0:00

Wake that ass up in the morning.

0:02

Breakfast Club more than

0:04

everybody. It is DJ Envy, Jess

0:07

Hilarious, Charlamagne the guy. We are the Breakfast

0:09

Club. We got a special guest.

0:10

In the building. Yes, indeed, the author.

0:12

Of My Black Country, A Journey through Country

0:14

Music's Black Past, President in Future,

0:17

Ladies and gentlemen, Alice Randall, Welcome,

0:19

good morning.

0:20

I am so glad to be on the Breakfast Club.

0:23

It's like being on America's front porch. O.

0:26

We're gonna have to.

0:26

Start using that one A use that as imaging

0:28

tale America's front porch. Alice

0:31

Man, you have such a storied history.

0:33

You are the first.

0:35

Black woman to ever write a

0:38

number one country song. Ero Tricia

0:40

Yearwoo was XX sex oh or those

0:43

X?

0:43

Isn't it X? And ose way

0:45

back in nineteen ninety four, but you know it

0:47

ain't that far way back.

0:49

Yeah, I.

0:50

Was born. I was two, but I was born.

0:53

But you know, Jess, I

0:55

have been forty one years in country

0:58

and Western music. I came to the Black Woman to

1:00

Nashville in nineteen eighty three,

1:02

so this is my forty first year and

1:04

it's wild. I had songs recorded. I'm glad

1:06

you shout out to that one that

1:09

was two weeks at number one, and it put

1:11

Miss Aretha Franklin's name in it.

1:13

A country song.

1:14

Got to two weeks Aretha Franklin and Patsy

1:16

Khine and we put Aretha first back

1:19

then, and it was all about

1:21

the money. It's hard to keep the

1:23

balance up between love and money. I'm going to tell you about

1:25

that in a second. But I wrote my first

1:28

song was recorded two years after

1:30

I arrived in Nashville, so that was nineteen

1:33

eighty five, and that was the B side of

1:35

the number one. So I had songs recording the eighties,

1:37

nineties, odds, tens, and twenties, and sure

1:39

you one of the first people to ever recognize that.

1:41

Wow, I love that.

1:42

Well, let's go from the beginning because you're from

1:44

Detroit, Michigan Motowntown.

1:47

So how did you get into country music?

1:49

Tell us how you got into the music at all.

1:51

Well, you know, I was born in Detroit

1:53

in nineteen fifty nine, the same year as Motown

1:56

Records, and that was essential

1:58

to how I did this black country,

2:01

motown and music city thing.

2:02

My father was.

2:06

Was a strong supporter of Malcolm X.

2:08

He was a very black centered,

2:11

black man who told me the banjo

2:13

was an African instrument. He pointed

2:16

out he was also a dad, mom girl

2:19

dad waiting for people were that he

2:21

was, so he told me,

2:24

and the Records was founded a year before

2:26

Motown Records. He loved Anna Gordy and

2:28

he would always put her up as an example in

2:31

front of me as a music publisher, as a writer,

2:33

as a woman business person. And he's

2:35

also the person that told me traditional

2:38

was probably a colored girl. So

2:40

I was born in a music city and

2:43

my family knew a

2:45

lot of people in the music industry, though they were

2:48

not in that. My father ran and

2:50

owned dry cleaners and laundries. But

2:52

I was just thinking my first

2:55

trip to New York, my first trip on a plane was

2:57

to New York City with my family to

2:59

see the.

3:00

Beames open at the Copa Cabana.

3:02

It was a weekend that the Beatles played

3:04

Chase Stadium, but my family didn't care anything

3:07

about that. We cared about the Supremes.

3:09

We're playing at the Copa Cabana. I was

3:11

ringside. I've got a picture of it, and

3:14

they sang Queen of the House. They sang

3:16

a country song. And the next night they

3:18

took me to see Sammy Davis on Broadway.

3:21

I didn't care, didn't I love Lola f

3:23

Atlana dancing half naked, and

3:25

she would eventually be in that wonderful

3:27

black spaghetti Western Lola

3:30

cult. So I started off being

3:32

around music and my father telling

3:34

me that there was Lil

3:36

Hardin who wrote a big number

3:39

one for Ray Charles right around that time that

3:41

she was playing on that huge hillbilly hit. He

3:43

didn't use the word hillbilly, actually use a different word.

3:45

I won't use it.

3:47

No, the probably pekawi, and

3:52

I don't use I think that's not proper language.

3:54

I don't actually say words like that.

3:56

But he was about the truth

3:58

that black genus was hidden in country, and

4:00

I just think an interesting thing about what we

4:02

know what we don't know is, of

4:04

course you know, Blue Yodel number nine

4:07

is an amazing song. This is

4:09

by Johnny Cash has said it was probably

4:11

the most iconic country song of all time. Three

4:14

people played on that. Two of them were

4:16

black geniuses. One was

4:18

Louis Armstrong, we all.

4:19

Know his name.

4:21

The other was Lil Hardin

4:24

Armstrong black woman born in Memphis,

4:26

good friend ALBERTA.

4:27

Hunter, and the third was Jimmy

4:29

Rogers.

4:30

There are three people on it, two were black geniuses,

4:32

but only one's name got on the label.

4:35

But fast forward in nineteen fifty nine, when

4:37

I was born and growing up, Lil Harden

4:39

was still alive. Do you think she didn't

4:41

tell people she played on that Billy Little Billy Reader.

