The Breakfast Club - INTERVIEW: Alice Randall On The History Of Black Country Music, Quincy Jones, Beyoncé + More

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

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Wake that ass up early in the morning. The Breakfast Club. Morning everybody, it's DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne Tha Guy. We are The Breakfast Club. We got a special guest in the building. Yes, indeed. The author of My Black Country, A Journey Through Country Music's Black Past, Present and Future. Ladies and gentlemen, Alice Randall. Welcome. Good morning. I am so glad to be on The Breakfast Club. It's like being on America's front porch.

Oh, we're going to have to start using that one. Use that as imaging, Taylor. That's right. America's Front Porch. Alice, man, you have such a storied history. You are the first black woman to ever write a number one country song. Trisha Yearwood's XXX, O's and O's. X's and O's.

X's and O's. Way back in 1994. That is in O. Way back in 1994. That ain't that far way back. At least I was born. I was two, but I was born. Jess, I have been 41 years in country

and western music. I came as a black woman to Nashville in 1983. So this is my 41st year and it's wild. I had songs recorded. I'm glad you shout out to that one that was two weeks at number one. And it put Miss Aretha Franklin's name in it. A country song, got to two weeks.

Aretha Franklin and Patsy Cline, and we put Aretha first. That's amazing. Back then. And it was all about the money. It's hard to keep the balance up between love and money. I'm going to tell you about that in a second. But I wrote my first song was recorded two years after I arrived in Nashville. So that was 1985.

And that was a B-side of a number one. So I had songs recorded in the 80s, 90s, aughts, 10s, and 20s. And Char, you're one of the first people to ever recognize that. Oh, I love that. Well, let's start from the beginning because you're from Detroit, Michigan. Motown, yes. Motown. So how did you get into country music? Tell us how you got into music at all. Well, you know,

I was born in Detroit in 1959, the same year as Motown Records, and that was essential to how I did this black country, Motown and Music City thing. My father was a strong supporter of Malcolm X.

He was a very black-centered, black man who told me the banjo was an African instrument. He pointed out he was also a dad mom, a girl dad way before people were that. He was a strong, so he told me Anna Records was founded a year before Motown Records. He loved Anna Gordy. And he would always put her up as an example in front of me as a music publisher, as a writer, as a woman business person. And he's also the person that told me traditional was probably a colored girl. So I was born in a music city and my family knew a lot of people in the music industry, though they were not in that.

My father ran and owned dry cleaners and laundries. But I was just thinking my first trip to New York, my first trip on a plane was to New York City with my family to see the Supremes open at the Copa Cabana. It was the weekend that the Beatles played Shea Stadium, but my family didn't care anything about that. We cared about the Supremes. We're playing at the Copa Cabana. I was ringside. I've got a picture of it. And they sang Queen of the House.

They sang a country song. And the next night, they took me to see Sammy Davis on Broadway. I didn't care. I love Lola Falana dancing half naked. And she would eventually be in that wonderful black spaghetti Western Lola Colt. So I started off being around music and my father telling me that there was Lil Harden who wrote a big number one for Ray Charles right around that time

that she was planning on that huge hillbilly hit. He didn't use the word hillbilly. I actually use a different word. I won't use the word hillbilly. He actually used a different word I won't use. What is it, redneck? No, probably Peckwood. Oh, Peckwood. And I don't use, I think that's not proper language. I don't actually say words like that.

But he was about the truth that black genius is hidden in country music. And I just think an interesting thing about what we know, what we don't know is, of course, Blue Yodel No. 9 is an amazing song. This is by Johnny Cash has said it was probably the most iconic country song of all time. Three people played on that. Two of them were black geniuses. One was Louis Armstrong. We all know his name.

The other was Lil Hardin Armstrong, black woman born in Memphis, good friend of Alberta Hunter. And the third was Jimmy Rogers. There are three people on it. Two were black geniuses, but only one's name got on the label. But fast forward, 1959, when I was born and growing up, Lil Hardin was still alive. Do you think she didn't tell people she played on that Billy Hill Billy record? Of course she told. Do you think in the black music community of Detroit it wasn't known? Of course it was known. And do you know,

and I talk about this in my book, My Black Country, in 1983 before I drove to Nashville, two days before I drove to Nashville, I got to go to the 25th anniversary of the CMA Awards Association. And Roy Acuff is on the stage. And Roy Acuff is talking about country being a family.

