May 14, 2024 • 55 mins
On this episode of The Bobbycast, Bobby Bones and Eddie do music talk about the most covered country songs. Then, we hear from Alice Randall about her new book and career. Alice details the importance of writing her book, My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music's Black Past, Present, and Future. She also talks about Charley Pride's influence on country music and starting her career as the only female black songwriter in Nashville. She also shares the time she met Roseanne Cash and wrote a song for Johnny Cash and more!
Book info on S&S.com here: MY BLACK COUNTRY: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future (Black Privilege Publishing; on sale 4/9/24; ISBN 9781668018408; Hardcover $28),
Album info on Alice's press page here!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
The country has never shied away from the actual reality,
how hard it is to make a living, how hard
it is to keep the love going.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hey guys, welcome to episode four fifty two. Coming up,
we'll talk to Alice Randall. She wrote My Black Country,
a journey through country music's black past, present, and future,
and also a really good songwriter and has written hits,
massive hits, So we'll talk to her. Also, she's a professor.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, after this, I want to go to her class. Yeah,
me too, the cooking class, Yeah, me too. I just
want to eat though at that cooking class.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
So that's coming up again, Vanderbilt professor, award winning songwriter, novelist,
and author, Alice Randall. And again i'll encourage you to
check out My Black Country. There's also a musical companion
to that as well. Shall we tease what or like
spoil what? She wrote at least one of the big songs.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Yeah, it's a big one.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
X's and O's Trishy Eetterwood.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
She used to nama his and have been sending boos.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Who in nexu zanos that goes I think that's it. Yeah, yeah,
And we're gonna start with this.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Stacker looked into the twenty five most covered country songs
of all time.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
And so Eddie and I talked about this a bit.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
The number one song has been covered like almost five
hundred times, and you'll find out what that song is.
We discussed each of these songs, their significance and country
music history. Some of these we discovered for the very
first time ever because they are so old. But this
is a very historic Bobby Cast. How do you feel
about that? It's good I should teach a class.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Yeah, we can keep some of the really really old
ones in there because the.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
The law, yeah, like the law that keeps us from
putting music in doesn't affect these songs because they're so
old and it's so old, like public domain even yeah,
like I'm a little teapot or these really old country songs.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
I think it falls under that. Okay, here you go.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Appreciate you guys being here, Episode four fifty two on
the Bobby Cast. It's Bobby and Eddie talk music.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Hey man, hey man, you want to talk music, Let's
talk about something. Might as well talk music.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
From stacker dot com, these are the top twenty five
most covered country songs. Oh and just data search it
see how many versions See if you can sing it
to me, okay, and if we can't, we just kind
of screwed because we can't really play the podcast or
a clip on the podcast. But number twenty five it
has one hundred and sixty two covers, originally recorded by
(02:23):
Hank Williams and his Drifting Cowboys, Clyde Grubb and his
Tennessee Valley Boys.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
I saw the light. I saw the light.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
I was that's Brooks and Done and then Luke Combs
when he did brand New Man Brooks Reboot Brooks and Done.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
So what is I saw the light? We can't play anything, Mike, No,
just a piece of it? Can't Can I play it
for my phone?
Speaker 5 (02:45):
Noh, we need reference to this.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
It starts, I wondered, so aimless, life filled with sin.
I wouldn't let my dear savior in. That's not gonna
do anything, no nothing. What if I listened to it
in my ear? You can do that, then sing it.
We're not going to jail, Mike, Hey, Mike it over yourself.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
Well, we're going to jail. It's gonna be YouTube, not mean.
I'm just a guess man.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
I saw the light. There you go. It's a fiddle.
You're good, all right, it's good, dude, I saw the light, Okay,
got it.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
They must have covered that a long time ago too,
because they don't do that one anymore.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
All right, Moving on.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Number twenty four, all right, right, all right, Crazy Arms
one hundred and seventy covers.
Speaker 5 (03:30):
I on Earth, He's got to be old again, crazy
arm crazy, I'm crazy for your arm.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
There's some fiddley. This is old man, old fiddle. It sucks.
We can't play a clip word documentary show.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I know.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
We're not gonna know this. Who's singing that one? Ray Price?
Oh wow? That one? All right?
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Number twenty three, This one's easy. We'll know this one.
One hundred and eighty eight covers of it. Stand by your.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Man, stand by ol Man one hundred and why not? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Is she the og? And then recovered he wrote it, Wow,
that's cool. Number twenty two, one hundred and eighty nine
covers Joline.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Joline Joline Joline Jolie.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Wrote it by herself. Number twenty one, one hundred and
ninety one covers. I can't help but if I'm still
in love with you. Original record about Hank Williams and
is Drifting Cowboys, written by Hank Williams.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
No Blue Moon a Kentucky. I know Bloe Moon, I've
heard of that, but I don't think I can sing
that one. Can you play it in my ear? Bloomon
of Kentucky? Old school, dude, old school? Okay?
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Number nineteen you'll know, original recorded by Patsy Klein. I
fall to pieces, Wow, I.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Fall dude pieces. Do you know? Do you know her story?
Patsy Cline? Yeah? In what way? Do you know? She died? Yeah? Okay,
plank crash yeah, here near?
Speaker 5 (05:00):
I mean yeah, there was this like this, this show
on I think Max maybe that's like a movie, like
a movie that they made about her life, and I
watched it. Man, she had a rough life, Yeah, rough life.
Husband was a bad dude.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Anyway. Else had a rough life? Was me and Bobby McGee.
Oh yeah, Danis Joplin rough live And she didn't even
get to have success alive. Neither did Patsy really, she
was just coming up.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Number eighteen is possibly my favorite song ever. That's all
I want to say.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Blue Eyes Crying, well, wass gonna.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Give you hints, but yeah, it's two hundred and ten covers.
God will Willie was crying in the ring written by
Fred Rose, not Willie not Willie wow So who was
the original singer of that.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Roy Acuff Really?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Number seventeen, two hundred and thirteen covers Karne Karna relates
to nineteen twenty eight by blues artist Charlie McCoy and Bochapman.
I don't know that I'll know that one anyway, I'm
hearing in my ears Number sixteen recorded by Johnny Cash.
In the Tennessee Too, written by Johnny Cash, two hundred
(06:05):
and sixteen covers, I walked the line.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Uh, I walked the line. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 5 (06:14):
Well, yeah, that's gotta be amazing to have so many
covers of your song two hundred and twenty four covers,
Number fifteen and I know this when you know this
one too?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Hey good Looking, Hank Williams.
Speaker 5 (06:23):
Singor Hey good looking, what you got cooking?
Speaker 3 (06:28):
How a boy cooking something up for me?
Speaker 2 (06:32):
And then the cheese like the National Cheese Federation took
it and changed it to.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Hey, good looking, what you got cooking? How'd you like
cooking something up with cheese? Really? They ran it. Yeah,
I don't remember that. I was singing a song with
my wife through the day.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
I was like I love eggs from my head down
to my legs.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
And she was like, that's not a real song.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I was like, yes from the egg commission from back
in the day commercials because she was incredible edaway egg.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
I was like, no, is that real? Yeah? Oh you
guys are remember you know know a song I do?
I love eggs. I do like singing old jingles though.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, from my head down to my legs. Cold Cold
Heart two hundred and thirty eight covers Cold Cold Heart.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
That's not my Q what about Hank Williams. This Hank
Williams song has just been covered by everybody in country.
