Speaker 1: Wake that ass up in the morning.
Speaker 2: Breakfast Club more than everybody. It is DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious,
Speaker 2: Charlamagne the guy. We are the Breakfast Club. We got
Speaker 2: a special guest.
Speaker 1: In the building. Yes, indeed, the author.
Speaker 2: Of My Black Country, A Journey through Country Music's Black Past,
Speaker 2: President in Future, Ladies and gentlemen, Alice Randall, Welcome, good morning.
Speaker 3: I am so glad to be on the Breakfast Club.
Speaker 3: It's like being on America's front porch. O.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to.
Speaker 4: Start using that one A use that as imaging tale
Speaker 4: America's front porch. Alice Man, you have such a storied history.
Speaker 1: You are the first.
Speaker 4: Black woman to ever write a number one country song.
Speaker 4: Ero Tricia Yearwoo was XX sex oh or those X?
Speaker 1: Isn't it X? And ose way back in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: but you know it ain't that far way back.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Was born. I was two, but I was born.
Speaker 3: But you know, Jess, I have been forty one years
Speaker 3: in country and Western music. I came to the Black
Speaker 3: Woman to Nashville in nineteen eighty three, so this is
Speaker 3: my forty first year and it's wild. I had songs recorded.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you shout out to that one that was
Speaker 3: two weeks at number one, and it put Miss Aretha
Speaker 3: Franklin's name in it.
Speaker 1: A country song.
Speaker 3: Got to two weeks Aretha Franklin and Patsy Khine and
Speaker 3: we put Aretha first back then, and it was all
Speaker 3: about the money. It's hard to keep the balance up
Speaker 3: between love and money. I'm going to tell you about
Speaker 3: that in a second. But I wrote my first song
Speaker 3: was recorded two years after I arrived in Nashville, so
Speaker 3: that was nineteen eighty five, and that was the B
Speaker 3: side of the number one. So I had songs recording
Speaker 3: the eighties, nineties, odds, tens, and twenties, and sure you
Speaker 3: one of the first people to ever recognize that.
Speaker 4: Wow, I love that.
Speaker 2: Well, let's go from the beginning because you're from Detroit,
Speaker 2: Michigan Motowntown. So how did you get into country music?
Speaker 2: Tell us how you got into the music at all.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I was born in Detroit in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty nine, the same year as Motown Records, and that
Speaker 3: was essential to how I did this black country, motown
Speaker 3: and music city thing.
Speaker 1: My father was.
Speaker 3: Was a strong supporter of Malcolm X. He was a
Speaker 3: very black centered, black man who told me the banjo
Speaker 3: was an African instrument. He pointed out he was also
Speaker 3: a dad, mom girl dad waiting for people were that
Speaker 3: he was, so he told me, and the Records was
Speaker 3: founded a year before Motown Records. He loved Anna Gordy
Speaker 3: and he would always put her up as an example
Speaker 3: in front of me as a music publisher, as a writer,
Speaker 3: as a woman business person. And he's also the person
Speaker 3: that told me traditional was probably a colored girl. So
Speaker 3: I was born in a music city and my family
Speaker 3: knew a lot of people in the music industry, though
Speaker 3: they were not in that. My father ran and owned
Speaker 3: dry cleaners and laundries. But I was just thinking my
Speaker 3: first trip to New York, my first trip on a
Speaker 3: plane was to New York City with my family to
Speaker 3: see the.
Speaker 1: Beames open at the Copa Cabana.
Speaker 3: It was a weekend that the Beatles played Chase Stadium,
Speaker 3: but my family didn't care anything about that. We cared
Speaker 3: about the Supremes. We're playing at the Copa Cabana. I
Speaker 3: was ringside. I've got a picture of it, and they
Speaker 3: sang Queen of the House. They sang a country song.
Speaker 3: And the next night they took me to see Sammy
Speaker 3: Davis on Broadway. I didn't care, didn't I love Lola
Speaker 3: f Atlana dancing half naked, and she would eventually be
Speaker 3: in that wonderful black spaghetti Western Lola cult. So I
Speaker 3: started off being around music and my father telling me
Speaker 3: that there was Lil Hardin who wrote a big number
Speaker 3: one for Ray Charles right around that time that she
Speaker 3: was playing on that huge hillbilly hit. He didn't use
Speaker 3: the word hillbilly, actually use a different word.
Speaker 4: I won't use it.
Speaker 3: No, the probably pekawi, and I don't use I think
Speaker 3: that's not proper language.
Speaker 1: I don't actually say words like that.
Speaker 3: But he was about the truth that black genus was
Speaker 3: hidden in country, and I just think an interesting thing
Speaker 3: about what we know what we don't know is, of
Speaker 3: course you know, Blue Yodel number nine is an amazing song.
Speaker 3: This is by Johnny Cash has said it was probably
Speaker 3: the most iconic country song of all time. Three people
Speaker 3: played on that. Two of them were black geniuses. One
Speaker 3: was Louis Armstrong, we all.
Speaker 1: Know his name.
Speaker 3: The other was Lil Hardin Armstrong black woman born in Memphis,
Speaker 3: good friend ALBERTA.
Speaker 1: Hunter, and the third was Jimmy Rogers.
Speaker 3: There are three people on it, two were black geniuses,
Speaker 3: but only one's name got on the label. But fast
Speaker 3: forward in nineteen fifty nine, when I was born and
Speaker 3: growing up, Lil Harden was still alive. Do you think
Speaker 3: she didn't tell people she played on that Billy Little
Speaker 3: Billy Reader.