And he talks about Jimmy Rogers. He even talks about some comedian, Will Rogers. And he does not say Lil Harden's name. And he doesn't say the name of D. Ford Bailey, the first superstar of the Opry, the man that helped Oikev himself get started. He knew that man's name, and he didn't say it. And I knew the man's name,

and now I've said it in my black country, and I'm thrilled that Char has publishing my book on his imprint, Atria. And we're getting that story out because the history of black people and country music on the radio goes back to 1927, almost a hundred years. To me, the first beat of black country on the radio is when D. Ford Bailey in 1927 played Pan American Blues on a show called Barn Dance, right after somebody on WSM said for the first time the words Grand Ole Opry, then a black man played. And if I can just say one thing here, that black man d for bailey is the father of black country and in my opinion the father of country radio you know little harden is the mother and little harden is a mama that's

right and ray charles is their genius child that's right and um i think that uh charlie pride is d for side child and herb jeffries the bronze buckaroo in all those 30s and 40s black westerns with singing cowboys. He's Lil' Stepchild. That's right. His first family of black country. I love that. You see that? You got Herb Jeffries, Charlie Pride, Lil' Harden, DeFord Bailey, Ray Charles.

Beautiful. That's amazing. And Beyonce in this moment, metaphorically, is Ray Charles' genius child, the daughter who may eclipse the father. Explain that. Why is Beyonce the daughter of Ray Charles in this case? In this case, because when 1963,

when modern sounds and country and western drops, that's Ray Charles' country album. So first of all, Ray Charles put out an amazing country album in 1963. I used to cha-cha around the living room with my black auntie Mary Frances, who I love more than life. Mary Frances, I would dance to Ray Charles. Ray Charles' country. He deconstructed and reconstructed country music according to his own aesthetics.

Now, you need to understand that Ray Charles grew up listening to the Opry. His mom won't let him stay up late to hear it on Saturday nights because back in the 40s, 30s, 20s, when my family was coming up, there was no black radio in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi. There was none. We were culturally redlined out of owning radio stations. So if you were black and you were living in the rural South, you could hear great live music in the juke joints in the church in your home. But the only thing you were really hearing in the rural South on the radio

was a lot of country and some classical music. So black people knew country. And just remember, as my daddy said, we were actually playing on it. We can now document that, that there was two black geniuses on Blue Yolo No. 9. And that doesn't even count the people passing that were playing in these bands. But so we knew country and we knew that we had invented the banjo, that a lot of the things are best in country, that it was a black person who taught Hank Williams how to play a lot of his early songs, Lefty Frizzell, that the Carter family, that they were taught by Esley Riddle. Esley Riddle was a black man who taught the Carter family their first songs, a lot of

their chords. Some people- Hold on, which Carter family now? Because you know we're thinking Jay-Z and Beyonce. Well, as it's been traditionally told in the white world, when they say about the first family of country, they say Jimmy Rogers is the papa. Now, I just told you he was really working with Lil and Louis. Absolutely. And they say that the mama is Maybel Carter, Mother Maybel.

But I'm going to tell you that Mother Maybel, she had a way of playing that's called Carter Family Scratch, the way she used two fingers, three fingers. Well, this man, Ezley Riddle, he was in a terrible accident when he was young, lost a leg. Then he almost committed suicide or maybe tried to commit suicide, and he lost a couple fingers. Jesus. He played with three fingers before the Carter family was playing. He's the one that taught them the first song. So I'm just saying, who really invented Carter family scratch? We can't prove that.

But is it the man who actually had, that we know that they acknowledge, and they played with him all through their history later? And they have, there's a story that they tell that he's called Esley Riddle because their children could not pronounce Leslie. Well, I found him in the U.S. Census as Eslie, E-S-L-I-E, long before he ever met the Carters. So there's questions about this because our history is not well documented.