My cold Cold Hort we'll tell Can you play that
in my ear? Yeap, I don't know it, my cold
cold Hall. Maybe he does that? That sounds it sounds
like that would be next.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Number thirteen, two hundred and fifty five covers I Will
Always Love You, Dolly Parton, I've written by yourself, Dolly Parton.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
I'll let you sing that one. No do real low
smart Yeah. Number twelve, Hank Williams, You're cheating heart.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
You're cheating old har.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
It's like the twist, like Cheby Checker. He did the twist.
But they need to twist again. Oh yeah, same song,
but just want to make a little money.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
That's funny. Let's twist again like we did last summer.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
John Henry three hundred and ten covers one of the
most popular folk songs in American history.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Sean Henry, recorded nineteen twenty four. This could be public
domain if we have the old version of it. Let's
see who's this by? What do you got through?
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Sounds like I was playing the CELLPHONEZ that was for sure, hundred.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Sounds public domain to me.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Fidland, John Carson, and covered three hundred and ten times
by who.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
I think all the other folk artists around them Airbay
in Town.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Love's Ring of Fire Love is originally recorded by Anita Carter,
written by June Carter and Merle Kilgore. Oh wow, but
that is Ring of Fire. So songs that Johnny Cash.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Saying huge. He made it made it huge, a little different,
but that same song. Uh. Number nine, three hundred twenty
five covers of it. Take Me Home, Country Road, Yes,
take take you road.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
We should know all the rest of these, right, have
any of the place. Number eight I'm so lonesome Hank
Williams again, I'm so lonesome.
Speaker 5 (09:07):
I can cry, I'm so lonesome, my good cry.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Riders in the Sky, Riders in the Sky. That's the doors.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
And I don't know that I know this one yet,
but that's the doors you play at Mike. So that
version is Johnny Cash right.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
M m Goho Riders. It sounds like a small movie.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Nine hundred Miles Away from Home, covered three hundred and
fifty one times, but it's fiddling John Carson again, so
recorded with the suit can Frame long Ly Sure Number
five three hundred and seventy two covers written by Willie Nelson.
(09:58):
Original recorded about Patsy c Line crazy, I'm crazy for
feeling so lonely. Help me make it through the night,
written by Chris Christopherson. Four hundred and three covers recorded
by Chris Christopherson and Percy Sledge.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Wow, don't know that one? I bet we do? You
play it my ear? I mean kind of? It may
help me make it through the not but I don't know.
I don't know that one.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
It's crazy that it's number four and we don't really
like no, No, it number three is here's the hints.
It's been covered four hundred and thirty six times. That
it's a lot. It was written by Jack Rawlins and
Steve Nelson. That Won't Help You, originally recorded by Gene
Autry and the Cass County Boys.
Speaker 5 (10:42):
Ruto off the Red Nose randew No, but You're close. Oh,
what's the one that click click click up on the
house top.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Frosty the Snowman. Dang it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you would.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
That's crazy If that was their original, they must have
made so much money off of that.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Number two covered four hundred and thirty nine times, the
original version of nineteen thirty nine by the Pine Ridge Boys.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
You for sure know this song pine Ridge Boys. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
I would try to give you a hints or to
do something, but it's just too easy. Number two most
covered song of all time.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
You are My Sunshine. Oh wo my oldest sunshine. That's crazy.
That's a country song. I mean, that's got to be
an old yu song too, nineteen thirty nine. Yeah, do
you have the original? You are my sun Shot? That's cool?
Only some shot, Oh my only only son. Time you
make me have me on Sky's are great. You'll never
(11:39):
know how much oild of you. Please don't take my
song shine always some of those harmonies, that's awesome. I
just picked one of the one of those jugs too,
three xes on it. Yeah, that's awesome and.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
The number one most covered country song of all time,
written by Pea week King and Red Stewart the Special
Record in nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
I wonder if the song isn't could you give me
the artist or is that too? I can give you
a bunch of them.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Originally recorded by Cowboy copas Pee Wee King and his
Golden West Cowboy so it's really old, right, And then
artists like Otashred and Eli Fitzgerald, Patsy Kline, Elvis Presley
all did a standard of it.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Okay, suck the version? Oh no way you get this?
You ain't nothing but a hond on no Tennessee waltz?
Speaker 2 (12:35):
What on earth can you play some of that Tennessee waltz?
I don't the most covered song of all time, and
I don't know that song.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
I thought I knew a lot about music until now.
A lot of music I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Of a lot of Hank Williams senior. Yeah, and also
some guy recording himself with a fiddle.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
And uh, what what was his name? Henry what Winkler?
One bo Henry.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah, well that's another episode of Eddie and Boby talking
about music.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Wow. I learned a lot there. Hey, thanks for talking
about music with me. Man anytime, dude.
Speaker 6 (13:06):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor,
and we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
First, thank you for coming over. This is cool for
me because when somebody that I adore adore somebody and says, hey,
you should really talk to them, I'm like, all right,
let's go. And then I started actually researching about you.
So Charlotte and the Gods are my best friends, like
so we're so close to it, and I my company
may here, may not, like we switch out and and
(13:42):
take care of each other like internal like lang, like
we grew up the same way. So he called and
he said, hey, told me you writing this book. And
the book that I read was the because I've written
a couple of books to Alice, this was the like
the publicity book. So all the chapters are like zero
zero zero zero, So I forget the places.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
And like go back.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
But you have such a wonderful story yourself, and I'd
like to start with just talking about a couple of
personal things, a couple things that I had pulled from
the book that I was like, I got to talk
about this because I'm interested in this that even if
there weren't microphones, I would ask you about. So I
was part of the Charli Pride documentary because it was
(14:22):
a massive Charlie Pride fan. My grandma was My grandma
grew up and she was country music. So it was
pushed on to me. But you had the chance to
Actually I never get to meet him.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I got to meet him from nineteen eighty three, from
the beginning of when I came down here, and I
got to spend some really sweet time with him at
the very end of his life. Yeah, you said that
you were in that Charlie Pride.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
I was.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah, and so was I and it was really funny.
And for your listeners, who don't mean I've been in
country music forty one years where we are today. I
remember when George and Tammy lived here in Franklin, wrote
and I would come back and drive past their house.
But so I was in the Charlie Pride documentary in
my role being a professor at Vanderbilt teaching about country music,
(15:03):
and so I was in the second VIP section, not
the good one. But I was really there.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Not good VIP.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
There's levels of VIP. You're always in the top one,
so you didn't know about the other one. But so
I was lucky to be there and so thrilled to
actually just be And Tanne Tucker, I remember she was
in the first one, as she deserved to be, And
there was a seat by me, and Charlie Pride walks
in and he comes and sits at his own documentary
in the second VIP section to sit beside me, And
(15:34):
of all the honors I have received, I almost cheer
up to this moment. He died, not I think within
a year of that that he sat there, and when
I came on, he's pointing to me. And when I
arrived in Nashville in.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Eighty eighty three, that what herote about.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
He had already been at the top of the charts
twenty nine times, twenty nine times. He was about to
go up with his last time to the number one spot.
And I remember being askcap dinner of black tie and
walking across the room to see him. He has no
idea who I am, and he stood up. I teasily
say maybe he just had to go to the bathroom.