Speaker 1: Of course she told. Do you think in the black
Speaker 1: music community of Detroit it wasn't known? Of course it
Speaker 1: was known? And do you know? And I talk about
Speaker 1: this in my book My Black Country.
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty three, before I drove to Nashville.
Speaker 1: Two days before I.
Speaker 3: Drove to Nashville, I got to go to the twenty
Speaker 3: fifth anniversary of the CMA Awards Association and Roy Acuff
Speaker 3: is on the stage and Roy Acuff is talking about
Speaker 3: country being.
Speaker 1: A family, and he talks about Jimmy Rogers.
Speaker 3: He even talks about some comedian Will Rogers, and he
Speaker 3: does not say Will Harden's name, And he doesn't say
Speaker 3: the name of D four Bailey, the first superstar of
Speaker 3: the opry, the man that helped Oycuff himself get started.
Speaker 3: He knew that man's name, and he didn't say it.
Speaker 3: And I knew the man's name. And now I've said
Speaker 3: it in My Black Country, and I'm thrilled that Sean
Speaker 3: has publishing my book on his imprint Atria, and we're
Speaker 3: getting that story out because the history of black people
Speaker 3: and country music on the radio goes back to nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty seven, almost one hundred years. To me, the first
Speaker 3: beat a black country tree on the radio is when
Speaker 3: D four Bailey in nineteen twenty seven played Pan American
Speaker 3: blues on a show called Barn Dance, right after somebody
Speaker 3: on WSM said for the first time the words Grand
Speaker 3: Old Opry.
Speaker 1: Then a black man played yeah.
Speaker 3: And if I can just say one thing here, that
Speaker 3: black man Deft Bailey is the father of black country,
Speaker 3: in my opinion, the father of country radio.
Speaker 1: Lil Harden is the mother, and Lil.
Speaker 3: Harden is the mama, and Ray Charles is their genius child.
Speaker 3: And I think that Charlie Pride is Defort's side child
Speaker 3: and HERB Jeffries the bronze buckaroo in all those thirties
Speaker 3: and forties black black western singing with singing cowboys.
Speaker 1: He's Lil stepchild is his first family of Black country.
Speaker 4: I love you see that you got HERB Jeffries, Charlie
Speaker 4: Pride Lil Hard in the Ford Bailey, Racharles Beautiful's amazing.
Speaker 3: And Beyonce in this moment metaphorically is Ray Charles's genius child,
Speaker 3: the daughter who may eclipse the father.
Speaker 4: Explain that why is why is Beyonce the daughter of
Speaker 4: Racheles in this case?
Speaker 3: In this case because when nineteen sixty three, when modern
Speaker 3: sounds and country and Western drops, that's Ray Charles's country album.
Speaker 1: So, first of all, Ray Charles put out an amazing country
Speaker 1: album in nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 3: I used to chatcha around the living room with my
Speaker 3: black auntie, Mary Francis, who I love more than life.
Speaker 1: Mary Francis, I would dance to Ray Charles. Ray Charles Country.
Speaker 3: He deconstructed and reconstructed country music according to his own aesthetics.
Speaker 1: Now you need to understand that Ray Charles grew up
Speaker 1: listening to the opry.
Speaker 3: His Mamo let him stay up late to hear it
Speaker 3: on Saturday nights. Because back in the forties, thirties, twenties,
Speaker 3: when my family is coming up, there was no black
Speaker 3: radio in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi.
Speaker 1: There was none.
Speaker 3: We were culturally redlined out of owning radio stations. So
Speaker 3: if you were black and you were living in the
Speaker 3: rural South, you could hear great live music in the
Speaker 3: juke joints, in the church in your home.
Speaker 1: But the only thing you were really hearing in the
Speaker 1: rural South on the radio. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: country in some classical music.
Speaker 3: So black people knew country. And just remember, as my
Speaker 3: daddy said, we were actually playing on it. We can
Speaker 3: now document that that there was two black geniuses on
Speaker 3: Blue Yola number nine, and that doesn't even count the
Speaker 3: people passing that were playing in these bears. But so
Speaker 3: we knew country, and we knew that we'd have been
Speaker 3: at the banjo, that a lot of the things are
Speaker 3: best in country. That it was a black person who
Speaker 3: taught Hank Williams how to play a lot of his
Speaker 3: early songs. Lefty Frizelle, that the Carter family that there
Speaker 3: were taught by Eslee Riddle. Esleie Riddle was a black
Speaker 3: man who taught the Carter family their first songs, a
Speaker 3: lot of the chords. Some people, you know, we're thinking, well,
Speaker 3: as it has been traditionally told in the white world,
Speaker 3: when they say about the first family of country, they say,
Speaker 3: Jimmy Rodgers is the Papa.
Speaker 1: Now, I just told you he was really working with
Speaker 1: Lill and Lewis.
Speaker 3: And they say that the mama is a may Bell,
Speaker 3: Carter mother may Bell, But I'm going to tell you
Speaker 3: that my mother may Bell. She had a way of
Speaker 3: playing that's called Carter Family scratch. The way she used
Speaker 3: two fingers three fingers. Well, this man, Esle Riddle, he
Speaker 3: was in a terrible accident when he was young, lost
Speaker 3: the leg. Then he almost committed suicide or maybe tried
Speaker 3: to commit suicide, and.
Speaker 1: He lost a couple of fingers.
Speaker 3: Jesus, he played with three fingers before the Carter family
Speaker 3: was playing.
Speaker 1: He's the one that taught them the first song. So
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, who really invented Carter Family scratched? We
Speaker 1: can't prove that, but is it the man who actually
Speaker 1: had that?