4:44

Of course she told. Do you think in the black

4:46

music community of Detroit it wasn't

4:48

known? Of course it was known? And

4:51

do you know? And I talk about this in

4:53

my book My Black Country.

4:54

In nineteen eighty three,

4:58

before I drove to Nashville.

5:00

Two days before I.

5:01

Drove to Nashville, I got

5:03

to go to the twenty fifth anniversary of

5:06

the CMA Awards

5:09

Association and Roy Acuff

5:11

is on the stage and Roy Acuff

5:14

is talking about country being.

5:15

A family, and he talks about Jimmy

5:17

Rogers.

5:18

He even talks about some comedian

5:20

Will Rogers, and he does not say

5:23

Will Harden's name, And he doesn't say the

5:25

name of D four Bailey, the

5:28

first superstar of the opry, the man

5:30

that helped Oycuff himself get

5:32

started. He knew that man's name,

5:34

and he didn't say it. And I

5:37

knew the man's name. And now I've

5:39

said it in My Black Country, and I'm thrilled that

5:42

Sean has publishing my book on

5:44

his imprint Atria, and we're getting that

5:46

story out because the history of black

5:48

people and country music on the

5:50

radio goes back to nineteen

5:52

twenty seven, almost one

5:54

hundred years. To me, the

5:57

first beat a black country

6:00

tree on the radio is

6:02

when D four Bailey in nineteen twenty

6:04

seven played Pan American

6:06

blues on a show called Barn Dance,

6:09

right after somebody on WSM

6:11

said for the first time the words

6:13

Grand Old Opry.

6:15

Then a black man played

6:18

yeah.

6:18

And if I can just say one thing here, that

6:21

black man Deft Bailey is

6:23

the father of black country, in

6:26

my opinion, the father of

6:28

country radio.

6:30

Lil Harden is the mother, and Lil.

6:32

Harden is the mama, and Ray

6:34

Charles is their genius child. And

6:38

I think that Charlie Pride

6:40

is Defort's side child and

6:43

HERB Jeffries the bronze buckaroo

6:45

in all those thirties and forties black

6:47

black western singing with singing

6:50

cowboys.

6:50

He's Lil stepchild is his

6:53

first family of Black country.

6:55

I love you see that you got HERB

6:57

Jeffries, Charlie Pride Lil Hard

7:00

in the Ford Bailey, Racharles Beautiful's

7:02

amazing.

7:03

And Beyonce in this moment

7:06

metaphorically is Ray Charles's

7:08

genius child, the daughter who may eclipse

7:10

the father.

7:11

Explain that why is why is Beyonce

7:13

the daughter of Racheles in this case?

7:15

In this case because when nineteen

7:17

sixty three, when modern

7:20

sounds and country and Western drops, that's Ray

7:22

Charles's country album.

7:23

So, first of all, Ray Charles put out an amazing country

7:26

album in nineteen sixty three.

7:28

I used to chatcha around the living room with my

7:30

black auntie, Mary Francis, who I love more

7:32

than life.

7:33

Mary Francis, I would dance to Ray Charles. Ray

7:36

Charles Country.

7:37

He deconstructed and

7:40

reconstructed country

7:42

music according to his own aesthetics.

7:44

Now you need to understand that Ray Charles grew

7:47

up listening to the opry.

7:49

His Mamo let him stay up late to hear it

7:51

on Saturday nights. Because back in

7:53

the forties, thirties, twenties, when my

7:55

family is coming up, there was no black

7:58

radio in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi.

8:01

There was none.

8:02

We were culturally redlined out of owning radio

8:04

stations. So if you were

8:06

black and you were living in the rural South, you could hear

8:09

great live music in the juke joints,

8:11

in the church in your home.

8:13

But the only thing you were really hearing in the

8:15

rural South on the radio. There

8:17

was a lot of country in some classical music.

8:20

So black people knew country. And just

8:22

remember, as my daddy said, we were

8:24

actually playing on it. We can now document

8:26

that that there was two black geniuses on

8:28

Blue Yola number nine, and that doesn't even count

8:30

the people passing that

8:32

were playing in these bears. But

8:35

so we knew country, and we knew

8:37

that we'd have been at the banjo, that a lot of

8:39

the things are best in country. That it

8:42

was a black person who taught Hank Williams how

8:44

to play a lot of his early songs. Lefty

8:46

Frizelle, that the Carter family

8:49

that there were taught by Eslee Riddle.

8:52

Esleie Riddle was a black man who

8:54

taught the Carter family their first songs, a lot

8:56

of the chords. Some people, you

8:59

know, we're thinking, well,

9:03

as it has been traditionally told in

9:06

the white world, when they say about the first

9:08

family of country, they say, Jimmy Rodgers

9:10

is the Papa.

9:11

Now, I just told you he was really working with

9:13

Lill and Lewis.

9:15

And they say that the mama is a

9:18

may Bell, Carter mother may Bell, But

9:20

I'm going to tell you that my mother may Bell.

9:23

She had a way of playing that's called Carter Family

9:25

scratch. The way she used two

9:28

fingers three fingers. Well,

9:30

this man, Esle Riddle, he was

9:32

in a terrible accident when he was young, lost

9:34

the leg. Then he almost committed suicide or maybe

9:36

tried to commit suicide, and.

9:37

He lost a couple of fingers.