So the cowboy Carter obviously speaks right now for Beyonce Knowles. And I, Mrs. Carter, I don't know that she is at all signing to the original Carter family. But what I signed to is, I'm not interested in that Carter family right now because they've had a lot of attention. I'm really interested in Esley Riddle, who's a black man who came from that same

place. And his story has not been told. And that's what you get in my black country. Dee Ford's story hasn't been told. Lil Harden's story hasn't been told. You know, it's interesting. My guy, Bobby Bones, he does, he's a big nationally syndicated country morning guy. Salute to Bobby Bones out in Nashville. He

talked about the banjo and how you can't even talk about black country, I mean, you can't talk about country music without talking about black people's contributions to country music from the very beginning. So my question is, when did it shift? When did people just make it country or white thing, so to speak? Well, there's two pieces to that. One, I agree with your friend, Bobby Bones, that my definition of country music is Celtic, English, Irish, Scottish,

ballad form storytelling, plus black influences, plus evangelical Christianity. Country can't be country without black influences. Without black influences, country is just folk music. Now, some of those black influences are black gospel from L.A. and the South. Some of the black influences are the banjo. Some of it is the way the notes are bent when they're sung. They're coming out of the blues. And the difference between, and if you don't have the evangelical Christianity, you might be in a country blues.

Because the big difference is, and I say said my childhood i had a very bad mother and had a great daddy and a really bad mother so i don't love the blues the blues is too my daughter loves the blues the blues is too hard for me i need some hope i need with my tragedy i need the reality and then i need some hope and black country has both of those things the hope because it could be i'm just gonna be up in heaven and tell jesus how you done me it could be you're gonna be in hell and some burning fires and i'm gonna be that there's some hope there's some revenge in country and i like the hope i like the revenge that blues has a little bit of experience of we are walking on hell and earth

but we're finding some joy we're making some joy in the hell and earth, but we're finding some joy. We're making some joy in the hell on earth. Yeah. But black country says we're going to get somewhere else. But country isn't country. And on, this is the little teacher in me. I hate to say I have to do this one because I'm a professor at Vanderbilt. I have a course on black country and I've been teaching that course since 2015. My first course, country, lyric and American culture, I've been teaching that course since 2015. My first course, Country, Lyric, and American Culture, I've been teaching since 2006. I used to say it was musical miscegenation, and that wasn't my phrase. I adopted that one. But here we know that country requires blackness to be country.

And one of the examples you see on Cowboy Carter is that song Blackbird, which is a remake of a Beatles song. Without the black voices on it, it's a folk song. You add those black women's voices and their black aesthetics, it's country. What makes it country? The black gospel you hear sound that they bring to it. I love my Raina Roberts on there. My students found her for me when she was only like three weeks when she was on TikTok. I had students rush in and show her to me. And so I've been loving her. She's my since sometime now. The world is discovering her now.

Yeah, Raina is talented. Yeah, absolutely. What did you think of Beyonce's album? Did you listen to it in full? What were your thoughts? Oh, I have listened to it many times. I actually love it in this

particularly. As I said, I'm 64. This is sort of my birthday party on the Breakfast Club. I'll be 65 May 4th. When I arrived here 41 years ago in Nashville, I wanted to get as number one and I got a number one. Yeah.

I wanted to spotlight black women who have really contributed. I'm proud to say I wrote the first major article on Linda Martel. Everybody talking about her now. I published that in 2010. Amazing. I'm in the documentary her granddaughter is making about her. I love Linda Martel. I had to fight to get that space for her back in 2010 when people weren't talking.

And I'm thrilled. So just stop there. I'm thrilled that Beyonce has brought her to a huge world. My article got a lot of attention, but in a narrow way. Now the whole world knows who Linda Martell is. That documentary, her granddaughter's been struggling to get made, picking up a little bit of money here, a little bit of money there. Now that thing is going to be made and made right. So I am absolutely thrilled that Beyonce has taken country to a global audience. But there's a third thing. So I wanted to spotlight these black people.

I could do that in this book. I wanted my own number one. But I wanted to spotlight these black people. I could do that in this book. I wanted my own number one. But I wanted to see, and Jess, this is going to be you and me here. I wanted to see a black woman at the top of the country charts. Because the day I arrived in Nashville in 1983, Charlie Pryde had already been up there 29 times. Ray Charles was acknowledged. I saw, I was in the room when he played Seven Spanish Angels in Nashville in a back small room for DJs. He got to go to the top of the charts. There are so many black men who have been to the number one spot.

Now, just call the name of the two most important. Charlie Pryde, Ray Charles. But Darius Rucker, I'm not even going to name anymore because there's so many and there has not been one black woman black women have absolutely I have a song called Small Towns are Smaller for Girls in Country

and that's true, it's hard on the country radio even for all women Small Towns are I can't argue with you are a lot smaller for black women. If small towns are smaller for girls, they're really smaller for black girls. And Music City is a small town. So I wanted to see a black woman at the top of it because it's acknowledging that we are worth, our beauty, our significance. And I thought I was going to retire without seeing it.