Speaker 3: We know that they acknowledge, and they played with him
Speaker 3: all through their history later and they have there's a
Speaker 3: story that they tell that he's called Leslie Riddle because
Speaker 3: their children could not pronounce Leslie.
Speaker 1: Well, I found him in the.
Speaker 3: US Census as Edley E. S l i E, long
Speaker 3: before he ever met the Carters. So there's questions about
Speaker 3: this because our history is not well documented.
Speaker 1: So the cowboy Carter obviously.
Speaker 3: Speaks right now for Beyonce Knowles, and I missus Carter.
Speaker 1: I don't know that she is at all signing to
Speaker 1: the original Carter family.
Speaker 3: But what I signed to is I'm not interested in
Speaker 3: that Carter family right now, because they've had a lot
Speaker 3: of attention. I'm really interested in Esleie Riddle, who's a
Speaker 3: black man who came from that same place, and his
Speaker 3: story has not been told. And that's what you get
Speaker 3: in My Black Country. D Ford's story hasn't been told.
Speaker 3: Lil Harden's story hasn't been told.
Speaker 1: You know what's.
Speaker 4: Interesting, My guy Bobby Bones, he does. He's a big,
Speaker 4: nationally syndicated, you know country morning guys, Luther Bobby Bones
Speaker 4: out in Nashville. He taught about the banjo and how
Speaker 4: you can't even talk about black country, I mean without
Speaker 4: you can't talk about country music without talking about black
Speaker 4: people's contributions to country music from the very beginning. So
Speaker 4: my question is when did it shift? When did people
Speaker 4: just make it country a white thing so to speak?
Speaker 1: Well, there's two pieces that One.
Speaker 3: I agree with your friend Bobby Bones that my definition
Speaker 3: of country music is Celtic, English, Irish, Scottish ballid form
Speaker 3: storytelling plus black influences plus evangelical Christianity. Country can't be
Speaker 3: country without black influences. Without black influences, country is just
Speaker 3: folk music.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: Some of those black influences are black gospel from la
Speaker 3: and the South. Some of the black influences are the banjo.
Speaker 3: Some of the is the way the notes are bent
Speaker 3: when they're sung. They're coming out of the blues. And
Speaker 3: the difference between and if you don't have the evangelical Christianity,
Speaker 3: you might be in a country blues because the big
Speaker 3: difference is and I said, my childhood, I had a
Speaker 3: very bad mother and I had a great daddy and
Speaker 3: a really bad mother.
Speaker 1: So I don't love the blues.
Speaker 3: The blues is too My daughter loves the blues. The
Speaker 3: blues is too hard for me. I need some hope
Speaker 3: I need with my tragedy. I need the reality, and
Speaker 3: then I need some hope. And black country has both
Speaker 3: of those things. The hope, because it could be I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna be up in heaven and tell Jesus how
Speaker 3: you've done me. It could be you're going to be
Speaker 3: in hell and some burning fires and I'm going to
Speaker 3: be that there's some hope, there's some revenge in.
Speaker 1: Country, and I like the hope.
Speaker 3: I like the revenge that Blues has a little bit
Speaker 3: of an experience of we are walking on hell on Earth,
Speaker 3: but we're finding some joy.
Speaker 1: We're making some joy in the hell on earth. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But Black country says we're gonna get somewhere else. But
Speaker 3: country isn't country, and on is the little teacher of me.
Speaker 3: I hate to say I have to do this one
Speaker 3: because I'm a professor at Vanderbilt. Whe have a course
Speaker 3: on Black country, and I've been to that course since
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen. My first course, Country lyric and American Culture,
Speaker 3: I've been teaching since two thousand and six. I used
Speaker 3: to say it was musical midsitenation, and that wasn't my phrase.
Speaker 1: I adopted that one. But here we know that.
Speaker 3: Country requires blackness to be country. And one of the
Speaker 3: examples you see on Cowboy Carter is that song Blackbird,
Speaker 3: which is a remake of a Beatle.
Speaker 1: Song without the black voices on it. It's a folks song.
Speaker 1: You add those black women's voices and they're black esthetics.
Speaker 1: It's country. What makes it country? The black gospel.
Speaker 3: You hear sound that they bring to it. I love
Speaker 3: my Randa Roberts.
Speaker 1: I'm there.
Speaker 3: My students found her for me when she was only
Speaker 3: like three weeks when she was on TikTok. I had
Speaker 3: students rush in and show her to me, and so
Speaker 3: I've been loving her. She's since sometime. Now the world
Speaker 3: is discovering her now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Rana talent Sen, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2: What did you think of Beyonce's album? Did you listen
Speaker 2: to it in full? What were your thoughts?
Speaker 1: Oh, I have listened to it many times.
Speaker 3: I actually love it in this particularly as I said,
Speaker 3: I'm sixty four.
Speaker 1: This is my birthday party on the Breakfast Club. I'll
Speaker 1: be sixty five May fourth, nine, Happy birthday.
Speaker 3: And you know when I arrived here forty one years
Speaker 3: ago in Nashville, I wanted to get as number one,
Speaker 3: and I got a number one.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I wanted to spotlight black women who have really contributed.
Speaker 3: I'm proud to say I wrote the first major article
Speaker 3: on Linda Martell. Everybody talking about her now I've published
Speaker 3: that in twenty ten.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 3: I'm in the documentary her granddaughter is making about her.
Speaker 1: I love Linda Martel.
Speaker 3: I had to fight to get that space for her
Speaker 3: back in twenty ten when people weren't talk.