(16:09):
I don't. Maybe because I was one of the only
black ladies in the room, maybe because he just had
that good hod trading. He stood up and we had
to encounter each other from eighty three to the end
of his life, and it meant so much to me.
He got a Lifetime Achievement award and I was getting
my hair DoD and Garth. I got a phone call
from Garth Brooks's manager, Bob Doyle, and it was Charlie
(16:33):
Pride is getting this big award and Garth wants you
to be on the stage with him and talk to
him about Charlie Pride. And that was when COVID was
still going on. I have the breast cancer things, so
I was really afraid of going out. That's how much
Charlie Pride meant to me. That I got on my
mask and got on that stage and took it off
and we just had Garth that I had an amazing
conversation about Charlie Pride because his voice he carves layers
(16:59):
of mean. He didn't write, and I'm a songwriter. I
don't sing, but I've been hearing about Charlie Pritt. I
was born in Detroit in nineteen fifty nine. I remember
when he came out as black in Detroit City, his
audience didn't know that. It was talked about so much
that even as a little girl in black Detroit, I
heard that gossip right then at his voice on the radio.
(17:20):
It was just so utterly universal, kissing Angel, good morning lot.
I mean, so there was just so much in every time,
every song.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
What do you think aside from how good he sounded it?
And I want to give my incorrect, probably opinion and
correct me one hundred times. And if i'm if you
feel differently about it, because again I'm coming from it
in my perspective as a white dude that grew up
in a segregated black and white town. M hm, So
my perspective isn't always going to be correct, Like I'm
not coming from the center of it. I'm coming from
(17:54):
near the outside of the edge. And so but I
also know that so if I say something you're like,
you know, I don't feel like that's actually a like,
let me know, why do you feel. Charlie Pride was
extremely valuable to country music in general, but he literally was.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
A brilliant singer. The way he bit notes very similar
to George Jones. He got that bit how he ben
did it. But all that truth, the passion, you know.
But he was important to country music for so many
different reasons. But remember his audience fell in love with him.
They didn't even know he was black, so they didn't
fall in love with him because he was blacky. He
had that juke blox voice. He had that I call
(18:36):
it that Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday morning paradox. Like
he had all the sin in him and all the sacred.
And when you got all the sin and all the
sacred in it, you got a great country song. He
was raggedy and right. But to me, part of the
genius of Charlie Pride that I hadn't thought of back
when in nineteen eighty three eighty four is when he
stood on the stage. He stood like an athlete.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
He was such an athlete, like he was a professional athlete.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
He was a baseball player. He had been in the
Negro leagues, he even had some time in the bigs,
And he was an athlete. He reminded some people of
what cash is Clay. He stood on the stage as
a man and not as a performer. He was delivering
the reality of a grown man's life, and I think
(19:21):
people got it. Men, women, people got it. They were
attracted to the power, the power in his stance. He
was so charismatic. I mean, the man had a twinkle
in his eye to the end. And that last time
I was sitting beside my husband and husband I'm now divorced,
and at the end of the documentary I could tell
(19:43):
something was he needed to get to the bathroom and
we were on this stair stadium type seating and I
asked him, do you need David to help you get there?
Absolutely yes, and he he accepted the help. David walked
him out. Was proud to be his walking stick. But
even with walking, he still had his swagger. He's so
(20:04):
still gorgeous. He still had it.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
The reason that they had asked me to be a
part of the Charlie Pride documentary. Again, there's a lot
of country music from when country music and gospel really
were crossing over, and so that's what I listened to
a lot as a kid because my grandmother adopted me
for a long time, so her music was my music.
You know, everything from you know, Andy Griffith's gospel records
(20:28):
to Ray Charles modern sounds, the country music like all
of that area. But Charlie pride to me was I
loved his songs. But I also am a massive sports fan,
so I know I knew he had like a double
life where he was such an athlete. But his story
of all of his music being sent out places and
(20:49):
never having a picture on it because he did not
want to be judged or have someone not give him
equal treatment because he was a black man, and the
fact that they had to keep that up for a
long time, Like that's what I talked about, and how
there must have been such a range of emotions internally
inside of him. One to understand like this, Okay, if
(21:11):
the record level was going to do this, this may
be lead to success, but too I would imagine you
probably want to be who you are at the same time.
And from my understanding, like that was always something that
plagued him a bit.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Well I said that phrase he went incognigro. People did
not know he was black. But I also think he
was very strategic man. He was a businessman aside from
being a musician. One of the things he was a
role model to me about. I've got to tell you
in a moment, he's in my first family of Black
Country is He came in about real estate. He came
and invested in publishing. He came in and supported other writers.
(21:47):
He was a man among men, And I don't always
like that because I say about country small towns are
smaller for girls, all girls. That that was business men
were running this town when Charlie Pride came to town and
he found a space in that business life. But he
had that visionary sense that he was both an artist
and a business person. He understood it's a music business.
(22:08):
If you want control of your fate, you've got to
get control of some part of the business.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Where do you think that came from his acumen? Like
what part of his life do you think that really developed?
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Being probably very.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Poor and hard, coming up really hard, and having nobody
trying to help him. I mean, one of the stories
I don't know if it's true or not that I
wasn't able to document, but supposedly when he was in
the negro leagues at one time somebody traded him for
a bus. Like being treated like an object and knowing
you weren't. But what I love is that brilliance that
(22:45):
that he It's like he was so successful in one
area that he was able to translate it into another. Sure,
and this so Americans stand. So you know, to me,
I call it country as corn bed Charlie Pride, because
you know, people want to talk about it. Most people
didn't even realize. It's just on the radio with somebody
who said they then they fell in love with Charlie Pride.
They didn't even know he was black. Like that, he
(23:06):
quote unquote sounds white to a lot of people. And
that's one of the things when I talk about my
book My Black Country, I talk about a first family
of Black country, and the two the MoMA and pop
of that is Defour Bailey and Lil Harden. But one
of the things about Lil Harden that's so interesting is
she played on this song called Blue Yodel Number nine.
Everybody knows that song. It was the first million seller.
(23:28):
It sounds like what people think a hill billy, old
hill billy record should sound like. But the reality is
two black people played on it, Lil Harden and Louis
Armstrong and Jimmy Rodgers. People think they know what black
people sound like, but they don't. Always they didn't know
Charlie Pride is a stone black man.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
We were talking about the book before you came in,
and I was talking about how you were talking. You
had mentioned the First Family, and I think you said
Ray Charles was like the kid genius, the child genius
something Will d Ford's brilliant child. Yeah, like he was
the kid genius. What'd you love about Ray Charles?
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Oh? I love the way he plays a piano. You
talk about the gospel piano. My aunt had lost a
baby in a house fire before I was born, and
she basically had descended into a bottle. And when I
was born, she came out of that. But what really
really helped her She used to cha cha around the
living room with me to Ray Charles the first year
(24:26):
I was born. It was just for a thrill. That
became one of the theme songs of my life. But
when modern Sounds in Country and Western dropped that song,
Bye Bye Love, it was an entire grammar of love
for her. One of those songs is was written by
Felice and Buddolo O'Bryant and pleeere one of the greatest
women songwriters country ever knew. But she's also a great
(24:48):
rock songwriter. Bye Bye Love. Ray Charles had the most
extraordinary song since but when he plays his piano, it
takes you to church. And what I'll say in the book,
I talk about but that piano that came from Arizona
Dreams a blind woman who played in the Kojik church
(25:09):
out in Los Angeles, the way Jerry Lee Lewis pounded
his piano, the way Ray Charles pounded his piano. Even
Aretha Owes a lot to a black woman called it Arizona.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
My Black country. The book in general, the entire project.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Is this something that you set out, I'm going to
write this specific book or was it a different like
collections of stories that you've had over an amount of time.