9:39

Jesus, he played with three

9:41

fingers before the Carter family was playing.

9:43

He's the one that taught them the first song. So I'm

9:46

just saying, who really invented Carter Family

9:48

scratched? We can't prove that, but is it the

9:50

man who actually had that?

9:52

We know that they acknowledge, and

9:54

they played with him all through

9:56

their history later and they

9:58

have there's a story that they tell that

10:01

he's called Leslie Riddle because their children

10:03

could not pronounce Leslie.

10:04

Well, I found him in the.

10:05

US Census as Edley E.

10:07

S l i E, long before he ever met

10:10

the Carters. So there's questions about

10:12

this because our history is not well documented.

10:14

So the cowboy

10:16

Carter obviously.

10:18

Speaks right now for Beyonce Knowles,

10:20

and I missus Carter.

10:23

I don't know that she is at all signing

10:26

to the original Carter family.

10:29

But what I signed to is I'm

10:31

not interested in that Carter family right now, because

10:33

they've had a lot of attention. I'm really interested

10:35

in Esleie Riddle, who's a black man who came

10:37

from that same place, and his story

10:40

has not been told. And that's

10:42

what you get in My Black Country. D Ford's

10:44

story hasn't been told. Lil Harden's

10:46

story hasn't been told.

10:50

You know what's.

10:50

Interesting, My guy

10:52

Bobby Bones, he does. He's a big, nationally syndicated,

10:55

you know country morning guys, Luther Bobby Bones out

10:57

in Nashville. He taught

11:00

about the banjo and how you can't even

11:02

talk about black country, I

11:04

mean without you can't talk about country music without

11:06

talking about black people's contributions to

11:08

country music from the very beginning. So my question is

11:11

when did it shift? When did people

11:13

just make it country a white thing so

11:15

to speak?

11:17

Well, there's two pieces that One.

11:19

I agree with your friend Bobby Bones that

11:21

my definition of country music is

11:25

Celtic, English, Irish, Scottish ballid

11:28

form storytelling plus

11:30

black influences plus

11:32

evangelical Christianity. Country

11:35

can't be country without black influences.

11:37

Without black influences, country

11:40

is just folk music.

11:41

Now.

11:42

Some of those black influences are black gospel

11:44

from la and the South. Some of the black

11:46

influences are the banjo. Some of the

11:49

is the way the

11:51

notes are bent when they're sung. They're coming out of

11:53

the blues. And the

11:55

difference between and if you don't

11:57

have the evangelical Christianity, you might be in

11:59

a country blues because the big difference is

12:02

and I said, my childhood, I had a very

12:05

bad mother and I had a

12:07

great daddy and a really bad mother.

12:09

So I don't love the blues.

12:10

The blues is too My daughter loves the blues.

12:12

The blues is too hard for me. I need some hope

12:15

I need with my tragedy. I need the reality,

12:18

and then I need some hope. And

12:21

black country has both of those things.

12:23

The hope, because it could be I'm just gonna be

12:26

up in heaven and tell Jesus how you've done me. It

12:28

could be you're going to be in hell and some burning fires

12:31

and I'm going to be that there's some hope,

12:33

there's some revenge in.

12:34

Country, and I like the hope.

12:36

I like the revenge that Blues

12:39

has a little bit of an experience of we are

12:41

walking on hell on Earth, but we're finding some

12:44

joy.

12:44

We're making some joy in the hell on earth. Yeah.

12:48

But Black country says we're gonna get somewhere

12:50

else. But country isn't country,

12:52

and on is the little teacher

12:54

of me. I hate to say I have to do this one because

12:56

I'm a professor at Vanderbilt. Whe have a course on Black

12:59

country, and I've been to that course since twenty

13:01

fifteen. My first course,

13:04

Country lyric and American Culture, I've been teaching

13:06

since two thousand and six. I used to

13:08

say it was musical midsitenation,

13:10

and that wasn't my phrase.

13:11

I adopted that one. But here

13:14

we know that.

13:17

Country requires blackness

13:19

to be country. And one of the examples

13:22

you see on Cowboy Carter is

13:24

that song Blackbird, which is

13:26

a remake of a Beatle.

13:29

Song without the black

13:31

voices on it. It's a folks song. You

13:33

add those black women's voices and

13:35

they're black esthetics. It's country.

13:38

What makes it country? The black

13:40

gospel.

13:40

You hear sound that they bring to it. I

13:42

love my Randa Roberts.

13:44

I'm there.

13:44

My students found her for me when she was

13:46

only like three weeks when she was on TikTok.

13:49

I had students rush in and show

13:51

her to me, and so I've been

13:53

loving her. She's since sometime.

13:57

Now the world is discovering her now.

13:59

Yeah, Rana talent Sen, Yeah,

14:01

absolutely.

14:02

What did you think of Beyonce's album? Did you listen to it in full? What

14:04

were your thoughts?

14:06

Oh, I have listened to it many times.

14:09

I actually love it in

14:11

this particularly as I said, I'm sixty

14:13

four.

14:14

This is my birthday party on the Breakfast Club.

14:16

I'll be sixty five May fourth,

14:19

nine, Happy birthday.

14:20

And you know when I arrived here forty one years

14:22

ago in Nashville, I wanted

14:24

to get as number one, and I got a number one.

14:26

Yeah.