Speaker 1: And I'm thrilled, So just stop there.
Speaker 3: I'm thrilled that Beyonce has brought her to a huge world.
Speaker 3: My article in a got a lot of attention, but
Speaker 3: in a narrow way.
Speaker 1: Now the whole world knows who Linda Martell is.
Speaker 3: That that documentary, her vand daughter has been struggling to
Speaker 3: get made, picking up a little bit of money here,
Speaker 3: a little bit of money there. Now that thing is
Speaker 3: going to be made and made right. So I am
Speaker 3: absolutely thrilled that Beyonce has taken country to a global audience.
Speaker 3: But there's a third thing. So I wanted to.
Speaker 1: Spot like these black people. I could do that in
Speaker 1: this book. I wanted my own number one, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to see and Jess is gonna be you and
Speaker 1: me here.
Speaker 3: I wanted to see a black woman at the top
Speaker 3: of the country charts because the day I arrived in
Speaker 3: Nashville in nineteen eighty three, Charlie probably had already been
Speaker 3: up there twenty nine times. Ray Charles was acknowledged. I
Speaker 3: saw I was in the room when he played Seven
Speaker 3: Spanish Angels in Nashville in a back small room for DJs.
Speaker 3: He got to go to the top of the charts.
Speaker 3: There are so many black men who have been to
Speaker 3: the number one spot. Now just call the name of
Speaker 3: the two most important Charlie Pride, Ray Charles, but serious Rucker.
Speaker 3: I'm not even to name anymore because there's so many
Speaker 3: and there has not been one Black woman. Black women
Speaker 3: have absolutely I have a song called small Towns are
Speaker 3: Smaller for Girls in country, and that's true. It's hard
Speaker 3: on the country radio even for all women. Small towns
Speaker 3: are cursed back here a lot smaller for black women.
Speaker 3: If small towns are smaller for girls, they're really smaller
Speaker 3: for black girls.
Speaker 1: And Music City is a small town.
Speaker 3: So I wanted to see a Black woman at the
Speaker 3: top of it because it's acknowledging that we are worth,
Speaker 3: our beauty are significance. And I thought I was going
Speaker 3: to retire without seeing it. So Cowboy Carter, for me personally,
Speaker 3: is so important because it is a Hallelujah moment, It
Speaker 3: is a Juneteenth moment. It is good news at long last.
Speaker 3: But my daughter, says Caroline Randall Williams, good news at
Speaker 3: long last is still good news.
Speaker 2: What's not what's the When you got your number one record?
Speaker 2: What did that mean to you? Because was it as
Speaker 2: big as it is now with it charts?
Speaker 1: Was it?
Speaker 2: You know? What did happen to number one record mean?
Speaker 2: Back then?
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm gonna give you want me to get it.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be real, real, real with yeah, because I
Speaker 2: don't even know it was number one was number one Rember.
Speaker 3: In some ways it was bigger because back then, let
Speaker 3: me just put it a little bit generally, let's say hypothetically,
Speaker 3: right now, back then, a number one record on the
Speaker 3: country charts for the co writer, that's a million dollars.
Speaker 3: It's bigger because it's streaming.
Speaker 1: That's not a million dollars the co writer nowadays. So
Speaker 1: back then it's a life changing you made a million dollars.
Speaker 1: Hold that record. You need to read my book because
Speaker 1: I said that about.
Speaker 2: You need to read the book.
Speaker 3: I will just say that that song earned the writers
Speaker 3: section of that song or significant. I was say, I'm
Speaker 3: made some money even just last month. That made so
Speaker 3: much money that I signed that contract I should not
Speaker 3: have signed.
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk to you much about that.
Speaker 3: Far into it, at the height of the success, and
Speaker 3: that song was so successful that it got itself out
Speaker 3: of jail that you know, when they're collateralizing everything against
Speaker 3: everything and every expense there was ever spent anywhere that
Speaker 3: that I made some money on that song just this year,
Speaker 3: and that's the song is thirty years old. So back then,
Speaker 3: another number one record changed your life? How did you
Speaker 3: and two weeks at number one really changed your life?
Speaker 2: How did you navigate through the industry? Because you hear
Speaker 2: all the time black artists never really got the money
Speaker 2: that they were old or they were supposed to get,
Speaker 2: So how did you navigate to make sure that you
Speaker 2: got what you was supposed to get?
Speaker 3: If you did, I did not successfully one hundred percent
Speaker 3: navigate through the industry. And there's so many things about that.
Speaker 3: You know, there was no chances that, so many complexities.
Speaker 3: You don't have the lawyers, the managers, or anyone who
Speaker 3: looks like you or understands you or is looking out
Speaker 3: for you or believing one hundred percent that you can
Speaker 3: do it again and again, I don't even think that
Speaker 3: any thing was said so, but I did successfully. My company,
Speaker 3: Midsummer Music is forty one years old and it still exists,
Speaker 3: and it has published some important people, Mark Sanders, a
Speaker 3: little tiny bit of Garth Books.
Speaker 1: Who's that are right?
Speaker 3: So two writers who are in the Nashville Songwriters Association.
Speaker 3: So number one is I came from Detroit City. So
Speaker 3: I set up my home publishing company. I got investors
Speaker 3: from outside of Nashville, an investor from outside of Nashville
Speaker 3: that believed in me and believed in my autonomy and
Speaker 3: supported me in that part and let me run the company.
Speaker 1: And they were fair to me. Garth Books was really
Speaker 1: fair to me.