Because I've done both kinds of books. I've just set
out and wrote, I want to write this book, and
then I've also had a bunch of stuff that I've
accumulated and went, oh, this makes sense together.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Where did this book come from?
Speaker 1 (25:43):
But you're a real writer because it's a little bit
of both of those things. That's that process.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
You know.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
When I first came here forty one years ago out
of Harvard, of all strange things, where I was listening
to country while I was typing papers, I knew I
wanted to talk about people like Defour Bailey and Lil Hardened.
Black people have been a race from the history of
country and the banjo, because I sincerely love country music
and I love it as a profound American art forum
(26:09):
that has been, in my opinion, co created by black
and white people. And like you, you know, I was
born in Detroit, Michigan, when it was a really segregated city.
My black Detroit was Detroit was a majority white city,
but my world was completely black. The wasn't just a
popsicle truck that went down the road. It was a
watermelon truck in the summer. It was might as well
(26:32):
be in Detroit, Alabama. But those people, my aunt, my grandmother,
my mother, they all listened to countries. So I have
known that black people listened to country because if you
were in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi back in the forties, there
was no black radio to listen to. You can go
to a juke joint, but if you listen, we're on
radio right now. Black people, including Ray Charles, listen to
(26:55):
country on the radio. That's why I'm honored to be
on this show, because this is the show. Radio is
what introduced Ray Charles to Defot Bailey. That's where he
first heard Defot.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
When I do my stand up shows, I talk a
bit about the history of country music, and I tell
the story about how generationally, we'll say generationally every decade,
every fifteen years or so, in country music, the same
argument of well, that ain't country happens. Regardless, it's cyclical,
(27:28):
it happen. And anybody that I've talked to, from Kenny
Rodgers to Garth to they all will have the same
story of when they came to talent and since they
were a bit different, they were told that's not country.
And so but what I rooted in and usually now
I'm from a rural town in Arkansas, So I say
this about other rural, semi uneducated white dudes who go, well,
(27:52):
that ain't country, they have no idea that really, what
real country is is the combination of Europeans with a
fiddle and the slave ships with string banjo. Like that's
if you want to say what exactly is country, it's
those black artists and it's those Europeans, and that's what
got the music to the hills to even start to
(28:14):
be created. Like to me, that's what the original country
music is.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Absolutely and I would just add this.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
One thing, please tell me I love it.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
So it's a Celtic, English, Irish, Scottish ballot forms plus
the Black influences, plus Evangelical Christianity. You need that, that
the Black Church, and that belief in God in heaven
because if not, if you don't have that, you may
have a blues song. You may have a country blues
and if you don't have the black influences, you may
have a folk song. And all of those are real.
(28:45):
But I think you're so right, and it's important to
know when we're arguing about what is country, we're really
arguing about what is America, because country claims itself and
is in some real ways America's music.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
And I like normal, peace, normal.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
There's no such things normal, but like common, hardworking people's anthems.
And that feels like that's where it started, because you're
looking at immigrants, and you're looking at people that are
forced to come here, and it gets no more hard
working than people who are either forced to find a
new life or have to move from their old life
(29:21):
because it's so hard.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Absolutely, life is hard. Is one of the rules of
country music. I look this not to get into the wild.
But sixteen carriages to me when I heard that song,
I hear the relationship to sixteen tons, and I assure
you that song, which is a country stone country classic,
But I would go up in Detroit. These men, black
and white working on the assembly lines, they knew everything
(29:44):
about sixteen times. They weren't digging coal in a West
Virginia coal mine or Alabama, but they were working assembly
line that same way. Merle Haggard, hungry eyes. This resonates
across lives when people are living hard lives. Johnny Cash,
I shot a man just to watch him die. All
(30:05):
kinds of mothers have felt that same pain. Country is
hard music for hard people, which is one of the
things I love about it. And my four Country rules
are what makes us on country. Life is hard, God
is real, the road, liquor, and family are significant compensations,
and the past is better than the present.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
The third one is kind of funny.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
The road, liquor and family are significant compensations for the
fact life is hard and blues there's no significant And
is it true? I read somewhere and sometimes you read
things aren't true that one of your first interviews was
Darius Rucker.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
It was my very first ever Well, I read that.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
And one of the things I tried to that song
of his from Hooting the Blowfish, let Her Cry. That's
a country song, but I was saying, because it has
a prayer in it, his mama, it is God in it.
That changes everything.
Speaker 7 (30:58):
Oh Mama, please hell? I mean yes, yeah. And this
woman is about to go use YEP drugs, but he
is asking God, He's begging his godden mama. There is
nothing more stone country than asking your mama and God
to help you get through something.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
And I think a lot of that too, because he's
South Carolina, right, a lot of it. And I think, again,
you're you're the expert. So but I feel like regionally,
even for me growing up before streaming music hit, you
could really only get what was around music wise, so
the influence was whatever's in the store or unless you
(31:33):
signed up for one of those eight pennies for twenty
ced deals and then you get like a Chili Pepper CD.
But it was all country music all the time. So
if you lived in South Carolina, if you live like Darius,
if you live in Arkansas like myself Georgia, if you so,
regardless of what music you liked all that regional influence
(31:54):
was built in. So when HOODI comes down and they're
a rock band, there's so much country influence because Darius
is from Charleston, South.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Carolina, absolutely, and what's going on in those southern college scenes,
they cross pollinating through the sports teams, through the SEC.
There is so much of that rooted countriness in that.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
What was the goal when you started writing the book?
What did you want to when someone finished it? What
did you want them to have?
Speaker 1 (32:20):
I wanted them to have an understanding of how black, white,
and indigenous people came in together and built this thing
we call country and that we love, and that it
already has been baked into it these cross collaborations, and
it's the cross collaborations that actually make it amazing. I
also wanted to go back and celebrate. I think life
(32:42):
is hard and God is real, and those are some real,
centered think truths that we all be better off holding onto,
in my opinion right now. And I didn't answer your
question when you asked me five years ago. I had died,
got diagnosed with cancer, and that's I thought, I've got
to do this book. I've got to tell this truth
(33:03):
of what I've been researching for forty some years, and
how this, how this hard This music helped me get
through that moment and helped me get through hard moments
before that. I love country music because country music has
helped me get through so much over the years. And
so many other.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
People can ask where you started, not page one of
the book, but where you started with the book, because
it's always a fundamental jump off point, something that's very
important to your foundation. Where did you start this book
from in your heart, in your head, I'll.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Cry over it. Daddy don't go in that var that
I wrote my first country song in a motown cherry tree.
And I also knew as I got older in Harvard,
the other kids didn't have didn't write songs like Daddy,
don't go in that bar because my daddy was an alcoholic.
He was actually a great father too, and he would
jump into bar get a drink. I don't even know
what was on the other side of the door. And
(33:58):
one day I said, Daddy, don't go in that v
just reading the sign, and he took me in with him,
and it's like that Guy Clark song. He taught me
how to drive when he was too drunk. To. But
I later, maybe a year after that, I was sitting
up in a little cherry tree in Detroit looking out
the highway, and I started turning that into a song.
