What do you get when Allison Russell, Rhiannon Giddens, Valerie June and others get together to sing songs by an underappreciated black songwriter on John Prine’s label? My Black Country – The Songs of Allice Randall.
Alice Randall has been writing country music songs for decades. Though hers isn’t exactly a household name, she’s been quite successful, writing some hit songs that were performed by the likes of Trisha Yearwood, Moe Bandy and Glen Campbell. But My Black Country is the first time she gets to her songs sung by the black women artists she envisioned as the messengers of her art. The songs are covered by some of the best of today’s Americana women singers, who happen also to be Black: Leyla McCall, SistaStrings, Adia Victoria, Giddens, Sunny War, Miko Marks, Russell, Saaneah Jamison, Rissi Palmer, June, and Randall’s daughter Caroline Randall Williams.
Randall’s story (which she tells at length in a book released in conjunction with the recording, My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future) isn’t what one might expect of a Nashville songwriter. Born in Detroit and raised in and around Washington, DC (where she attended the same prep school as a certain Supreme Court Justice – yes, that one), she graduated with honors from Harvard before heading to Nashville, get into the music business.
But don’t let the pedigree fool you. Randall has had some hard knocks, including, according to her liner notes, being raped as a youth with her mother’s knowledge. Randall said music, particularly country music (especially including Prine), provided an escape. And since being in the music business, she has at times struggled; she says black voices and artists are largely “white-washed … out of country space.”
But she hasn’t relied exclusively on her music income. She is a professor and writer in residence at Vanderbilt University, and she’s written numerous books, including The Wind Done Gone, a popular parody of Gone with the Wind (which resulted in her being sued by Margaret Mitchell’s estate, because … whatever).
My Black Country is a great album, featuring great songs, mostly with a feminist bent. Among my favorites are “Small Towns (Are Smaller for Girls),” sung by McCalla; “The Ballad of Sally Anne,” sung by Giddens; “Many Mansions,” sung by Russell, and “XXX’s and OOO’s (An American Girl),” sung by Williams (also a writer-in-residence at Vanderbilt!).
About the author: Bill Wilcox is a roots music enthusiast recently relocated from the Washington, DC area to Philadelphia, PA and back again.