14:28

I wanted to spotlight black women

14:30

who have really contributed. I'm

14:33

proud to say I wrote

14:35

the first major article on Linda

14:37

Martell. Everybody talking about her now I've published

14:39

that in twenty ten.

14:40

Amazing.

14:41

I'm in the documentary her granddaughter is

14:43

making about her.

14:44

I love Linda Martel.

14:46

I had to fight to get that space for her back

14:49

in twenty ten when people weren't talk.

14:50

And I'm thrilled, So just stop there.

14:54

I'm thrilled that Beyonce has brought her

14:56

to a huge world. My article

14:59

in a got a lot of attention, but

15:01

in a narrow way.

15:02

Now the whole world knows who Linda Martell

15:04

is.

15:05

That that documentary, her vand daughter has

15:07

been struggling to get made, picking

15:10

up a little bit of money here, a little bit of money there. Now

15:12

that thing is going to be made and made right. So

15:14

I am absolutely thrilled that Beyonce has taken

15:17

country to a global audience. But there's a third

15:19

thing. So I wanted to.

15:20

Spot like these black people. I could do that in this

15:22

book. I wanted my own number one,

15:25

but I wanted to see and

15:28

Jess is gonna be you and me here.

15:31

I wanted to see a black woman at

15:33

the top of the country charts because the

15:35

day I arrived in Nashville in nineteen eighty

15:38

three, Charlie

15:40

probably had already been up there twenty nine

15:42

times. Ray Charles

15:44

was acknowledged. I saw

15:47

I was in the room when he played Seven Spanish

15:49

Angels in Nashville in a back small room for

15:52

DJs. He got to go to the top of

15:54

the charts. There are so many black men who

15:56

have been to the number one spot. Now just

15:58

call the name of the two most important Charlie

16:01

Pride, Ray Charles, but

16:05

serious Rucker. I'm not even to name

16:07

anymore because there's so many and

16:09

there has not been one Black woman. Black

16:11

women have absolutely I have

16:13

a song called small Towns are Smaller for Girls

16:16

in country, and that's true. It's

16:18

hard on the country radio even for all women.

16:22

Small towns are cursed

16:24

back here a lot smaller

16:26

for black women. If small towns

16:29

are smaller for girls, they're really smaller for black

16:31

girls.

16:31

And Music City is a small town.

16:34

So I wanted to see

16:36

a Black woman at the top of it because

16:38

it's acknowledging that we are

16:40

worth, our beauty are significance.

16:43

And I thought I was going to retire without seeing it.

16:45

So Cowboy Carter, for me personally,

16:49

is so important because it is a Hallelujah

16:51

moment, It is a Juneteenth

16:53

moment. It is good news at long

16:56

last. But my daughter, says

16:58

Caroline Randall Williams, good news

17:00

at long last is still good news.

17:02

What's not what's the When

17:04

you got your number one record? What

17:07

did that mean to you? Because was it as big as it is

17:09

now with it charts?

17:10

Was it?

17:11

You know? What did happen to number one record mean?

17:13

Back then?

17:15

Oh, I'm gonna give you want me to get it.

17:16

I'm gonna be real, real, real with

17:18

yeah, because I don't even know it was number one was number

17:20

one Rember.

17:22

In some ways it was bigger because back then, let me

17:25

just put it a little bit generally, let's say

17:27

hypothetically, right now, back

17:29

then, a number one record on the country charts

17:31

for the co writer, that's a million dollars.

17:34

It's bigger because it's streaming.

17:35

That's not a million dollars the co writer nowadays.

17:38

So back then it's a life changing you made

17:40

a million dollars. Hold that record. You need to read my

17:42

book because I said that about.

17:45

You need to read the book.

17:47

I will just say that that song earned

17:49

the writers section of that song or

17:52

significant. I was say, I'm made some money even

17:54

just last month. That made so much money that I signed

17:57

that contract I should not have signed.

17:58

I don't want to talk to you much about that.

18:00

Far into it, at the height of the success,

18:04

and that song was so successful

18:06

that it got itself out of jail that you know, when

18:08

they're collateralizing everything against everything

18:11

and every expense there was ever spent anywhere

18:13

that that I made some money on that song just this

18:16

year, and that's the song

18:18

is thirty years old. So back then, another

18:20

number one record changed your

18:22

life? How did you and two weeks at number

18:25

one really changed your life?

18:26

How did you navigate through the industry? Because you

18:28

hear all the time black artists never really

18:31

got the money that they were old or they were

18:33

supposed to get, So how did you navigate

18:35

to make sure that you got what you was supposed to get?

18:37

If you did, I did not

18:39

successfully one hundred percent navigate

18:41

through the industry. And there's

18:43

so many things about that. You know, there was

18:45

no chances that, so many

18:48

complexities. You don't have the lawyers, the managers,

18:50

or anyone who looks like you or understands you

18:52

or is looking out for you or believing

18:55

one hundred percent that you can do it again and

18:57

again, I don't even think

18:59

that any thing was said so, but

19:02

I did successfully. My company,

19:05

Midsummer Music is forty one years

19:07

old and it still exists, and

19:10

it has published some important people, Mark

19:12

Sanders, a little tiny bit of Garth

19:14

Books.

19:14

Who's that are right?

19:16

So two writers who are in the Nashville Songwriters Association.

19:19

So number one is I came from Detroit

19:21

City. So I set up my home publishing company.