So Cowboy Carter for me personally is so important because it is a hallelujah moment. It is a Juneteenth moment. It is good news at long last. But my daughter says, Caroline Randall Williams, good news at long last is still good news. What's the, what's the, what's a... When you got your number one record, what did that mean to you?

Because was it as big as it is now with their charts? Was it, you know, what did having a number one record mean back then? Oh, I'm going to... I'm going to be real with you. Yeah, because I don't even know... It was number one. In some ways, it was bigger because back then,

let me just put it a little bit generally, let's say hypothetically right now. Back then, a number one record on the country charts for the co-writer, that's a million dollars. It's bigger because it's streaming. That's not a million dollars for the co-writer nowadays. So back then, it's a life changing. So you made a million dollars off that record? You need to read my book because I said that. I know that's right.

Put that in there. You need to read my book because I said that. I know that's right. Put that in there. You need to read the book. I will just say that that song earned, the writer's section of that song earned significant. I'll say I made some money even just last month. It made so much money that I signed a contract I should not have signed. I don't want to talk too much about that. Far into it at the height of the success.

And that song was so successful that it got itself out of jail that you know when they're collateralizing everything against everything and every expense that was ever spent anywhere that that i made some money on that song just this year and that's a third the song is 30 years old so back then another number one record changed your life how did you and two weeks at number one really changed your life how And two weeks at number one really changed your life. How did you navigate through the industry? Because you hear all the time, black artists

never really got the money that they were owed or what they were supposed to get. So how did you navigate to make sure that you got what you were supposed to get, if you did? I did not successfully 100% navigate through the industry. And there's so many things about that. There was no there's so many things about that.

There was no chances that so many complexities. You don't have the lawyers, the managers, or anyone who looks like you or understands you or is looking out for you or believing 100% that you can do it again and again. I don't even think that anything was said. But I did successfully. My company, Midsummer Music, is 41 years old, and it still exists.

And it has published some important people, Mark Sanders, a little tiny bit of Garth Brooks. Oh, nice. So two writers who are in the Nashville Songwriters Association. So number one is I came from Detroit City, so I set up my own publishing company. I got investors from outside of Nashville, an investor from outside of Nashville that believed in me and believed in my autonomy and supported me in that part and let me run the company. And they were fair to me.

Garth Brooks was really fair to me over the years. I found some allies who were really fair to me, and I had a vision. Like, for example, the songs that I published and we did and are on my new album, My Black Country, she has an album too. We had the first big country song about the homelessness. The first significant country song that I know of about lynching. That song was called The Ballad of Sally Ann.

I'm very thrilled that Rhiannon Giddens, who's on Cowboy Carter, she sings it on my new album now. And this is a song about a woman whose husband is lynched between his wedding and her reception. It's a song that demands reckoning. It demands acknowledging that lynching happened. Ebony Smith, brilliant black woman out of Memphis, is the producer. She put horns on that song.

People say, why are there horns on this song? To remind people that the last significant lynching we know of happened in 1955. It didn't happen in the 19th century or the 1910s. Emmett Till was lynched after he was drugged. People want to think that lynching, something happened a long time ago. Lynchings happened in the 40s. Lynching happened in 55. So that Ballad of Sally Ann that Rhiannon has re-recorded, produced by Ebony Smith,

this whole group, 11 different artists, all black women, rode to the rescue of my legacy when they came to make this album. So I made money because I was a publisher, because I was acting like Anna Gordy, because I didn't, and I recognized talent. And I worked with a lot of women to have this vision. At the very top of the success success when you get the big success it puts a target on your back and so even if you behind the scenes kind of yeah because there's so much money in the room got you back then there was so much money in the room and i as i said i fought myself only i take responsibility because i going out to lunch, and we were supposed to be celebrating that record. And they said something, read it in the book.

Like, all it does is change how long you're going to be with us. It's the same exact terms. Does that need to send it to my lawyer? No, you don't. It's just the same thing. I need to show people that you're not going to just get the big hit and go somewhere else because you're having the success. And I signed something without reading it, without the lawyer, thinking I swam in this lady's pool,

confusing a business associate with a friend. I've never made that mistake again. How old were you at the time? Could you remember? It was 1994. I was old enough to know better. I was old enough to know better. I was old enough to know better. And I did something that hardly anyone could believe I'd done.