Speaker 3: I over the years that I found some allies were
Speaker 3: really fair to me, and I had a vision, like,
Speaker 3: for example, the songs that I published and we did
Speaker 3: and are on my new album, My Black Country.
Speaker 1: He has an album too.
Speaker 3: We were had the first big country song about the homelessness,
Speaker 3: the first big, the first significant country song that I
Speaker 3: know of about lynching.
Speaker 1: That song was called the Ballad of Sally Anne.
Speaker 3: I'm very thrilled that Rihannan Giddons, who's on Cowboy Carter,
Speaker 3: she sings it on my new album now. And this
Speaker 3: is a song about a woman whose husband is lynch
Speaker 3: between his wedding and reception. It's a song that demands
Speaker 3: reckoning it, demands acknowledging that lynching happened. Ebany Smith, brilliant
Speaker 3: black woman out of Memphis, is the producer. She put
Speaker 3: horns on that song. People say, why are there horns
Speaker 3: on this song? To remind people that the first, the
Speaker 3: last significant lynching we know of, happened in nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 3: It didn't happen in the nineteenth century or the nineteen tenths.
Speaker 3: And mctill was lynched after he was drug that people
Speaker 3: want to think that lynching something happened a long time ago.
Speaker 1: Lynching's happened in the forties. Lynching happened in fifty five.
Speaker 3: So that ballad of Sally ann that Rihannan has re
Speaker 3: recorded produced by Ebany Smith. This whole group, eleven different artists,
Speaker 3: all black women, rode to the rescue of my legacy
Speaker 3: when they came to make this album. So I made
Speaker 3: money because I was a publisher, because I was acting
Speaker 3: like Anna Gordy, because I didn't I didn't and I
Speaker 3: recognize talent, and I worked with a lot of women
Speaker 3: to have this vision at the very top of the success.
Speaker 3: When you get the big success puts a target on
Speaker 3: your back and so even if you behind the scenes
Speaker 3: kind of yeah, because there's so much money in the room.
Speaker 1: Got back then, there was so much money in the room.
Speaker 3: And as I said, I thought myself, only I take
Speaker 3: responsibility because I was going out to lunch and we
Speaker 3: were supposed to be celebrating that record. And they said
Speaker 3: and something read it in the book like this. All
Speaker 3: it does is changed how long you're going to be
Speaker 3: with us, the same exact terms seventy.
Speaker 1: Decided to my Laurie. I know you don't. It's just
Speaker 1: the same thing.
Speaker 3: Just we need I need to show people that you're
Speaker 3: not going to just get the big head and go
Speaker 3: somewhere else because you're having the success. And I signed
Speaker 3: something without reading it without the lawyer thinking I swam
Speaker 3: in this lady's pool that confusing a business associate with
Speaker 3: a friend.
Speaker 1: I've never made that mistake again.
Speaker 3: Oh at the time, because you remember, mm it was
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety four, I was old enough to know better,
Speaker 3: old enough to know better, and I did something that
Speaker 3: no one that hardly anyone could believe I'd die I
Speaker 3: read I signed something that.
Speaker 1: Signed without reading it, So totally my fault wasn't I
Speaker 1: knew better and I did it.
Speaker 4: It's also illegal though if the lawyer said to you,
Speaker 4: have you said to the person, hey, I need to
Speaker 4: see my lawyers, Like no, no, no, you don't like
Speaker 4: they're not supposed to see that.
Speaker 1: Who knows it was in a room and no one's
Speaker 1: gonna All I can say is it all worked out
Speaker 1: on the end.
Speaker 3: Of my story now is there's an album that I
Speaker 3: adore and you know, if you are for me, I
Speaker 3: love that some of the interesting things you've just said
Speaker 3: recently about if you are me. When I was started
Speaker 3: off how David asked me, what will you do if
Speaker 3: someone steals the song from you? And I thought form
Speaker 3: him and I said, write another song. He said, that's
Speaker 3: the answer.
Speaker 1: Go down in Nashville because people will.
Speaker 3: And you know what, I'm not glad that that thing
Speaker 3: happened to me, but that thing happened to me. Now
Speaker 3: I had the audacity I refuse to write for them
Speaker 3: after that, like, you can have all the but you're
Speaker 3: not getting another song.
Speaker 1: So you can just see that.
Speaker 3: After two weeks and number one, I stopped writing country
Speaker 3: songs and that thing, and I wrote a book that
Speaker 3: was in the top ten. You know, when done Gone
Speaker 3: the Black retelling of Gone with the Whim from a
Speaker 3: black perspective that I doubled down on, a new audacity,
Speaker 3: on a new autonomy. If you're not gonna play fair
Speaker 3: with me, I'll go play somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sure, and so and that was a huge, huge success,
Speaker 3: And I now have five novels and the New York Times.
Speaker 4: Bestseller, it's about to be another.
Speaker 3: One critically acclaimed, and we've got My Black Country. So
Speaker 3: it all worked out for me because if you do
Speaker 3: the work and you get the wisdom.
Speaker 1: Now I learned from that lesson.
Speaker 3: If you do the work and you get the wisdom
Speaker 3: and you get the right people around you, then it
Speaker 3: does work out. But you lose some battles, but you
Speaker 3: go back you I was. I learned that in Detroit,
Speaker 3: survived a plague to fight another day.
Speaker 4: Can we talk about divine alignment? Because you started My
Speaker 4: Black Country a while ago. So when you're writing the
Speaker 4: book and you know, you know your book is about
Speaker 4: to be published, you get the date it's you know, April,
Speaker 4: But then all of a sudden you started to hear
Speaker 4: these Beyonce Texas hold them and Beyonce maybe doing a
Speaker 4: country album, Like, what did that feel.