19:23

I got investors from outside of Nashville,

19:26

an investor from outside of Nashville that

19:28

believed in me and believed in my autonomy and

19:30

supported me in that part and let

19:32

me run the company.

19:34

And they were fair to me. Garth

19:37

Books was really fair to me.

19:38

I over the years that I

19:41

found some allies were really fair

19:43

to me, and I had a vision, like,

19:45

for example, the songs

19:47

that I published and we did and are on

19:50

my new album, My Black Country.

19:52

He has an album too.

19:54

We were had the first big country song about the homelessness,

19:57

the first big, the first significant

20:00

country song that I know of about lynching.

20:02

That song was called the Ballad of Sally Anne.

20:04

I'm very thrilled that Rihannan Giddons,

20:07

who's on Cowboy Carter, she

20:10

sings it on my new album now.

20:13

And this is a song about a woman

20:15

whose husband is lynch between his wedding and reception.

20:18

It's a song that demands reckoning it,

20:21

demands acknowledging that lynching happened.

20:23

Ebany Smith, brilliant black woman

20:25

out of Memphis, is the producer. She

20:28

put horns on that song. People say, why are

20:30

there horns on this song? To

20:32

remind people that the first,

20:35

the last significant lynching we know of, happened

20:37

in nineteen fifty five. It didn't happen in

20:39

the nineteenth century or the nineteen

20:41

tenths. And mctill was lynched after

20:44

he was drug that people

20:47

want to think that lynching something happened a long time

20:49

ago.

20:50

Lynching's happened in the forties. Lynching

20:52

happened in fifty five.

20:54

So that ballad of Sally ann that Rihannan

20:56

has re recorded produced

20:58

by Ebany Smith. This whole

21:01

group, eleven different artists,

21:03

all black women, rode

21:05

to the rescue of my legacy when

21:07

they came to make this album.

21:10

So I made money because I was a publisher,

21:12

because I was acting like Anna Gordy, because

21:15

I didn't I didn't and I

21:17

recognize talent, and I

21:19

worked with a lot of women to

21:23

have this vision at the very top of

21:25

the success. When you get the big success puts

21:28

a target on your back and

21:31

so even if you behind the scenes kind

21:33

of yeah, because

21:35

there's so much money in the room.

21:36

Got back then, there was so much

21:38

money in the room.

21:39

And as I said, I thought myself, only

21:42

I take responsibility because

21:44

I was going out to lunch and we were supposed to be

21:46

celebrating that record. And they said and something

21:49

read it in the book like this. All it

21:51

does is changed how long you're going to be

21:53

with us, the same exact terms seventy.

21:55

Decided to my Laurie. I know you don't. It's just the same

21:57

thing.

21:58

Just we need I need to show people that

22:00

you're not going to just get the big head and go

22:02

somewhere else because you're having the success.

22:05

And I signed something without reading it without the

22:07

lawyer thinking

22:10

I swam in this lady's pool that confusing

22:13

a business associate with a friend.

22:14

I've never made that mistake again.

22:16

Oh at the time, because you remember, mm

22:19

it was nineteen ninety four, I was old

22:21

enough to know better, old

22:24

enough to know better, and I did something

22:26

that no one that hardly anyone could believe

22:28

I'd die I read I signed

22:30

something that.

22:31

Signed without reading it, So totally

22:33

my fault wasn't I

22:36

knew better and I did it.

22:37

It's also illegal though if the lawyer said

22:39

to you, have you said to the person,

22:42

hey, I need to see my lawyers, Like no, no, no, you

22:44

don't like they're not supposed to see that.

22:46

Who knows it was in a room and

22:48

no one's gonna All I can

22:50

say is it all worked out on the end.

22:52

Of my story now is there's an album

22:54

that I adore and

22:57

you know, if you are for me, I

23:00

love that some of the interesting things you've just said

23:03

recently about if you are

23:05

me. When

23:08

I was started off how David asked me, what will you do

23:10

if someone steals the song from you? And

23:14

I thought form him and I said, write another song. He said,

23:16

that's the answer.

23:17

Go down in Nashville because people will.

23:19

And you know what, I'm

23:22

not glad that that thing happened to me, but that

23:24

thing happened to me. Now I had the audacity

23:26

I refuse to write for them after that, like, you

23:28

can have all the but you're not getting another song.

23:31

So you can just see that.

23:32

After two weeks and number one, I stopped writing

23:34

country songs and that thing, and

23:37

I wrote a book that was in the top ten. You know,

23:39

when done Gone the Black retelling of Gone with

23:41

the Whim from a black perspective that

23:44

I doubled down on, a new audacity,

23:47

on a new autonomy. If you're not gonna

23:49

play fair with me, I'll go play somewhere else.

23:51

Yeah.

23:51

Sure, and so and that was

23:54

a huge, huge success, And I now

23:56

have five novels and

23:59

the New York Times.

24:01

Bestseller, it's about to be another.

24:03

One critically acclaimed, and we've got My

24:05

Black Country. So it all worked out

24:07

for me because if you do the work and

24:09

you get the wisdom.

24:10

Now I learned from that lesson.

24:12

If you do the work and you get the wisdom and you

24:15

get the right people around you, then

24:19

it does work out. But you lose some battles, but

24:21

you go back you I was. I

24:23

learned that in Detroit, survived a plague

24:25

to fight another day.

