Micah Loewinger: This is the On the Media midweek podcast, I'm Micah Loewinger. Some of you already know this, but Beyoncé's new country-influenced album Cowboy Carter drops this Friday and because most of our producers are huge Beyoncé fans, we spent our Monday editorial meeting brainstorming and debating how and if we could find a way to talk about the release on the show. Then we learned that our friends at Today, Explained the daily news podcast from Vox Media beat us to it. They just released an excellent overview of the history of Black musicians making country music, and it was so good we thought we'll just share it with you as our podcast this week. Here's co-host Noel King.

Noel King: Last week, I went to the Nashville home of songwriter Alice Randall to talk about Cowboy Carter. Alice Randall has been writing and teaching for a long time about country music's very Black roots. If her life was a country song, it would go something like this, a sensitive Black girl with a barfly dad and a distant mom finds solace in Ray Charles and Charlie Pride, writes her first country song before she's even old enough to read, and at 24, hits the road to Nashville with a folder full of handwritten songs, one of which will go to number one on the country charts.

[MUSIC - Trisha Yearwood: XXX's And OOO's]

Phone rings baby cries TV diet guru lies

Good mornin' honey

Go to work makeup try to keep the balance up

Between love and money

Noel King: XXX's And OOO's sung by Trisha Yearwood. Alice then spends 40 years in Nashville waiting for another Black woman to make it in country, an art form that she defines this way.

Alice Randall: The simplest definition it requires three things. It has to have Celtic English, Irish Scottish ballad forms, news reporting elements, storytelling. It has to have Black influences, African influences that could be in the instrumentation, say a banjo, can be in other aspects, and it has to have evangelical Christianity. Those things come together and you have country music.

Noel King: Does the story that the song is telling have to be a certain type of story to be country?

Alice Randall: There are patterns of country narrative and a secular theology of country that I have observed and this is how that would go. God is real, life is hard, road, whiskey, and family are significant compensations, and the past is better than the present. When I see those four things, I know I may be looking at a country song.

Noel King: Here, Alice Randall's life diverges from a country song because, for her the present just got pretty damn good. In 18 days, her memoir, My Black Country, comes out right as Beyonce has all the universe interested in country music and asking where Black people fit into it. As it happens, Alice Randall has spent a lot of time trying to find an answer to that. She identifies the birth of both recorded country and Black country as a moment in 1927 when DeFord Bailey takes the stage in Nashville.

Alice Randall: DeFord Bailey is to me the first superstar of the Grand Ole Opry. The Grand Ole Opry for those who don't know it, is the oldest country radio show in America and it's the most powerful, it's the most significant. DeFord Bailey is one of the people who founds the Opry. One day they were playing the show and the announcer said, "We've just been listening to Grand Opera, now we're going to have some Grand Opry," meaning we're coming down home, and the next sound that was heard was DeFord Bailey playing Pan-American blues on his harmonica.

Now, DeFord plays harmonica, some of his songs are called blues, but he describes himself actively as a hillbilly performer. Although he's known for the harmonica playing, he also does sing, plays guitar, and banjo. He was a multi-instrumentalist and I think that's very important. I think that Fox Chase is one of his first very important songs.

Announcer: DeFord Bailey and it'll be his famous Fox Chase. All right, DeFord.

[MUSIC - DeFord Bailey: Fox Chase]

Alice Randall: Fox Chase is about the difficulty of being pursued and scrutinized. I assure you that was a big problem in Black life in America at that time.

Noel King: In 1927, racism is still rampant in America. It's alive and well. How does DeFord Bailey pull this off? Why is he allowed in?

Alice Randall: What's wild about music, we have to always remember about commercial-recorded music is the business. He was making them money and then remember at first it's for radio and so they're not seeing that it is a Black person and they're not necessarily announcing it. That may be part of the reason in many of those early recordings he's not speaking or singing because it might've been more evident to people. He was a Black person if he was speaking or singing.

[applause]

Alice Randall: DeFord was able to defy, evade the structural obstacles created to keep his voice off the radio and to keep him out of the public but he never did have the same opportunities that his white contemporaries had.

Noel King: Okay, that's 1927, this is 97 years ago now, and then, where does Black country go from that moment on?

Alice Randall: 1930, we are going to get another extraordinary performance. We're going to get Lil Hardin Armstrong performing on Blue Yodel No. 9.

[MUSIC - Jimmie Rodgers: Blue Yodel No. 9]

Alice Randall: Jimmie Rogers is going to be the singer, the frontman, but there are three people on that record. One is a Black woman born in Memphis, Lil Hardin, and the other is Louis Armstrong.