Speaker 3: Like it felt that what you just said divine alignment,
Speaker 3: because this project I started forty one years ago, and
Speaker 3: really this part of it started in Deep five years ago,
Speaker 3: is a pure project for me. This is my life work,
Speaker 3: the history of Black people and country, putting it back
Speaker 3: into the seventeenth century. And it was just and it's
Speaker 3: just a wild alignment because it has created a global conversation,
Speaker 3: a global conversation I spent forty one years preparing for,
Speaker 3: but actually started even earlier than that at Harvard in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy seven, when I'm starting to look studying the
Speaker 3: Harlem Renaissance with Nathan Huggins and starting to try to
Speaker 3: prove my father's Black Detroit Gossip was true, chasing that
Speaker 3: down because back then there was no scholarship that told
Speaker 3: us that the banjo was a black instrument. Back then,
Speaker 3: there was no scholarship that said Lil Harden was really
Speaker 3: on that record.
Speaker 1: But I have traced down these oral histories that.
Speaker 3: Other scholars have, and now we know that Lil Harden
Speaker 3: was absolutely on that record.
Speaker 1: Black Gossip of Motown was correct.
Speaker 3: So the alignment, though instead of this being some small book,
Speaker 3: although it wouldn't be if you're on the breakfast club.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say I'm from I'm up here in New
Speaker 3: York from Nashville.
Speaker 1: I want all the.
Speaker 3: Folks up in up in Detroit, all down South. I
Speaker 3: want you out there getting my black country. I want
Speaker 3: to be lifted up by black readers. Yeah, that is
Speaker 3: I have always with all of my books, starting with
Speaker 3: The Wind Done Gone, I have loved. One of my
Speaker 3: readers told me is the literary equivalent of prissy slapping
Speaker 3: scarlet back.
Speaker 1: I had more than one reader.
Speaker 3: I happened to stop and tell this story. It was
Speaker 3: one of the most meaningful stories on Wind Done Gone tour.
Speaker 3: I was in North Carolina, a black woman library, and
Speaker 3: hit bought all these books for the State Library of
Speaker 3: North Carolina mine. But we were coming home after big
Speaker 3: reading and I'm thinking back to my hotel.
Speaker 1: This is not the way we went, Like, I don't.
Speaker 3: Know where we are going, and it's late at night,
Speaker 3: we've got dinner reading. And she drove me and we
Speaker 3: sat outside the house. She pulled up in front of
Speaker 3: house in a fancy neighbor and she said, my mother
Speaker 3: worked as a maid in this house almost all my life.
Speaker 3: They made her come in the back door. They made
Speaker 3: me come in the back door. They loved gone with
Speaker 3: the wind. And I cannot tell you what it means
Speaker 3: to me that you wrote this book attacking everything that
Speaker 3: that valued that.
Speaker 1: And the way they treated her. I waited this long,
Speaker 1: she said, I felt, she said, joy, but the number.
Speaker 3: But more than that, I had women who were ongoingly
Speaker 3: working as domestic servants telling me this book meant so
Speaker 3: much to them. And when I read the book.
Speaker 1: That one out loud. And I read this one because
Speaker 1: I'm not an actress. I'm not a performer. I don't
Speaker 1: have great voices like all three you.
Speaker 3: I read this one because I've always my grandparents couldn't
Speaker 3: read or write. My grandmother could read a tiny bit.
Speaker 3: My grandfather couldn't read or write even his own name.
Speaker 3: I dore my grandparents. They were brilliant people and storytellers,
Speaker 3: just never had a day of school in Alabama. I
Speaker 3: read my books and make sure there's audio books because
Speaker 3: I know a lot of brilliant people can't read or write, and.
Speaker 1: I want them.
Speaker 3: I'm working as much for them as the people who.
Speaker 1: Have all these degrees and whatever. That's amazing.
Speaker 3: Look chapter six in your book, Big Dreams, big, big
Speaker 3: mistakes without spoiling it, you know, because I know it's
Speaker 3: a lot of information in this book. You keep saying
Speaker 3: to read his book. No, we're won't read it, but
Speaker 3: I just can you tease a little bit?
Speaker 1: What like mistakes? Was a big mistake?
Speaker 3: Was that sign sign reading it because I swam in
Speaker 3: the ladies pool. They won't invite me to your house.
Speaker 3: I swam see I swam in your pool and all that.
Speaker 3: That was a big it was, and the big dreams,
Speaker 3: that part of it was the first. It's one of
Speaker 3: the first big things I did was a song called
Speaker 3: Big Dream that I co wrote with my daughter when
Speaker 3: she was just little, and it got into this movie
Speaker 3: called The Thing called Love. It was River Phoenix's last
Speaker 3: big movie, and it was it was a song this
Speaker 3: girl is trying to make it in the Blueberg Cafe,
Speaker 3: trying to make it now. Of course they have a
Speaker 3: white girl playing it, Samantha Mott, But that was really
Speaker 3: my story, and I got to write all the songs
Speaker 3: for that main character. And that song, Big Dream, is
Speaker 3: the one she sings at the end of the movie.
Speaker 3: And what's wild about that is all the big white
Speaker 3: male songwriters were trying to get that job. Everybody was
Speaker 3: after it and I got it. So that was the
Speaker 3: first time I competed with these people for something they
Speaker 3: really wanted and I beat them out, and you know,
Speaker 3: and that was a big movie, Paramount Pictures and River.