I signed something without reading it. It was totally my fault. I knew better and I did it. It's also illegal though. If the lawyer said to you, if you said to the person, hey, I need to see my lawyer. He's like, no, no, no, you don't. They're not supposed to say that.

Who knows? It was in a room and no one's going to... All I can say is it all worked out and the end of my story now is there's an album that I adore. And, you know, if you are, for me, and I love that some of the interesting

things you've just said recently about if you are me. When I was starting off, Hal David asked me, what will you do if someone steals a song from you? And I thought for a moment, I said, write another song. He said, that's the answer. Go down to Nashville because people will. And you know what? I'm not glad that that thing happened to me, that that thing happened to me.

Now, I had the audacity. I refused to write for them after that. Like, you can have all the crap, but you're not getting another song. So you can just see that after two weeks of number one, I stopped writing country songs in that thing. And I wrote a book that was in the top ten, you know, When Done Gone,

the black retelling of Gone with the Wind from a black perspective, that I doubled down on a new audacity, on a new autonomy. If you're not going to play fair with me, I'll go play somewhere else. And that was a huge, huge success. And I now

have five novels. New York Times bestseller. New York Times bestseller. There's about to be another one. Critically acclaimed. And we've got My Black Country. So it all worked out for me because if you do the work and you get the wisdom, I learned from that lesson. Yeah.

If you do the work and you get the wisdom and you get the right people around you, then it does work out. But you lose some battles, but you go back. I learned that in Detroit. Survive to play to fight another day. Yeah. Can we talk about divine alignment? Because you started My Black Country a while ago.

So when you're writing the book and you know your book is about to be published, you get the date, it's April. But then all of a sudden you start to hear these Beyonce Texas Hold'em and Beyonce maybe doing a country album. Like, what did that feel like? It felt like what you just said, divine alignment. Because this project I started 41 years ago and really this part of it started in deep five years ago. It's a pure project for me. This is my life work, the history of black people and country,

putting it back into the 17th century. And it's just a wild alignment because it has created a global conversation, a global conversation that I spent 41 years preparing for, but actually started even earlier than that at Harvard in 1977, when I'm starting to look, studying the Harlem Renaissance with Nathan Huggins and starting to try to prove my father's black Detroit gossip was true, chasing that down. Because back then there was no scholarship that told us that the banjo was a black instrument. Back then there was no scholarship that said Lil Hardin was really on that record. But I have traced down these oral histories that other scholars have, and now we know that Lil

Hardin was absolutely on that record, that the black gossip of Motown was correct. So the alignment though, instead of this being some small book, although it wouldn't be. If you're on the Breakfast Club, I'm going to say I'm from up here in New York from Nashville. I want all the folks up in Detroit, all down south. I want you out there getting my black country. I want to be lifted up by black readers. That is, I have always, with all

of my books, starting with The Wind Done Gone, I have loved, one of my readers told me, is the literary equivalent of Prissy slapping Scarlet back. I had

more than one reading. I have to stop and tell this story. It was one of the most meaningful stories on Wind Down Gone Tour. I was in North Carolina. A black woman librarian had bought all these books for the State Library of North Carolina of mine. But we were coming home after the big

reading and I'm thinking back to my hotel, this is not the way we went. I don't know where we are going it's late at night we've got dinner reading and she drove me and we sat outside the house she pulled up in front of a house in a fancy neighborhood and she said my mother worked as a maid in this house almost all my life they made her come in the back door. They made me come in the back door. They loved Gone with the Wind. And I cannot tell you what it means to me that you wrote this book attacking everything that valued that and the way they treated her. I waited this long. She said, I felt such joy. But more than that, I had women who were ongoingly working as domestic servants telling me this book meant so much to them.