[MUSIC - Jimmie Rodgers: Blue Yodel No. 9]

Standing on the corner, I didn't mean no harm

Alice Randall: When you listen to Blue Yodel No. 9, many people think it's a very white song. It is considered the most iconic country song and Lil Hardin, her piano is driving the session. Louis is playing on it. It sounds what people think, it sounds so white, but actually, two out of the three geniuses on the record were Black. This becomes this aesthetic redlining that that was Black music. Now, whoever labeled it white and it was marketed as white, but actually, the people behind the session and their names were not put on the record. This was repressed, erased information for years.

Noel King: What was the sound that would've led people to be like, "Ah, we can call this one a white song and nobody will notice."

Alice Randall: Often, they took the exact same recording and marketed one to a white audience and one to a Black audience. Sometimes changing the name of the group. A lot of it is literally marketing and bifurcating the audience thinking they would make more money that way. There's a lot of cultural redlining that is actually separating things that are not intrinsically separate. Fast forward, we're at 1930, we can't get through the '30s and '40s without one of my other great influences on country, Herb Jeffries, the Bronze Buckaroo.

[music]

Took my roll, went to town

with some gal and played around

And she cut my bankroll down

Oh! Got the payday blues

Alice Randall: These are Black-singing cowboy movies. They're financed out of the white world but this is his concept, he is starring in them. That's going to be a whole nother influence on country and Black country. In the 1890s, 20% to 30% of all cowboys are going to be Black and brown in America. Cowboys have cowboy songs and cowboy camps, and in these cowboy camps, singing was an extremely important part of the culture. We get in Herb Jeffries in the '30s and '40s some of this wisdom, this collected wisdom from the Black cowboy camps.

After the Bronze Buckaroo in the 1940s, I want to jump forward until the late '60s and the early '70s and hit Charley Pride. Charlie Pride is going to come out of the Negro leagues baseball. He's going to rise. By 1971, he's going to be entertainer of the year of country.

[MUSIC - Charlie Pride: Kiss an Angel Good Morning]

Whenever I chance to meet, some old friends on the street

They wonder how does a man get to be this way

Alice Randall: He is going to come out as Black in the '60s in Detroit City.

Noel King: Wait, what do you mean come out as Black?

Alice Randall: When they released the early Charley Pride records--

Noel King: Oh, people didn't know.

Charley Pride: My oldest sister used to say to me, "Why are you singing their music?"

Interviewer: Okay.

Charley Pride: Their music.

Interviewer: Their music. Okay.

Charlie Pride: I said, "Well, it's my music too." Now, that's me growing up in a segregated southern state.

Alice Randall: They actively made sure that no one knew he was Black. He, I am not saying this "sounds white" that's what it was said at the time that he sounds white. What people thought was white. They did not put his face on the original, they did not share any photographs of him.

[MUSIC - Charley Pride: Kiss an Angel Good Morning]

but some of them never learn it's a simple thing

Alice Randall: They wanted people to fall in love with the voice and the records first and then he came out as Black in Detroit, Michigan, when I was a little girl. I still remember people talking about it in the background in the city. He will end up going to the top of the chart so many times. We get this line from DeFord Bailey to Charley Pride. Both of them belong to the Opry. Charley will be given superstar status. He will become entertainer of the year, I believe that was in 1971.

[MUSIC - Charley Pride: Kiss an Angel Good Mornin']

-like the devil when you get back home.

Alice Randall: At that same time, we get Linda Martell trying to step into that space and she is shut down. She will be the first Black woman to sing at the Opry. She will release an album on plantation records which is actually quite extraordinary.

[MUSIC - Linda Martell: Color Him Father]

I think I'll color him father

I think I'll color him love

Alice Randall: She has a beautiful voice. She's quite beautiful physically, she can rock these miniskirts. She has very much the style of a Bobbie Gentry and people who are superstars of the moment. The album I believe is called Color Me Country. One of the great singles on it is called Color Him Father which is actually about a stepfather.

[MUSIC - Linda Martell: Color Him Father]

I love this man and I don't know why

Alice Randall: It's an extraordinary album, but she's on Hee Haw, she's on the Opry but she never goes incognegro. The very first time she comes out as a Black woman there just isn't the traction. She experiences myriad micro and macro aggressions navigating Nashville. She is not allowed in this space.

Noel King: Okay, Charley Pride had done it. He had broken the barrier. What happened with Linda Martell? What was the resistance? He'd proved you could be popular, and make money, and be Black so?