24:27

Can we talk about divine alignment? Because

24:30

you started My Black Country

24:32

a while ago. So when you're writing

24:34

the book and you know, you know your book

24:36

is about to be published, you get the date it's

24:38

you know, April, But then all

24:41

of a sudden you started to hear these Beyonce

24:44

Texas hold them and Beyonce maybe

24:46

doing a country album, Like, what did that

24:48

feel.

24:49

Like it felt that

24:51

what you just said divine

24:53

alignment, because this project I started

24:56

forty one years ago, and really this part

24:58

of it started in Deep five years

25:00

ago, is a pure project for me. This

25:03

is my life work, the history of Black

25:05

people and country, putting it back into

25:07

the seventeenth century. And

25:10

it was just and it's just a wild

25:13

alignment because

25:15

it has created a global conversation,

25:19

a global conversation I spent forty

25:21

one years preparing for, but actually started

25:23

even earlier than that at

25:26

Harvard in nineteen seventy seven, when

25:28

I'm starting to look studying

25:30

the Harlem Renaissance with Nathan Huggins

25:33

and starting to try to prove

25:36

my father's Black Detroit Gossip was

25:38

true, chasing that down

25:41

because back then there was no scholarship that told

25:43

us that the banjo was a black instrument. Back

25:46

then, there was no scholarship that said

25:48

Lil Harden was really on that record.

25:51

But I have traced down

25:53

these oral histories that.

25:54

Other scholars have, and now we know that

25:56

Lil Harden was absolutely on

25:58

that record.

26:00

Black Gossip of Motown was correct.

26:02

So the alignment, though instead

26:05

of this being some small book, although it

26:07

wouldn't be if you're on the breakfast

26:09

club. I'm gonna say I'm from I'm

26:12

up here in New York from Nashville.

26:14

I want all the.

26:15

Folks up in up in Detroit,

26:17

all down South. I want you out

26:19

there getting my black country. I want to be lifted

26:22

up by black readers. Yeah,

26:24

that is I have always with

26:28

all of my books, starting

26:30

with The Wind Done Gone,

26:33

I have loved. One

26:36

of my readers told me is the literary

26:38

equivalent of prissy slapping scarlet

26:41

back.

26:43

I had more than one

26:45

reader.

26:46

I happened to stop and tell this story. It was one of the

26:48

most meaningful stories on Wind Done Gone tour. I

26:50

was in North Carolina, a

26:53

black woman library, and hit bought all these

26:55

books for the State Library of North

26:57

Carolina mine. But we were coming home

26:59

after big reading and I'm thinking back

27:02

to my hotel.

27:02

This is not the way we went, Like,

27:04

I don't.

27:05

Know where we are going, and it's late at night, we've

27:07

got dinner reading. And

27:09

she drove me and we sat outside the

27:11

house. She pulled up in front of house in a fancy

27:14

neighbor and she said, my mother worked

27:17

as a maid in this house almost

27:19

all my life. They made her come in the

27:21

back door. They made me come in the back

27:24

door. They

27:26

loved gone with the wind. And I

27:28

cannot tell you what it means to me that

27:32

you wrote this book attacking

27:34

everything that that valued that.

27:36

And the way they treated her. I waited this

27:38

long, she said, I felt, she said,

27:41

joy, but the number.

27:43

But more than that, I had women who

27:45

were ongoingly working as domestic

27:47

servants telling me this

27:49

book meant so much to them. And

27:53

when I read the book.

27:55

That one out loud. And I read this one because I'm not an

27:57

actress. I'm not a performer. I don't have great voices

27:59

like all three you.

28:01

I read this one because I've

28:03

always my grandparents couldn't read or write.

28:05

My grandmother could read a tiny bit. My grandfather

28:08

couldn't read or write even his own name. I

28:10

dore my grandparents. They were brilliant people and

28:12

storytellers, just never had a day of school

28:14

in Alabama. I

28:16

read my books and make sure there's audio

28:18

books because I know a lot of brilliant people

28:21

can't read or write, and.

28:22

I want them.

28:24

I'm working as much for them as the people who.

28:26

Have all these degrees and whatever. That's

28:29

amazing.

28:30

Look chapter six in your book, Big Dreams,

28:33

big, big mistakes without

28:35

spoiling it, you know, because I know it's a lot of information

28:37

in this book. You keep saying to read his book. No, we're

28:39

won't read it, but I just can

28:42

you tease a little bit?

28:42

What like mistakes? Was a big mistake?

28:45

Was that sign sign

28:48

reading it because I swam in the ladies pool.

28:52

They won't invite me to your house. I swam see I swam

28:54

in your pool and all that. That was a big it

28:56

was, and the big dreams, that part of

28:59

it was the first. It's one of the first big

29:01

things I did was a song called Big Dream that I

29:03

co wrote with my daughter when she was just little,

29:05

and it got into this movie called The Thing called Love.

29:07

It was River Phoenix's last big movie,

29:10

and it was it was a song

29:12

this girl is trying to make it in the

29:14

Blueberg Cafe, trying to make it now. Of course

29:16

they have a white girl playing it, Samantha Mott, But that was

29:18

really my story, and I got

29:20

to write all the songs for that main

29:23

character. And that song, Big Dream,

29:25

is the one she sings at the end of the movie.

29:28

And what's wild about that is all the big

29:30

white male songwriters were

29:32

trying to get that job. Everybody

29:34

was after it and I

29:37

got it. So that was the first time I competed

29:39

with these people for something they really wanted

29:42

and I beat them out, and you

29:45

know, and that was a big movie, Paramount

29:47

Pictures and River.