And when I read the book, that one out loud, and I read this one, because I'm not an actress. I'm not a performer. I don't have great voices like all three of you. I read this one because I've always, my grandparents couldn't read or write. My grandmother could read a tiny bit always my grandparents couldn't read or write. My grandmother could read a tiny bit. My grandfather couldn't read or write even his own name. I adore my grandparents. They were brilliant people and storytellers. Just never had a day

of school in Alabama. I read my books and make sure there's audio books because I know a lot of brilliant people can't read or write and that I want them I'm working as much for them as the people who have all these degrees and whatever that's amazing look chapter six in your book big dreams big hits big mistakes without spoiling it you know because i know it's a lot of information

in this book you keep saying look read this book we're gonna read it but i just can you tease a little bit what like mistakes mistakes was that big mistake was that signing without signing it without reading it because I swam in the ladies pool you want to invite me to your house I swam see I swam in your pool and all that yeah that was a big it was in the um big dreams that part of it was the first one the first big things I did was a song called big dream that I co-wrote with my daughter when she was just little. And it got into this movie called The Thing Called Love. It was River Phoenix's last big movie.

And it was a song. This girl is trying to make it in the Bluebird Cafe, trying to make it. Now, of course, they have a white girl playing it, Samantha Mott. But that was really my story. And I got to write all the songs for that main character. And that song, Big Dream, is the one she sings at the end of the movie. And what's wild about that is all the big white male songwriters were trying to get that job. Everybody was after it.

And I got it. So that was the first time I competed with these people for something they really wanted. And I beat them out. And that was a big movie, Paramount Pictures. And then that song has been recorded now by Valerie June now, which I'm so excited on the new version of it. So Big Dream was that song that I started writing. It was a song my daughter and I started writing together.

Then I wrote it with Ralph Murphy. And that got me to Hollywood. Y'all know that when you I got to meet Mr. Quincy Jones and work with him. He got me my first contract to write a black Western that never got made, but paid me some money. So that was really very exciting. And the big mistake was and then I had to pivot away from the big mistake. The big mistake was I literally signed that thing that I should never

have signed. I told you big dreams and you signed the contract without reading it. But the other good thing was that I got to write novels. I might have just been a country songwriter and now I get to be a country songwriter and a novelist and a memoirist. And I love my six books.

That's right. I've got one about a black spy family. Oh, hold up now, for real. Yes! Okay. And it's from, if you ever get involved in that kind of movie production, I've got a great one Rebel Yell about a black spy family. I've got some really cool books.

Oh, he's going to read all of them, girl. He's probably right. Yeah, and turn in the movies. We're going to talk about that. Let's respond on Quincy Jones a little bit because in the book you talk about Quincy Jones and the cosmic colored cowboy. Yes, that was going to be Danny Glover. That was amazing. You know, I got snuck into Quincy's house. I was literally. Got snuck in.

Hold on, wait. What you mean? How you just snuck up in there waving? You went through the side, the window, the back? Well, it was a wild thing. These are things you only do when you're? Yeah. How you just snuck up in there waving? You went through the side, the window, the back? Well, it was a wild thing. These are things you only do when you're really young. And I do not advise anyone to do this. I'm sure it would be very incorrect to do this now.

But I knew I wanted to write this black Western. And back then, I didn't think nobody was doing anything. This is way before Django or anything that was happening, anything like this. And so I realized the only person who could get this was Quincy Jones. I asked everybody I knew if they could get me a meeting with Quincy Jones. So a person I knew who was actually dating, they said they could get me into Quincy Jones's, give me a meeting with him.

And so I flew out at my own expense, and she picks me up at the airport, and we're on the way. She said something about the big problem. And I said, well, I thought we figured out the big problem. She said, no, the big problem is you don't really have an appointment with Quincy Jones. I said, we're not going. She said, I can get you into the house, but you don't actually have an appointment. I still don't know.

I said, do you mean like, you know, the guard? She didn't answer the question. I have no idea. I feel like that's about as far as we probably had. So I get let into Quincy Jones' house in Bel Air. It's a very lovely home. And they sit me in this room that looks sort of like a library. And he walks in front of me, literally.

He's like going. It's a room between two rooms. The first time he doesn't say anything, I don't say anything. I'm sitting there with literally banjos clipped to my ear, this little black denim skirt and white shirt and some black penny loafers that Danny Glover used to make fun of. He said, Alice, why are you wearing that, these penny loafers?

Anyway, he stops and says, either who are you? I mean, what are you here for? I said, I'm Alice from Detroit City and Nashville, Tennessee. I want to make a movie about a black cowboy. I think his wife has got kidnapped and gang raped

and everybody else doesn't want their wife back, but he loves his wife and wants her back. And he's like, Security! He sat down beside me and he said, now start that again. And I will tell you, I told it slower and two things happen he said right then and there

I'm going to take you to the movie studios and we're going to make that movie he said right in that first time he said but you've got to come back in two or three weeks because he said right now I'm going to lay down a velvet carpet for my pearl. And he was talking about Miles Davis. He was about to go do something with Miles Davis. I wasn't even sure what exactly he said. And so you need to come back in three weeks, two or three. And I came back and he took me to two studios and the second studio bought that movie.