Alice Randall: One of my favorite songs I've written is a song called Small Towns (Are Smaller for Girls) and that was recorded by Holly Dunn. Small Towns (Are Smaller for Girls) Small Towns are even smaller for Black girls. That's what Linda Martell was up against and Music City was a small town. Linda Martell when she left Nashville continued to make music. She just wasn't making it in country spaces. Now, in that time, in the early '60s, we're going to get the arguably most important album of country music and certainly, the most important album of Black country perhaps to this current moment is Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music by the great Ray Charles.

[MUSIC - Ray Charles: I Can't Stop Loving You]

I can't stop loving you

I've made up my mind

Alice Randall: In my way of looking at it, DeFord Bailey is the papa, Lil Harden is the mama, and Charley Pride is their genius child. This is the first family of Black country and the founding family of all country music. When Ray Charles releases Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music it's going to deconstruct and reconstruct the industry and the audience's understanding of what country music is. It's going to claim the first huge white and Black, Asian, and Indigenous audience for country because everybody listened to Ray Charles.

He may not have been on the country charts but everybody was listening to this. It was on the radios, it was in jukeboxes, it was everywhere and it was constructing and deconstructing country music. Ray Charles is the foundation for everything. This genius child that's coming into this current moment and this Beyoncé moment. We now know that the album is called Cowboy Carter is the biggest revelation since Modern Sounds in Country and Western.

It's that same moment I say that Beyoncé is Ray Charles's genius child. She's deconstructing and reconstructing country in her own aesthetic image but reflecting the Black geniuses come before and larger country cultural genius, and creating new opportunities for genius to come after.

[MUSIC - Ray Charles: I Can't Stop Loving You]

I've made up my mind

To live in memories-

Noel King: Coming up after the break. Beyoncé country.

[MUSIC - Ray Charles: I Can't Stop Loving You]

-of the lonesome times

Micah Loewinger: This is the On the Media midweek podcast, I'm Micah Loewinger and this is the second part of Noel King's conversation with author and songwriter Alice Randall.

Noel King: 21st-century country has gotten really interesting. It includes your Darius Rucker's and your Lil Nas X's and other Black artists. Alice, who is a songwriter and country music historian says the 21st century hasn't been much kinder to Black women than the 20th was. Now she does list some bright spots. Rissi Palmer, Miko Marks, Mickey Guyton, and then along comes--

Alice Randall: The other great genius of Black country equal Dolly Parton in country is Rhiannon Giddens. We're going to see her appear first in the Carolina Chocolate Drops. She will discover the banjo. She will release extremely important country singles and albums. She is by all standard measures a beautiful woman. She has an extraordinary voice.

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

Sally shivered as she said,

"I'll love you till the day I'm dead."

Alice Randall: She's an extraordinary instrumentalist, world-class, and she's a fine songwriter. Rhiannon should have been a country star. She had everything. To me, she is the evidence. The system did not work at that point to allow a Black woman to rise to those heights. Beyoncé has her playing on Texas Hold 'Em.

Noel King: Did you know Beyoncé was working on a country album?

Alice Randall: I had heard rumor but more importantly I knew Beyoncé had already done country music.

[MUSIC - Beyoncé: Daddy Lessons]

Came into this world

Daddy's little girl

And daddy made a soldier out of me (ooh-ooh)

Alice Randall: I knew that Daddy Lessons was actually I think one of the great country songs of all time, that it was emphatically a country song. I had written an article about that in American Songwriter Magazine and it received some very harsh criticism for that article. I also knew that when she performed with The Dixie Chicks on air, that it was actually an extraordinary country performance.

[MUSIC - Beyoncé: Daddy Lessons]

He said, "Take care of your mother

Watch out for your sister"

That's when daddy looked at me--

Alice Randall: I'd seen how that song had been received which was negatively.

Speaker 5: It's the highest-rated 15 minutes in CMA history. Then they start getting racist assholes bombarding their website with comments, emails, and whatever, and so they take her down. They took our performance down and caved to that bullshit. Then they I guess got so much bad press for doing that. Within 24 hours they put it back up again. Just cowards. It's just crazy. She just gave you your greatest ratings that you've ever gotten. How dare you take her song off.

Alice Randall: I've seen how much the establishment had pushed away at it, that I had myself a lot of pushback when I thought was speaking the obvious truth that it was a country song. The rejection of that and the rejection of her performance at the CMA awards, to me again it was a Ray Charles moment. Beyoncé is a superstar. She can also be a country superstar. This has happened before. Elvis Presley started off thinking he was a country singer. He at some point became a rock star, and then maybe at some other point, he became a country singer again, and ultimately genre is just a construct too.