29:49

And then that song.

29:51

Has been recorded now by Valerie

29:53

June now.

29:54

Which I'm so excited on the new version

29:56

of it. So big dream was that song

29:58

that I started writing.

29:59

It was a song daughter and I started writing together

30:01

that I wrote it with Ralph Murphy.

30:03

But the and that got me to Hollywood,

30:06

y'all.

30:06

Know that when you I got

30:08

to meet mister Quincy Jones and work

30:10

with him. He got me my first contract

30:13

to write a black Western that never got made but

30:15

paid me some money.

30:18

So that was really very exciting.

30:21

And the big mistake was

30:24

and then I had to pivot away from the big mistake. The

30:26

big mistake was I literally

30:28

signed that thing that I should never have signed.

30:30

Got told you big dreams, and you

30:32

signed a contract what I read. But the other

30:34

good thing was that I got to write novels.

30:36

I might have just been a country songwriter,

30:38

and now I get to be a country songwriter and

30:41

a novelist and a memoirrist and

30:43

I love my six books.

30:44

That's right, that one about a black spy family.

30:47

It's all hold on now for you, yes,

30:50

okay.

30:50

And it's from it if you ever get

30:53

involved in me and that kind of movie production.

30:55

I got a great one, Rebel Yell about a black

30:57

spy family.

30:58

I've got some really cool books, all

31:00

of them.

31:01

Girl, Yeah, and turning the movies.

31:03

You're gonna talk about that.

31:04

This is found on Quincy Jones a little bit, because in the book you

31:06

talk about Quincy Jones and the cosmic colored cowboy.

31:09

Yes, that was gonna be Danny Glover. That was

31:11

amazing. You know, I

31:14

got snuck into Quincy's house. I was

31:17

literally I got what

31:20

you mean.

31:22

How you just snuck up in there? Waven you went to the side

31:24

the window of the bed. Well, it was a while.

31:26

It was wild. Think these are things you only do when you're really

31:29

young.

31:29

And I do not advise anyone to do this. I'm

31:31

sure it would be very incorrect to.

31:33

Do this now.

31:33

But I knew I wanted to write this black western,

31:36

and back then I didn't think nobody

31:38

was doing anything. This is way before Jango or anything

31:40

that was happening, anything like this, and so

31:43

I realized the only person to get this was Quincy

31:45

Jones. I asked everybody I knew if they

31:47

could get me a meeting with Quincy Jones.

31:50

So a person I knew

31:53

who was actually dating she,

31:55

they said they could get me into Quincy Jones's

31:58

give me a meeting with him. And so I

32:01

flew out at my own expense till and she

32:03

picks me up at the airport and we're on the

32:05

way. She said something that the big problem and I

32:07

said, well, I thought we figured out the big problem.

32:09

He said, no, the big problem is you don't really

32:11

have an appointment with Quincy Jones. That

32:14

I said, we're not going. She said, I can get you

32:16

into the house, but you don't actually have an

32:18

appointment.

32:19

I still don't know. I said, do you mean, like you know

32:21

the guard. She didn't answer the question. I have no idea.

32:24

I feel like that's about as far as we probably.

32:26

Had, right.

32:26

So I get let into Quincy

32:28

Jones's house in bel Air.

32:29

It's a very lovely home, and

32:32

they sent me in this room that looks sort of like a library,

32:36

and he walks.

32:37

In front of me.

32:38

Literally, he's like going, it's a room between

32:40

two rooms. The first time, he doesn't say anything.

32:42

I don't say anything. I'm sitting there with literally Banjo's

32:45

clipped to my ear, this little black denim scarred and

32:47

white shirt and some black pennylovers that Danny

32:49

Glover.

32:50

Used to make fun of that. He said, Alice, why are.

32:52

You wearing that? These pennylovers? Anyway,

32:55

he stops and says.

32:57

Either who are you? Who? I mean, what

32:59

are you here for?

33:00

I said, I'm Alice Fianda from Detroit

33:03

City and Nashville, Tennessee.

33:04

I want to make a movie about black cowboy.

33:07

I think his wife has got kidnapped and Rake gang

33:09

repped, and everybody else does want the wipe back, but he

33:11

loves his wife and wants her back, and he likes security.

33:16

Sat down beside me and

33:18

he said, start that again, and

33:22

I will tell you I toned it slower,

33:25

and two things happen. He

33:28

said, right then and there, I'm

33:32

going to take you to the movie studios

33:35

and we're gonna make that movie. He said right

33:37

in that first time, he

33:39

said, but you got to come back in two or three weeks,

33:41

because he said, right now, I'm going to

33:43

lay down a velvet carpet for

33:45

my pearl and he was talking about Miles

33:48

Davis. He was about to go do something

33:50

with Miles and Davis. I wasn't even sure what

33:52

exactly he said, and so

33:55

you need to come back in three weeks, two

33:57

or three. And I came back and he took me

33:59

to two studios and the

34:02

second studio bought that movie nice.

34:05

And they didn't make it.

34:07

I co wrote it with someone else, but they

34:09

but they paid me well. And it

34:11

was this cosmic colored cowboy. It was just way

34:14

too ahead of its time, but

34:16

it was. And

34:18

I loved working with Quincy Jones. We had

34:20

some great projects together and

34:24

he's just such a brilliant creative.