And they didn't make it. I co-wrote it with someone else, but they paid me well. And it was this cosmic colored cowboy. It was just way too ahead of its time. But it was, and I loved working with Quincy Jones. We had some great projects together and he's just such a brilliant creative. But one of the things he taught me that I feel really inspired the second half of my career. And the Risi Palmer, Rhiannon Giddens. He taught me what I did for Linda Martel.

I hope I think Risi and Rhiannon would say this. I, they are my pearls. And in my courses, why I teach black country is so I can lay down a velvet carpet for my pearls, my black pearls, so that people can understand the significance of Raina Roberts. That, for example, that she's subversive because she has all these, she does things that people consider to be sins. And she is a black woman inhabiting that. And she is, it's fine that black women don't have to be perfect in country to be worthy. And that what other people consider to be wrong isn't necessarily. Does that make sense?

Yes. And that we don't have to be sanitized and perfect to be respected because country allows some real wildness, but it doesn't necessarily allow black characters wildness. They seem to have to be super perfect. And that's not right. I feel like it should be like that in all genres. Absolutely. It needs to be because it's like that in all life. Yeah, I feel like when you say that, I feel like that's what you see a lot of women in hip hop reclaiming in the last few years. Absolutely. You know, one of my favorite poets is Missy Elliott. I just have to shout out with her.

When I think of storytelling traditions, she and I remember seeing her on a beautiful throne. But I think that you're absolutely right. But we have to reclaim that people are imperfect. People are raggedy, but right at their best. And at least that's who I am. And we got to claim that and acclaim that. Absolutely. Listen, they got to go get the book, man. Alicia Randall, My Black Country, A Journey Through Country Music, Black Past, Present and Future. I do have one last question. Why do you think they try to erase so much of our people's involvement,

black people's involvement in the country music world? I think a lot of people find black genius threatening. I think that after that whole welcome table thing, that after we've been culturally redlined out of something, the guilt and shame some people have. Roy Acuff, if he were here, I'd say the guilt and shame he had of never doing right by default, Bailey. When people feel really guilty and really ashamed,

they sometimes don't want you anywhere near them. And I am thrilled that we are in a new day. Beyonce has helped, has been a big part of bringing that day because what is being noticed here, and some of that's on the Breakfast Club out there, is the existence of a global black audience for country. We haven't even talked about that.

The people listen, black people listen to country in Africa and including make their own black country there., black people listen to country in Africa and including make their own black country there. But black people in this country also listen to country and a larger number are going to now. And it's the black genius. There has been so much black genius hidden in country that I think it's a great time to be celebrating and centering it and to realize, as I say, if country owes a great debt to black people, what in America doesn't? That is country.

And that's why, because some people don't want to recognize the debt, what they owe. And this country, I want to end on that saying that Thomas Jefferson, when he was defining freedom, he had his British, the British documents and the French documents, but they always talked about freedom as legal and economic. And when you say life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you know how we get to that? Sally Hemings, that black woman in his bed that he understood all around him that some black people embodied freedom, even when they didn't have a legal right to it, even when they didn't have economic freedom, that freedom starts in the mind. And some people, and that, our American understanding of freedom is country music, is black, and it has some English and Celtic in it.

So when we understand what freedom means and its ideal in America, that is a co-creation of black people and white people, just like country music. Yeah, you have it. Thank you. Alice Randall, ladies and gentlemen,

make sure you pick up a book right now. My black country. Yes. The latest release. Country's music, black past, present and future. Yes.

The latest release off my book imprint, black privilege publishing, but also this Wednesday from seven to eight 30, you can catch me and Alice Randall and Roseanne Cash. We'll be at the Brooklyn Public Library from 7 to 8.30 having more conversations about my black

country. Yes, and I was so excited. I hope to see so much of the Breakfast Club out there. I came all the way up from Nashville to meet some new people. I'm Char's country cousin. Come up to town. The auntie.

Country auntie. We need you. That's right. It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning. Wake that ass up. In the morning. The Breakfast Club.