I was singing to the birds, Daddy, don't go in
(34:19):
that var Please don't leave me alone in the car.
And you talked about that early gospel. When I came
to town, there's a man called Archie Jordan had written
a huge song called What a Difference She Made in
My Life. It was one of those gospel songs that
was a country song. He touched that one and said,
that's the hit. I said, that happened to me. He said,
I know. I said, how can you know? He said,
(34:41):
you can't invent something like that. So all my biggest
songs x's and o's that happened to me. So I
started with Daddy, don't go in that var And you
know I became friends with in my life now Bobby Braddock,
he wrote DI V O RC and he stopped loving
her today. I heard that in the back of my mind.
(35:02):
That's what kept that song alive. I was making the
same kind of wordplay, letter play that Bobby did because
I learned it from country.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
How long did you hold on to that song because
obviously you're singing it, you have it, You hold it
until it actually came to where you were having somebody
listen to it and record it.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Because that one I didn't. I couldn't let it go. Okay,
that one, it was so everything for me and my
father and him taking me inside. I could never collaborate
on that song. Another song I brought here about a
reckless Night, about a girl and the girl and a
boy make love and the green grass. They meet in
the choir, make love in the green glass. He's still
(35:46):
in the choir, and she shunned with her baby outside
the choir. That was the first song I had recorded.
That was the first when I brought here that I
could collaborate with with Mark Sanders and Bobby Braddock. He
listened to the chorus of that. He said, you never
get to get two lines as good as your first two,
so just use those the ones you have twice. So
that but by then on that I was turning bar
(36:09):
was just too much my life. I could never turn
it into art. But when I wrote the art of
this memoir, I knew it's the cornerstone.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Yeah, So I'm just thinking about your career.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Were there other black songwriters here at all that you
would see regularly?
Speaker 1 (36:29):
No, there was not. As far as I knew at
the time, there had never been another black woman writer.
You know, Oblee Clinton. It depends on how you look
at it. There weren't here. Phil Withers, I believe, is
a country songwriter, Grandma's Hands, railroad man. I knew he existed.
I knew Lionel Ritchie existed. I was not seeing these
(36:50):
people anyway regularly, and as far as I knew, I
never saw any other black women. D four Bailey had
died the year before I go. I knew he had
written songs. Charlie Pridde is amazing, But one of the
few things Charlie Pride did not do was write a
lot of songs. George Jones is not known for writing songs,
but he did. Roseanne Cash was actually a huge influence.
(37:14):
I could tear up about her.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Charlotte made me a picture of him and her together
a few days ago, and he said, do you know
Roseanne Cash? And I said, I know, I'm from Arkansas.
I said, I know over her, but I don't know
Roseanne Cash. And so were you were you there with him.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
I brought her that that was my book launch, got
it and I have known you gave me no context.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
He just sent a picture of him and Roseen Cash.
It was like, do you know her? I was like,
I know over, but.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
What is Roseanne? That's really so much about that.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
I've known Roseanne since the first year I came here.
I was listening to her when I was at Harvard.
She had her first album out in about seventy eight,
and I was in college seventy seven to eighty one.
I came here. One of the first things I got
to do was work on a series of Johnny Cash
videos and get to meet him. But I cross strung
with past with Roseanne, and particularly we were doing some
environmental activism she was getting started with and she had
(38:02):
a video production company early on, and that video company
actually gave me the chance to write what became a
Reba McIntyre Video of the Year. But my closest thing
with Roseanne her daughter, Chelsea, considers me one of her
top mentors and I am, and she produced my podcast.
I've loved Chelsea through, but Roseanne and I've known each
(38:24):
other the whole way through. And so she had eleven
number ones as a woman writer, I teasally said her
seven Year Ach was one of the songs that helped
me leave my husband, my first one. So I have
been following Roseanne's path, and she's also a memoirist, and
she has been watching me across a distance. I actually
(38:44):
did more work with Rodney along the way, but Roseanne
and I have truly come together and done in these
later years some important things together, and both of us
are great admirers of the other's daughter and Chelsea. I
love Chelsea, she loves Caroline, and when she's up in
(39:04):
New York. When I was launching this book, I asked
her if she would come and be in conversation with me,
and she said yes. And that's one of the most
important yeses any woman ever gave me in country. The
other one was Trisha Yearwood as a whole nother story.
But Roseanne and I will this her story to tell more.
But she now knows that her mama was black, part black,
(39:28):
and she didn't know that growing up, and so that's
been an interesting, small a conversation that we've had. So
I will, she reasily say, if you want to depend
on how you look at it with her eleven number ones.
She was the first, but she didn't know she was
a black woman, and the audience didn't see her that way.
And I'm not trying to say anything about her identity
sure here, but I just am so proud that Roseanne
(39:50):
and Cash would come out because she was a songwriter
that was ahead of me when I was here, and
as a woman writer meant so much to me.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Such a big deal, especially to kids, because it's like
kids need to see that things can't exist and they
are part of that existence. But who what was your
representation in country music that you saw, because again, it
feels like you're the only black woman in town, writing
in rooms or writing with folks.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
That's how I've been at that. My Black Family, my
mythic Black Family, D four it Lil Harden.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
I knew that liter you got to go to history
for representation.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
I had to go to history. I had Emily Dickinson.
I have that Mobiindi song that starts out hope as
a thing with feathers that poaches on the soul that
is now Alison Russell has covered. That's Emily Dickinson. I
had to remember when nobody believed in Emily Dickinson. She
died with I think only having had six poems published.
We now know Emily Dickinson is one of perhaps the
(40:47):
greatest American poet, the greatest American woman poet. I had
to believe maybe I was going to die without getting
a song recorded. Now I did get my first one
recorded two years after getting here, and it's interesting to
me that Bobby Braddock and Bob Bigdill, these are the
two in my time, those are two of the greatest
songwriters here Roseanne. Both of them supported me in different ways.
(41:10):
Bobby and I would actually write a big song together.
Bob McDill, who wrote good old boys like me, Amanda.
He took me seriously, but I did not have anyone
who looked like me in the room. I was the
unexpected body. I don't know if I could tell this
or should tell it. You know one of my favorite writers.
I'm not going to call his name, but really a
person I came here thinking this is one of the
(41:30):
great country poets. He met me, shook hands, stood back
four feet from me, and said, I'm not going to
say exactly what he said. I've been at this too long.