Beyoncé can be in both of these spaces. What is interesting here to me and what I love, I have seen literally white, Black, and Asian people dancing to Texas Hold 'Em on my Instagram. I've seen all kinds of people from all walks of life doing all kinds of complicated dances. They're embracing this. Beyoncé, her beauty is acknowledged widely now in this country space. This is the first time that a Black woman's ability, beauty, and musicality has been acknowledged widely as a pinnacle.

This moment means that finally the history of black people in country is being acknowledged. It's far beyond the success of Beyoncé. It is a moment that reveals she did not come out of nowhere. She's not claiming to come out of nowhere. And when I listened to 16 CARRIAGES for example.

[MUSIC - Beyoncé: 16 CARRIAGES]

Sixteen carriages drivin' away

While I watch them ride with my dreams away

Alice Randall: Which is elegiac that is a song that is in conversation with May the Circle Be Unbroken.

[MUSIC - Carter Family: Can the Circle Be Unbroken (By and By)]

Can the circle be unbroken

By and by Lord, by and by

Alice Randall: It's a song in conversation with Sixteen Tons a work song about coal mining.

[MUSIC - Merle Travis: Sixteen Tons]

You load sixteen tons and what do you get

Another day older and deeper in debt

Alice Randall: It's a song in conversation with Strawberry Wine, I think about loss of innocence.

[MUSIC - Deana Carter: Strawberry Wine]

Yeah, I was caught somewhere between a woman and a child One restless summer we found love growing wild

Alice Randall: It's also, I believe, a song, consciously or unconsciously, in conversation with my song, XXX's and OOO's, about the balance between love and money. That song is a Black country song.

[MUSIC - Trisha Yearwood: XXX's and OOO's]

Fix the sink, mow the yard, really isn't all that hard

If you get paid

[MUSIC - Beyoncé: 16 CARRIAGES]

I might cook, clean, but still won't fold

Still workin' on my life, you know

Only God knows, only God knows

Only God knows

Sixteen carriages drivin' away

Noel King: It seems that what Beyoncé has the ability to do is illuminate what from the past was lost or ignored, but then also fundamentally to change what the future looks like, right?

Alice Randall: Absolutely. What is also most important here is she is creating new sounds, new methods of narration. In country, there's always a balance between preserving and evolving. She is doing more evolving than preserving, but she's significantly preserving and spotlighting past genius while manifesting her own present genius and creating a path forward for further innovation.

Noel King: What do you think that means for Black artists? What could that mean for Black artists in country?

Alice Randall: I think the difference between zero and one is a mix. When something has never been done, people can think it is impossible to do, and they don't try, and they don't support. When something has once been done, they think it can again be done. Now that she has done it, she has proven it's possible.

No one again can say, "A Black woman can't chart." No one again can say, which is a thing that was unfortunately said around town, "Bring me the right Black woman. Bring me the one that's pretty enough, who sings well enough, and has some songs, and we'll make her a star."

[MUSIC - Beyoncé: Texas Hold 'Em]

This ain't Texas (woo), ain't no hold 'em (hey)

So lay your cards down, down, down, down

Alice Randall: I think because it's been done, people know it can be done. I think it gives them a lot of fortitude. She had to be extraordinary. She is the pathbreaker.

She had to evade layers and layers of cultural redlining, strategically, intellectually, artistically, but she's also proven that there's a giant country audience that's new in this moment, as well as an old audience. That includes white people who thought they were too cool for country but were following Beyoncé and have followed Beyoncé into country. It includes Black people who didn't want to publicly acknowledge they like country but are willing to publicly announce they like Beyoncé's country. It includes white people who thought they really did not like Black country, but they just loved this. It includes lots of people.

[MUSIC - Beyoncé: Texas Hold 'Em]

We headin' to the dive bar we always thought was nice

Ooh

Alice Randall: People have fallen in love. It's a magical moment when people who don't get music get it because some music is being served up that is just irresistible.

[MUSIC - Beyoncé: Texas Hold 'Em]

This ain't Texas (woo), ain't no hold 'em (hey)

So lay your cards down, down, down, down

Micah Loewinger: Noel King is the co-host of Today, Explained. She spoke to songwriter Alice Randall, whose new book, My Black Country, comes out next month. Thanks for listening to the midweek podcast, and don't forget to tune into the big show this Friday. See you then. I'm Micah Loewinger.

[MUSIC - Beyoncé: TEXAS HOLD 'EM]

-come take it to the floor now (woo)

And I'll be damned if I cannot dance with you

Come pour some liquor on me honey, too

It's a real life boogie and a real life hoedown

Don't be a bitch, come take it to the floor now--

[00:23:50] [END OF AUDIO]

 

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