You’ll likely know Alice Randall as a revered author, who became nationally known in the wake of 2001’s The Wind Done Gone, her reinterpretation of Gone With the Wind that centers Black perspectives. What you might not be aware of is that prior to her debut novel, Randall penned songs cut by mainstream country artists — who, as it’s unlikely to surprise you, are all white. April 12, Oh Boy Records is set to release My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall, featuring an array of ace singers and songsmiths in the country, R&B and Americana worlds who are Black women.
“Because all the singers of my songs had been white, because country has white-washed Black lives out of country space, most of my audience assumed the stars of my songs were all white,” Randall writes in a release. “I wanted to rescue my Black characters. This album does that; it centers black female creativity, but it welcomes co-creators and allies from a myriad of identities. This is the good harvest: abundant love and beauty for all.”
The first track released from the collection illustrates Randall’s point handily. Above, listen to blues champion, poet and activist Adia Victoria’s take on “Went for a Ride.” The song first appeared on Radney Foster’s 1992 debut Del Rio, TX 1959. That version is a fine showcase for Foster’s voice, but its major-key ballad arrangement, floating on a cloud of reverb, emphasizes nostalgia for a bygone time. Foster sounds like he’s staring wistfully at some sepia-tone photos as he sings the line in the hook that you’ll probably find yourself humming later: “It wasn’t cowboys and ponies / It was horses and men.”
It’s easy enough to focus on that part and miss out on the full story in the lyrics (see also: “Born in the U.S.A.”) — or even that the former riding partner that the narrator is singing about is Black, though it’s the first line of the song. Victoria’s brooding take on the piece redirects our attention to how hard it was to eke out a living tending cattle; in contrast to Foster, she doesn’t make this sound like a party: “There was blood on the leather / And tears in their eyes / We swore at the devil / And went for a ride.” At every turn, she reinforces the song’s thematic underpinning: Nostalgia for something that never existed — a grand Old West where manly men frolicked about wide-open spaces without a care beyond ensuring the horses were fed and the herd didn’t stray — is dangerously toxic, no matter how well it might sell.
“To join the circle of Black women coming together to reimagine the songs and stories of Alice Randall was the definition of blues work,” writes Victoria in the release. “This is the work of reclaiming, re-conjuring, re-centering and resurfacing Black, Southern storytelling that has too long been denied its due outside the ‘qualifier’ of Whiteness. The Storybook of Alice Randall allows for a closer listening — a truer listening — to the lives and stories of the Black Southern women I always imagined living the lyrics in Alice’s songs.”
The 11-track set includes Allison Russell on “Many Mansions” (cut by Moe Bandy in 1989), SistaStrings doing “Girls Ride Horses” (a single for Judy Rodman in 1987), Rhiannon Giddens on “Sally Anne” (fittingly, a traditional tune to which Randall set lyrics, cut by Mark O’Connor on 1991’s The New Nashville Cats). It wraps with Randall’s daughter Caroline Randall Williams on “XXX’s and OOO’s,” which was Trisha Yearwood’s second No. 1 single on its release in 1994. Check with your favorite local record shop or see this handy link for preorder options.