If I have to compete with in were girls from
Harvard Cutts, and I stepped right towards him and I said,
I am, and you do. But I never spoke to
that man again. That was one of the worst things
(41:53):
anyone has ever said to me in my life.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Do you feel like that was a common feeling amongst
the older male white writer in town, or even the
younger male They just didn't say it.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
I can't judge me. Steve Girl said he thought it
was so wild. He wanted to help me be a
big writer. Certainly Bob McDill and Bob B. Braddock sat
there and helped me. I think I think a lot
of people thought. I think a lot of people use
that word a lot of places, and I think a
lot of people thought it was just impossible. But on
(42:25):
the other hand, of all strange things, Merle Haggard loved
the way I talked about his songs. I remember getting
to dance with him one of those October weeks at
a Sony party on the and talk about Hungry Eyes
and what his poetry meant to me and him. He
had a song about an interracial love relationship or I
always get the title way back. You know that people
(42:46):
are more complex than they seem there's an old joke,
and I don't know, I'm gonna tell it. It's they said,
you know, I came up from Harvard. They say, up
North people love black people in general and hate them
and particular, and down South they hate black people in
general and love them in particular. What was wild is
under the surface, there's a lot of love and country
(43:10):
for anybody who really loves country and knows it. And
what people understood about me is I knew my country music,
and they began to think if I thought it was
blacker than they thought it was, maybe it was. Does
that make sense? I knew so many songs I knew
Lefty Frizel.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Did you feel like you had to prove yourself constantly,
because that's what I hear That's what I hear you saying,
is that you knew a lot and sometimes maybe people
didn't think you wouldn't know a lot since you weren't
white and from the South.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Oh. I felt like if I was willing to try
to prevent yeah, I was doubted, and that the whole
Harvard thing didn't help either. Frankly that but you know,
on the other hand, one of the reasons I loved
but I did love about country music. There was more.
There's more genius here than there was at Harvard, and
(44:00):
I'd be fair and that Ray Charles, because being educated
is not the same as being intelligent. And one of
the things I love about country, I don't recall a
change of any size. I love he stopped loving her
to dead. It's going to be horrible for a moment,
but good dynamic stasis. In almost all of Western literature,
(44:22):
we love it when the hero changes grows, But in
real life people often die without changing. And a country
song will scare you about that. That song of Bobby Breddicks.
They hung a wreath upon his door. Soon they'll carry
him away. He stopped loving her today. That song inspires
(44:42):
you to do something.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Because you don't because you don't want to be that.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
You don't want to be that, you don't want to
just be stuck there. Country talks about the hard truths
of hard loves. I was teasing say, rock and roll
is about chasing women, chasing men. Country is about finding
some love when you're twenty five years in it, like
Conway in that with your hair all up and curlers
and that faded something down. I just love to lay
(45:07):
you down. There's nothing in punk rock hard in that,
or Roseanne saying take the baby, grab the babies, and
the clothes on your back right now, Hardy wait in
the truck. The Dixie Chicks when they're talking about the
viral with some Black Eyed Peas. There's some hard things
(45:28):
going on in people's lives, and I am totally anti violence,
but there is Country has never shied away from the
actual reality of how hard it is to make a living,
how hard it is to keep the love going. But
I love That's one of the things I love about
this new song, Texas Hold Them. It's about keeping the
(45:52):
love going way into the thing. The Country has always been.
Speaker 4 (45:55):
About that the Bobby cast will be right back. This
is the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Was this just happened to be timed that Beyonce put
her record out and then the book was there because
the timing's perfect.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
I think it's a God thing. I think there is
some proof that God loves. There is God to get
It is totally Uh, there was no there was no
plan to it, that was any part of my plan.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
Sure, it has been.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
As I said, my whole thing started five years ago
when I thought I might only have you know, if
I only had a live amount of time to live
what I want to do. I started writing country songs
and getting the recorded thirty nine years ago. So this
album of songs that are re recording of songs that
have been recorded, it's been in the making thirty nine years.
It's a literal god thing of the universe coming together
(46:54):
that then it also shows that there's a common cause.
A lot of people all over the world love country music.
And one of the things I have experienced this as
I love that Dolly Parton, who's one of my favorite
songwriters of all time, and Willie Nelson, who's one of
my favorite songwriters of all time, are on this album.
(47:18):
But Anne Linda Martel because it's like a great, big
family reunion and the whole family's invited. And I feel
a little tearfully about that of being on your show
right now, because the Bobby Bone Show is the biggest
radio show in country. And when I was a young bride,
I was Marrie in eighty five, my first husband Black,
(47:38):
we got sent off to the he was a foreign
service officer to Manila in time for a revolution. And
I used to have friends in Nashville white friends Mark Sanders,
who would tape the country down I'm little cassettes and
send it to me in Manila because it's the only
way I could hear it. And I would play it
on a cassette player in the Philippines even during your
(47:59):
revolution and wait to hear those songs and wait to
see what it jumped up on the chart, what haddn't
And now people are doing that with yours thirty year countdown.
It's that same spirit. It's part of a family reunion.
Everybody loving this music all over the world.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
So I have three final questions for you, Hope, I'm
not keeping you too long, Okay, Bill to be here.
Three final questions for you. What do you think has
been successful by country music from its creation to now?
What's the common theme that has been successful and has
maintained even though everybody complains about it changing all the time.
Do you still believe it has the four principles or
whatever you like? What's the common thread in successful country
(48:38):
music that has happened since day one to now?
Speaker 1 (48:42):
It gives people those three compensations that they need for
the fact life life is hard, because it gives you
with the even when people are talking about the bro company.
Some countries, sometimes all you need to do is shake
your booty. Sometimes you just need the distraction from how
hard it is that it has. It recognizes life is hard,
(49:04):
and it's giving people either the wisdom or the distraction
to make it through another day.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Where do you think country music has lost? It's the
exact opposite question, but the same. Where do you think
it's lost its realness or it's you know, from its uh,
from its from its beginning that you kind of wish
it would go back to, and it might because it
happens to cycles.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
What do you wish would happen?
Speaker 1 (49:32):
I don't think it should be chasing trying to be
the coolest rock thing. I think it is grown folks
music for grown people. That and some grown people are
six years old because their life is so hard. And
so when it moves away from wisdom completely doesn't have
any God or faith in it, It is going the
wrong direction. It is trying to be something it will
(49:53):
never be because part of country music is it's wise,
it's wise and it's.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
True perspective is what I feel about is a lot
of country music, right, Yeah, you don't, you don't give
perspective how easy things happening.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
No, that's why that song, the hardy song Wait in
the track is so important, because that is about having
a series of bad choices to make and making the
best bad choice.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
Final question about the book especially, I have a lot
of friends that they don't really read. They act like
they read, but they like to read just a little
bit so they can act like they So if I
were to be like, hey, I want you to read
this book, and they're gonna lie to me and say
they're gonna read it, but they're really just going to
read one chapter of the book. Now, I know it's
it's it's a terribly hard question, but I know they're
(50:37):
not gonna read the whole book.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
I'm be honest with you.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
Well, one they can listen to the audiobook.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
And you're not gonna do that. I'm ya, what's gonna
happen right now? They're gonna go, They're gonna go, I'm
gonna read it.
Speaker 2 (50:45):
But what can I What can I serve them that
they're going to finish reading this section of the book
and they're going to go, oh dang, I felt that,
and it's actually going to inspire.
Speaker 3 (50:55):
Them to read more, Like I need you to hit
them with something.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
I think it's chapter eight. That's the one where you're
going across country and you're hearing about the black cowboys
and had some wild sex and some deep business stuff
in it.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
It's got everything.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
Okay, that might be it, because what my friends do.
They lie about reading books to me, They lie, did
you read this? They're like, yeah, they read like people.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
That's one of the grown up things that that's part
of the reality.
Speaker 2 (51:17):
Baby all to write a country song, I can't read,
or baby allied about reading? Thank you, No, this is
this has been amazing for me. Do you do you
teach in classrooms still?
Speaker 1 (51:32):
Yes, I am a professor.
Speaker 3 (51:33):
I know you're a professor. Yeah, and I do. I
told everybody what you did before you came in.
