My Black CountryMy Black Country

"It was at the age of three, sitting in the front seat of her father's car, that Alice Randall began to write her first country song: "Daddy, don't go in that B-A-R." To Randall, country music is a beating heart, shared communally with her family alive and gone, and the origin of a singular distinction she holds in American music history: the first Black woman to cowrite a #1 country hit, Trisha Yearwood's "XXX's and OOO's." Randall found inspiration and comfort in the sounds and history of the first family of Black country music: DeFord Bailey, Lil Hardin, Ray Charles, Charley Pride, and Herb Jeffries, who, together, made up a community of Black Americans rising through hard times to create simple beauty, true joy, and, sometimes, profound eccentricity. Now, in My Black Country, comes a celebration of country music as a genre with its original yet ever-evolving Black roots and flowers. Randall guides the reader with painstaking care as she revisits her own past marked by times of trial and triumph. Situating us in the present as country music goes through a fresh renaissance, with a new wave of Black artists enjoying success, My Black Country is both an earnest reclamation of the genre and a vibrant introduction for a new generation of listeners who appreciate the radical joy in realizing the power of Black influence on American culture." --