Speaker 1: And then that song.
Speaker 3: Has been recorded now by Valerie June now.
Speaker 1: Which I'm so excited on the new version of it.
Speaker 1: So big dream was that song that I started writing.
Speaker 3: It was a song daughter and I started writing together
Speaker 3: that I wrote it with Ralph Murphy.
Speaker 1: But the and that got me to Hollywood, y'all.
Speaker 3: Know that when you I got to meet mister Quincy
Speaker 3: Jones and work with him. He got me my first
Speaker 3: contract to write a black Western that never got made
Speaker 3: but paid me some money.
Speaker 1: So that was really very exciting.
Speaker 3: And the big mistake was and then I had to
Speaker 3: pivot away from the big mistake. The big mistake was
Speaker 3: I literally signed that thing that I should never have signed.
Speaker 1: Got told you big dreams, and you signed a contract
Speaker 1: what I read. But the other good thing was that
Speaker 1: I got to write novels.
Speaker 3: I might have just been a country songwriter, and now
Speaker 3: I get to be a country songwriter and a novelist
Speaker 3: and a memoirrist and I love my six books.
Speaker 1: That's right, that one about a black spy family. It's
Speaker 1: all hold on now for you, yes, okay.
Speaker 3: And it's from it if you ever get involved in
Speaker 3: me and that kind of movie production. I got a
Speaker 3: great one, Rebel Yell about a black spy family.
Speaker 1: I've got some really cool books, all of them.
Speaker 4: Girl, Yeah, and turning the movies.
Speaker 1: You're gonna talk about that.
Speaker 4: This is found on Quincy Jones a little bit, because
Speaker 4: in the book you talk about Quincy Jones and the
Speaker 4: cosmic colored cowboy.
Speaker 3: Yes, that was gonna be Danny Glover. That was amazing.
Speaker 3: You know, I got snuck into Quincy's house. I was
Speaker 3: literally I got what you mean.
Speaker 1: How you just snuck up in there? Waven you went
Speaker 1: to the side the window of the bed. Well, it
Speaker 1: was a while. It was wild. Think these are things
Speaker 1: you only do when you're really young.
Speaker 3: And I do not advise anyone to do this. I'm
Speaker 3: sure it would be very incorrect to.
Speaker 1: Do this now.
Speaker 3: But I knew I wanted to write this black western,
Speaker 3: and back then I didn't think nobody was doing anything.
Speaker 3: This is way before Jango or anything that was happening,
Speaker 3: anything like this, and so I realized the only person
Speaker 3: to get this was Quincy Jones. I asked everybody I
Speaker 3: knew if they could get me a meeting with Quincy Jones.
Speaker 3: So a person I knew who was actually dating she,
Speaker 3: they said they could get me into Quincy Jones's give
Speaker 3: me a meeting with him. And so I flew out
Speaker 3: at my own expense till and she picks me up
Speaker 3: at the airport and we're on the way. She said
Speaker 3: something that the big problem and I said, well, I
Speaker 3: thought we figured out the big problem. He said, no,
Speaker 3: the big problem is you don't really have an appointment
Speaker 3: with Quincy Jones. That I said, we're not going. She said,
Speaker 3: I can get you into the house, but you don't
Speaker 3: actually have an appointment.
Speaker 1: I still don't know. I said, do you mean, like
Speaker 1: you know the guard. She didn't answer the question. I
Speaker 1: have no idea. I feel like that's about as far
Speaker 1: as we probably.
Speaker 4: Had, right.
Speaker 1: So I get let into Quincy Jones's house in bel Air.
Speaker 3: It's a very lovely home, and they sent me in
Speaker 3: this room that looks sort of like a library, and
Speaker 3: he walks.
Speaker 1: In front of me.
Speaker 3: Literally, he's like going, it's a room between two rooms.
Speaker 3: The first time, he doesn't say anything. I don't say anything.
Speaker 3: I'm sitting there with literally Banjo's clipped to my ear,
Speaker 3: this little black denim scarred and white shirt and some
Speaker 3: black pennylovers that Danny Glover.
Speaker 1: Used to make fun of that. He said, Alice, why are.
Speaker 3: You wearing that? These pennylovers? Anyway, he stops and says.
Speaker 1: Either who are you? Who? I mean, what are you
Speaker 1: here for?
Speaker 3: I said, I'm Alice Fianda from Detroit City and Nashville, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: I want to make a movie about black cowboy.
Speaker 3: I think his wife has got kidnapped and Rake gang repped,
Speaker 3: and everybody else does want the wipe back, but he
Speaker 3: loves his wife and wants her back, and he likes security.
Speaker 3: Sat down beside me and he said, start that again,
Speaker 3: and I will tell you I toned it slower, and
Speaker 3: two things happen. He said, right then and there, I'm
Speaker 3: going to take you to the movie studios and we're
Speaker 3: gonna make that movie. He said right in that first time,
Speaker 3: he said, but you got to come back in two
Speaker 3: or three weeks, because he said, right now, I'm going
Speaker 3: to lay down a velvet carpet for my pearl and
Speaker 3: he was talking about Miles Davis. He was about to
Speaker 3: go do something with Miles and Davis. I wasn't even
Speaker 3: sure what exactly he said, and so you need to
Speaker 3: come back in three weeks, two or three. And I
Speaker 3: came back and he took me to two studios and
Speaker 3: the second studio bought that movie nice.
Speaker 1: And they didn't make it.
Speaker 3: I co wrote it with someone else, but they but
Speaker 3: they paid me well. And it was this cosmic colored cowboy.