Speaker 1 (51:37):
Okay, well, I'll be teaching two things. I'll teach black country.
In the fall. I teach about two of the most
fun things in the South, southern and soul food and
country music.
Speaker 3 (51:46):
I when you teach sulfo, do people cook it?
Speaker 1 (51:49):
Do you do they cook? They read cookbooks. We also
read theory, but yes, they actually have to cook and
serve the food. So in the so, I do think
I teach about two of the most important things that
Southerners are most proud of and where American culture is
that it's greatest, our great food and our great meats.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
Man, I wish I could eat because again, I went
to probably one out of four weeks I went, so
my town railroad tracks segregated. They had white quarters and
black quarters. Still today, No, it's still what's crazy, it's
twenty twenty four, still segregated, and about one out of
four because I went to the Baptist church, but I
would go over to Black church. And the thing about
Black church was it may started a but you might
(52:25):
all go home till two pm.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
Like it was all day, all day and all night.
But you also got fed, which at white church that
didn't hardly ever happen. A Black churches got fed well fed. Yeah,
And it was like at the time, I guess my
metabolism worked pretty well. I stayed skinny.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
I have a feeling if I went and was well
fed at the same Black church today, i'd put on
about forty pounds.
Speaker 1 (52:46):
Well, I'm still eating all that great food and I
carry it.
Speaker 3 (52:49):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (52:50):
But I'm enjoying every moment of the great music and
great food.
Speaker 3 (52:53):
I am not. I love I love the book.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
I'm going to try to What I'm going to try
to do is make my friends that I know like
to lie about reading read little passages of it that
hopefully inspire them to read other little passages of it.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
Well, I'm honored that you read it.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
Yeah, I know, I read it as the version that's
not even full, you know, when the pa they're not
as much.
Speaker 3 (53:15):
I brought one for you, a gift that would.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
Be I brought this one. And I love that you
and charlottage and are friends. One of the things I
love about country songs are Poncho and Lefty, the friendship
songs I and Paul. I love the great friendship songs
to country, and I think I've written some of them too.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
I love that that's my guy.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
Like if he needed a kidney and he would take
one from the white Devil what she calls all white people,
I would give him one of my white Devil kidneys.
Speaker 3 (53:39):
I would because I love them. I mean, that's that's
my guy, and he's.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
Been my main number one in all media, and we're
each other's confidant in a lot of ways, and we share.
You know, when people talk about their money. When you
grow up like we did, we don't who do we
talk about that with.
Speaker 3 (53:52):
We didn't know how to have it. We don't know
who to talk to about it. And that's what we like.
We trade that information because we trust each other. There's
so much.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
Well, i'm his old auntie now, and so since you
both are brother you're like some kind of soul twin brothers.
I will give you some space if you ever want
any over here.
Speaker 3 (54:09):
But he does call all white people the white devil.
And I'm like, you know, not all of us. He's like, nah,
it's the white devil.
Speaker 1 (54:16):
Well, you know, be like, not all, not all.
Speaker 3 (54:20):
You know.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
I'm going to tell you a little This end country
thing is that when my father was when I was
going up, my father used to say to me, if
I ever dated a white boy, the only question would
be who would he shoot first, me or the boy.
And then one day I had to tell him I
was dating someone that was white, and my father looked
at me and he said, I can't help but love
(54:41):
who you love. He turned on that don he was
because he loved body country music. That's what country family
it does. The hard thing.
Speaker 3 (54:51):
Well, thank you again, Alice. This has been amazing for me.
Speaker 2 (54:55):
And you know, we talked about a lot of you accolades,
the songs you wrote before you got here, and I
want to encourage everybody my Black country lie and say
you read it all, but just start a chapter eight
and then move from there. That'd be the way to
get most of my people.
Speaker 1 (55:07):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (55:07):
Thank you, Thank you. Please keep up the good work.
It is so needed and instrumental.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
And sometimes history can get away from us because we
either try to cover it up or make new versions
of it, or even forget because people behind us covered
it up or made new versions of it. So I
really appreciate the effort and the passion that you have
for this, and thank you for coming
Speaker 4 (55:25):
Over, Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production.
The country has never shied away from the actual reality,
how hard it is to make a living, how hard
it is to keep the love going.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hey guys, welcome to episode four fifty two. Coming up,
we'll talk to Alice Randall. She wrote My Black Country,
a journey through country music's black past, present, and future,
and also a really good songwriter and has written hits,
massive hits, So we'll talk to her. Also, she's a professor.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, after this, I want to go to her class. Yeah,
me too, the cooking class, Yeah, me too. I just
want to eat though at that cooking class.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
So that's coming up again, Vanderbilt professor, award winning songwriter, novelist,
and author, Alice Randall. And again i'll encourage you to
check out My Black Country. There's also a musical companion
to that as well. Shall we tease what or like
spoil what? She wrote at least one of the big songs.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
Yeah, it's a big one.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
X's and O's Trishy Eetterwood.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
She used to nama his and have been sending boos.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Who in nexu zanos that goes I think that's it. Yeah, yeah,
And we're gonna start with this.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Stacker looked into the twenty five most covered country songs
of all time.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
And so Eddie and I talked about this a bit.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
The number one song has been covered like almost five
hundred times, and you'll find out what that song is.
We discussed each of these songs, their significance and country
music history. Some of these we discovered for the very
first time ever because they are so old. But this
is a very historic Bobby Cast. How do you feel
about that? It's good I should teach a class.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Yeah, we can keep some of the really really old
ones in there because the.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
The law, yeah, like the law that keeps us from
putting music in doesn't affect these songs because they're so
old and it's so old, like public domain even yeah,
like I'm a little teapot or these really old country songs.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
I think it falls under that. Okay, here you go.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Appreciate you guys being here, Episode four fifty two on
the Bobby Cast. It's Bobby and Eddie talk music.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Hey man, hey man, you want to talk music, Let's
talk about something. Might as well talk music.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
From stacker dot com, these are the top twenty five
most covered country songs. Oh and just data search it
see how many versions See if you can sing it
to me, okay, and if we can't, we just kind
of screwed because we can't really play the podcast or
a clip on the podcast. But number twenty five it
has one hundred and sixty two covers, originally recorded by
(02:23):
Hank Williams and his Drifting Cowboys, Clyde Grubb and his
Tennessee Valley Boys.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
I saw the light. I saw the light.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
I was that's Brooks and Done and then Luke Combs
when he did brand New Man Brooks Reboot Brooks and Done.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
So what is I saw the light? We can't play anything, Mike, No,
just a piece of it? Can't Can I play it
for my phone?
Speaker 5 (02:45):
Noh, we need reference to this.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
It starts, I wondered, so aimless, life filled with sin.
I wouldn't let my dear savior in. That's not gonna
do anything, no nothing. What if I listened to it
in my ear? You can do that, then sing it.
We're not going to jail, Mike, Hey, Mike it over yourself.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
Well, we're going to jail. It's gonna be YouTube, not mean.
I'm just a guess man.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
I saw the light. There you go. It's a fiddle.
You're good, all right, it's good, dude, I saw the light, Okay,
got it.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
They must have covered that a long time ago too,
because they don't do that one anymore.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
All right, Moving on.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Number twenty four, all right, right, all right, Crazy Arms
one hundred and seventy covers.
