the country Canon. Persephone is a song about a girl who is being abused and finds shelter in her young girl lover's bed. It's a redemptive song, it's stone country, and it's old as the Greek myth that it is partially named for. To me, actually in the time I've been here, 41 years, when I got here, they used to say it was a young man's town. Today, I say it's a Wild Woman's town.

Brigid Bergin: Oh, I like that.

Alice Randall: The machine is being renovated. I adore Beyonce and I love the family reunion moment that is this album, but this album that dropped today, My Black Country, we started making it over three years ago. Ebony Smith is a producer, but it's all amazing Black and brown women. It's Layla McKayla singing about small towns being smaller for girls. It's Adia Victoria singing the song about the Black female cowboy, but it's Rhiannon in that song about actually a man who's lynched between his wedding and his reception and his wife being the embodied resistance and witness. I think Nashville is reinventing itself in this moment and has been since about 2006, 2007 as a Wild Woman's town and very grown-up stories about actual pain, domestic violence, transcendence, and beauty and of joy being radical.

Brigid Bergin: A Wild Woman's town.

Alice Randall: That is a woman's story. It's a Wild Woman's-- One of the songs on this album is A Big Dream. That song goes way back in the 20th century, but it said way back then, it was a country song, "makes me think maybe God's a woman too. Makes me think God's a woman too." I hope that your listeners will listen to the deeper cuts. I couldn't believe, I woke up this morning and this new album of ours, it's all feminist country, it was in some kind of top 10. It's right out there.

Country, Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, part of what drove me to Nashville. The main thing was the Black genius embedded, Lil Hardin, what she was doing.

Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn were telling stories about women going through hard times way back then. They were political and they were inspiring to me. Rosanne Cash was this extraordinary-- She's gone up to the top of the charts 11 times talking about take the baby, and the clothes on your back when that wasn't happening in rock and roll music.

I will call out rock and roll that it has not told the same kind of stories about how women make it through the day and how you don't stop being important when some man stops chasing you, that life is something that we get reborn into every -- I say we make sane like we make a bed every day. That's pure stone country saying. Make sane like you make a bed every day.

Brigid Bergin: You've talked a little bit about the difference between Black country and Black blues. I wonder if you could just tell us briefly what you think, how these styles are different.

Alice Randall: Blues is an extremely important roots music, and it's a root of country. It's a root of rock. Blues to me, reductively narrates hell on earth. Country, because of the evangelical Christianity that is part of it that's baked into it, has hope. It has hope of the old Black Gospel song Welcome Table. "I'm going to tell Jesus how you done me." It's almost like therapy in that sense. It believes there is a narrative, there's a next step that will get you beyond hell and earth. It believes that your enemies are being relegated to some fiery pit. I've always loved that.

I said my childhood was too hard for me to enjoy the blues, although there's some great blue singers and artists that I do adore. I needed the country. I needed the Black country that promised I could make tomorrow better than today.

Brigid Bergin: Wow. Alice Randall, this has been such a pleasure to speak with you. I'm grateful that you were in the Wild Woman's town and helping remake it. We're going to have to leave it there for now. Alice Randall is a novelist and songwriter most recently author of My Black Country, A Journey Through Country Music's Black, Past, Present, and Future. She's got a new album of the same name that is out today. Alice, thank you so much for coming on.

Alice Randall: Thank you. I hope all of our friends in New York will help rediscover and make Nashville truly a Wild Woman town right now.

Brigid Bergin: Me too. The Brian Lehrer Show's producers are Lisa Allison, Mary Croke, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Our intern is [unintelligible 00:18:52]. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen takes care of the podcast. Megan Ryan is the head of Live Radio. Juliana Fonda and Milton Ruiz are at the Studio Controls. I'm Brigid Bergin. This is the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Have a great weekend everybody. Thanks for listening.

[MUSIC]

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.