Speaker 3: It was just way too ahead of its time, but
Speaker 3: it was. And I loved working with Quincy Jones. We
Speaker 3: had some great projects together and he's just such a
Speaker 3: brilliant creative. But one of the things he taught me
Speaker 3: that I feel really inspired the second half of my
Speaker 3: career and the reci Palmer Rihanna Giddens, he taught me
Speaker 3: what I did for Linda Martell.
Speaker 1: I hope I think reci and Rihanna would say this.
Speaker 1: I there my prols and in my courses.
Speaker 3: Why I teach Black Country is so I can lay
Speaker 3: down a velvet carpet for my pearls, my black pearls,
Speaker 3: so that people can understand the significance of Reina Roberts
Speaker 3: that for example, that she's subversive because she has all
Speaker 3: these she does things that people consider to be sins,
Speaker 3: and she is black woman inhabiting that, and she is
Speaker 3: it's fine that black women don't have to be perfect
Speaker 3: in country to be worthy, and that what other people
Speaker 3: consider to be wrong.
Speaker 1: Is it necessarily? Does that make sense?
Speaker 3: And that we don't have to be sanitized and perfect
Speaker 3: to be respected because country allows some real wildness, but
Speaker 3: it doesn't necessarily allow.
Speaker 1: Black characters wildness. They seem to have to be super perfect,
Speaker 1: and that's not right.
Speaker 4: I feel like it should be like that in all genres.
Speaker 3: Though. Absolutely it needs to be that because it's like
Speaker 3: that in a whole life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I feel like when you say that, I feel
Speaker 4: like that's what you see a lot of women in
Speaker 4: hip hop reclaiming in the last few years.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And you know, one of my favorite poets is
Speaker 3: Missy Elliott. I just have to shout down with her
Speaker 3: when I think of storytelling traditions.
Speaker 1: She and I remember seeing her in a beautiful throwne.
Speaker 3: But I think that you're absolutely right, But we have
Speaker 3: to reclaim that people are imperfect. People are raggedy, but
Speaker 3: right at their best and at least that's who I am,
Speaker 3: and we got to claim that and acclaim.
Speaker 4: That absolutely Listen, they got to go get the book man,
Speaker 4: Alicia Randall My Black Country, A Journey through Country Music,
Speaker 4: Black Past, President Future. I do have one last question.
Speaker 4: Why do you think they try to erase so much
Speaker 4: of our people's involvement, Black people's involvement in the country
Speaker 4: music world.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people find black genius threatening.
Speaker 3: I think that after that whole welcome table thing, that
Speaker 3: after we've been treating culturally red lined out of something,
Speaker 3: the guilt and shame some people have. Roy Acuff, if
Speaker 3: he were here, I'd say the guilt and shame he
Speaker 3: had of never doing right by deft Bail. When people
Speaker 3: feel really guilty and really shamed, they sometimes don't want
Speaker 3: you to where near them.
Speaker 1: And I am thrilled that we are in a new day.
Speaker 3: Beyonce has helped been It's been a big part of
Speaker 3: bringing that day because what is being noticed here and
Speaker 3: some of that's on the breakfast club out there, is
Speaker 3: the existence of a global black audience for country.
Speaker 1: We haven't even talked about that that people listen.
Speaker 3: Black people listen to country in Africa and including make
Speaker 3: their own Black country there, but black people in this
Speaker 3: country also listen to country, and a larger number are
Speaker 3: going to now and it's the black genius. There has
Speaker 3: been so much black genius hidden in country that I
Speaker 3: think it's a great time to be celebrating and centering
Speaker 3: it and to realize, as I say, if country owes
Speaker 3: a great debt to black people.
Speaker 1: What in America doesn't. And that's why because they some
Speaker 1: people don't want to recognize the debt what they owe
Speaker 1: and this country.
Speaker 3: I want to end on that saying that Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 3: when he was defining freedom, he had his British, the
Speaker 3: British documents and the French documents, but they all talked
Speaker 3: about freedom as legal and economic. And when you say life,
Speaker 3: liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you know how we
Speaker 3: get to that Sally Hemmings, that black woman in his bed,
Speaker 3: that he understood all around him, that some black people
Speaker 3: embodied freedom even when they didn't have a legal right
Speaker 3: to it, even when they didn't have economic freedom. That
Speaker 3: freedom starts in the mind and some people, and that
Speaker 3: our American understanding of freedom is country music is black,
Speaker 3: and it has some English and Celtic in it.
Speaker 1: So when we understand.
Speaker 3: What freedom means in its ideal in America that is
Speaker 3: a co creation of black people and white people, just
Speaker 3: like country music.
Speaker 2: There you have it, Alice Randall. Ladies and gentlemen, make
Speaker 2: sure you think of a book right now, My Black Country. Yes,
Speaker 2: the countries music, Black past, present and future.
Speaker 4: Yes, the latest release off my book in print, Black
Speaker 4: Permi is publishing. But also this Wednesday from seven to
Speaker 4: eight thirty, you can catch me and Alice Randall and
Speaker 4: Roseanne Cash will be at the Brooklyn Public Library from
Speaker 4: seven to eight thirty having more conversations about My Black Country.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I'm so excited. I have to see so
Speaker 1: much of the Breakfast Club out there. I came all
Speaker 1: the way up from Nashville to need some new people.
Speaker 3: I'm Charles's country cousin, Auntie Country Auntie.
Speaker 1: I need, we need you. That's right, It's the Breakfast Club.
Speaker 1: Good morning, Wake that ass up in the morning. The
Speaker 1: Breakfast Club