34:26

But one of the things he taught me that I feel

34:29

really inspired the second half of my career and

34:31

the reci Palmer Rihanna

34:33

Giddens, he

34:37

taught me what I did for Linda Martell.

34:39

I hope I think reci and Rihanna would say

34:41

this. I there

34:44

my prols and in my courses.

34:47

Why I teach Black Country

34:49

is so I can lay down a velvet carpet

34:52

for my pearls, my black pearls, so that people

34:54

can understand the significance of Reina Roberts

34:57

that for example, that she's subversive

34:59

because she has all

35:01

these she does things that

35:04

people consider to be sins, and

35:06

she is black woman inhabiting

35:09

that, and she is it's fine

35:11

that black women don't have to be perfect in country

35:14

to be worthy, and that

35:16

what other people consider to be wrong.

35:18

Is it necessarily? Does

35:20

that make sense?

35:21

And that we don't have to be sanitized

35:24

and perfect to be respected because country

35:26

allows some real wildness, but it doesn't

35:28

necessarily allow.

35:29

Black characters wildness. They seem

35:31

to have to be super perfect, and that's

35:34

not right.

35:34

I feel like it should be like that in all genres.

35:36

Though. Absolutely it needs

35:38

to be that because it's like that in a whole

35:40

life.

35:41

Yeah, I feel like when you say that, I feel

35:43

like that's what you see a lot of women in hip

35:45

hop reclaiming in the last few years.

35:48

Absolutely, And you know, one of my favorite

35:50

poets is Missy Elliott. I just have to

35:52

shout down with her when I think

35:55

of storytelling traditions.

35:57

She and I remember seeing her in a beautiful

35:59

throwne.

36:00

But I think that you're absolutely right, But we

36:02

have to reclaim that people

36:05

are imperfect. People

36:07

are raggedy, but right at their best and

36:10

at least that's who I am, and

36:13

we got to claim that and acclaim.

36:15

That absolutely Listen,

36:17

they got to go get the book man, Alicia Randall

36:20

My Black Country, A Journey through Country Music,

36:22

Black Past, President Future. I do have one last

36:24

question. Why do you think they try to erase so much

36:27

of our people's involvement, Black people's involvement

36:29

in the country music world.

36:32

I think a lot of people find black genius threatening.

36:36

I think that after that

36:38

whole welcome table thing, that after we've

36:41

been treating culturally red lined

36:43

out of something, the guilt and

36:46

shame some people have. Roy

36:48

Acuff, if he were here, I'd say the

36:51

guilt and shame he had of never doing

36:53

right by deft Bail. When

36:56

people feel really guilty and really shamed,

36:58

they sometimes don't want you to where near them.

37:01

And I am thrilled that

37:04

we are in a new day.

37:06

Beyonce has helped been It's been a big part

37:09

of bringing that day because what is

37:11

being noticed here and some of that's

37:13

on the breakfast club out there, is

37:15

the existence of a global

37:17

black audience for country.

37:19

We haven't even talked about that that people

37:21

listen.

37:22

Black people listen to country in Africa

37:24

and including make their own Black country

37:27

there, but black people in this

37:29

country also listen to

37:31

country, and a larger number

37:34

are going to now and

37:37

it's the black genius. There has been

37:40

so much black genius

37:42

hidden in country that

37:45

I think it's a great time to be celebrating

37:49

and centering it and to realize,

37:52

as I say, if country

37:54

owes a great debt to black people.

37:56

What in America doesn't.

38:00

And that's why because they some

38:02

people don't want to recognize the debt what

38:04

they owe and this country.

38:07

I want to end on that saying that Thomas

38:10

Jefferson, when he was

38:12

defining freedom, he

38:15

had his British, the British documents

38:17

and the French documents, but they all talked about freedom

38:19

as legal and economic. And

38:21

when you say life, liberty and the pursuit

38:24

of happiness, you know how we get to that Sally

38:27

Hemmings, that black woman in his

38:29

bed, that he understood all

38:31

around him, that some black people embodied

38:34

freedom even when they

38:36

didn't have a legal right to it, even

38:38

when they didn't have economic freedom.

38:41

That freedom starts in the mind

38:44

and some people, and that our

38:48

American understanding of freedom is

38:51

country music is black, and

38:53

it has some English and Celtic in it.

38:56

So when we understand.

39:00

What freedom means in its ideal

39:02

in America that is a co creation

39:05

of black people and white people,

39:08

just like country music.

39:10

There you have it, Alice Randall. Ladies and

39:12

gentlemen, make sure you think of a book right now, My

39:14

Black Country. Yes, the countries

39:16

music, Black past, present and future.

39:18

Yes, the latest release off my book in print, Black Permi is

39:20

publishing. But also this Wednesday

39:22

from seven to eight thirty, you can catch

39:25

me and Alice Randall and Roseanne

39:27

Cash will be at the Brooklyn Public

39:30

Library from seven to eight thirty having

39:32

more conversations about My Black Country.

39:34

Yes, and I'm so excited. I have

39:37

to see so much of the Breakfast Club out

39:39

there. I came all the way up from Nashville

39:41

to need some new people.

39:43

I'm Charles's country cousin, Auntie

39:47

Country Auntie.

39:47

I need, we need you. That's right,

39:49

It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning, Wake

39:52

that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast

39:55

Club