Speaker 5 (03:30):
I on Earth, He's got to be old again, crazy
arm crazy, I'm crazy for your arm.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
There's some fiddley. This is old man, old fiddle. It sucks.
We can't play a clip word documentary show.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I know.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
We're not gonna know this. Who's singing that one? Ray Price?
Oh wow? That one? All right?
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Number twenty three, This one's easy. We'll know this one.
One hundred and eighty eight covers of it. Stand by your.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Man, stand by ol Man one hundred and why not? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Is she the og? And then recovered he wrote it, Wow,
that's cool. Number twenty two, one hundred and eighty nine
covers Joline.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Joline Joline Joline Jolie.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Wrote it by herself. Number twenty one, one hundred and
ninety one covers. I can't help but if I'm still
in love with you. Original record about Hank Williams and
is Drifting Cowboys, written by Hank Williams.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
No Blue Moon a Kentucky. I know Bloe Moon, I've
heard of that, but I don't think I can sing
that one. Can you play it in my ear? Bloomon
of Kentucky? Old school, dude, old school? Okay?
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Number nineteen you'll know, original recorded by Patsy Klein. I
fall to pieces, Wow, I.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Fall dude pieces. Do you know? Do you know her story?
Patsy Cline? Yeah? In what way? Do you know? She died? Yeah? Okay,
plank crash yeah, here near?
Speaker 5 (05:00):
I mean yeah, there was this like this, this show
on I think Max maybe that's like a movie, like
a movie that they made about her life, and I
watched it. Man, she had a rough life, Yeah, rough life.
Husband was a bad dude.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Anyway. Else had a rough life? Was me and Bobby McGee.
Oh yeah, Danis Joplin rough live And she didn't even
get to have success alive. Neither did Patsy really, she
was just coming up.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Number eighteen is possibly my favorite song ever. That's all
I want to say.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Blue Eyes Crying, well, wass gonna.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Give you hints, but yeah, it's two hundred and ten covers.
God will Willie was crying in the ring written by
Fred Rose, not Willie not Willie wow So who was
the original singer of that.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Roy Acuff Really?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Number seventeen, two hundred and thirteen covers Karne Karna relates
to nineteen twenty eight by blues artist Charlie McCoy and Bochapman.
I don't know that I'll know that one anyway, I'm
hearing in my ears Number sixteen recorded by Johnny Cash.
In the Tennessee Too, written by Johnny Cash, two hundred
(06:05):
and sixteen covers, I walked the line.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Uh, I walked the line. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 5 (06:14):
Well, yeah, that's gotta be amazing to have so many
covers of your song two hundred and twenty four covers,
Number fifteen and I know this when you know this
one too?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Hey good Looking, Hank Williams.
Speaker 5 (06:23):
Singor Hey good looking, what you got cooking?
Speaker 3 (06:28):
How a boy cooking something up for me?
Speaker 2 (06:32):
And then the cheese like the National Cheese Federation took
it and changed it to.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Hey, good looking, what you got cooking? How'd you like
cooking something up with cheese? Really? They ran it. Yeah,
I don't remember that. I was singing a song with
my wife through the day.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
I was like I love eggs from my head down
to my legs.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
And she was like, that's not a real song.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I was like, yes from the egg commission from back
in the day commercials because she was incredible edaway egg.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
I was like, no, is that real? Yeah? Oh you
guys are remember you know know a song I do?
I love eggs. I do like singing old jingles though.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, from my head down to my legs. Cold Cold
Heart two hundred and thirty eight covers Cold Cold Heart.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
That's not my Q what about Hank Williams. This Hank
Williams song has just been covered by everybody in country.
My cold Cold Hort we'll tell Can you play that
in my ear? Yeap, I don't know it, my cold
cold Hall. Maybe he does that? That sounds it sounds
like that would be next.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Number thirteen, two hundred and fifty five covers I Will
Always Love You, Dolly Parton, I've written by yourself, Dolly Parton.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
I'll let you sing that one. No do real low
smart Yeah. Number twelve, Hank Williams, You're cheating heart.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
You're cheating old har.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
It's like the twist, like Cheby Checker. He did the twist.
But they need to twist again. Oh yeah, same song,
but just want to make a little money.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
That's funny. Let's twist again like we did last summer.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
John Henry three hundred and ten covers one of the
most popular folk songs in American history.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Sean Henry, recorded nineteen twenty four. This could be public
domain if we have the old version of it. Let's
see who's this by? What do you got through?
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Sounds like I was playing the CELLPHONEZ that was for sure, hundred.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Sounds public domain to me.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Fidland, John Carson, and covered three hundred and ten times
by who.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
I think all the other folk artists around them Airbay
in Town.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Love's Ring of Fire Love is originally recorded by Anita Carter,
written by June Carter and Merle Kilgore. Oh wow, but
that is Ring of Fire. So songs that Johnny Cash.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Saying huge. He made it made it huge, a little different,
but that same song. Uh. Number nine, three hundred twenty
five covers of it. Take Me Home, Country Road, Yes,
take take you road.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
We should know all the rest of these, right, have
any of the place. Number eight I'm so lonesome Hank
Williams again, I'm so lonesome.
Speaker 5 (09:07):
I can cry, I'm so lonesome, my good cry.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Riders in the Sky, Riders in the Sky. That's the doors.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
And I don't know that I know this one yet,
but that's the doors you play at Mike. So that
version is Johnny Cash right.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
M m Goho Riders. It sounds like a small movie.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Nine hundred Miles Away from Home, covered three hundred and
fifty one times, but it's fiddling John Carson again, so
recorded with the suit can Frame long Ly Sure Number
five three hundred and seventy two covers written by Willie Nelson.
(09:58):
Original recorded about Patsy c Line crazy, I'm crazy for
feeling so lonely. Help me make it through the night,
written by Chris Christopherson. Four hundred and three covers recorded
by Chris Christopherson and Percy Sledge.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Wow, don't know that one? I bet we do? You
play it my ear? I mean kind of? It may
help me make it through the not but I don't know.
I don't know that one.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
It's crazy that it's number four and we don't really
like no, No, it number three is here's the hints.
It's been covered four hundred and thirty six times. That
it's a lot. It was written by Jack Rawlins and
Steve Nelson. That Won't Help You, originally recorded by Gene
Autry and the Cass County Boys.
Speaker 5 (10:42):
Ruto off the Red Nose randew No, but You're close. Oh,
what's the one that click click click up on the
house top.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Frosty the Snowman. Dang it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you would.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
That's crazy If that was their original, they must have
made so much money off of that.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Number two covered four hundred and thirty nine times, the
original version of nineteen thirty nine by the Pine Ridge Boys.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
You for sure know this song pine Ridge Boys. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
I would try to give you a hints or to
do something, but it's just too easy. Number two most
covered song of all time.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
You are My Sunshine. Oh wo my oldest sunshine. That's crazy.
That's a country song. I mean, that's got to be
an old yu song too, nineteen thirty nine. Yeah, do
you have the original? You are my sun Shot? That's cool?
Only some shot, Oh my only only son. Time you
make me have me on Sky's are great. You'll never
(11:39):
know how much oild of you. Please don't take my
song shine always some of those harmonies, that's awesome. I
just picked one of the one of those jugs too,
three xes on it. Yeah, that's awesome and.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
The number one most covered country song of all time,
written by Pea week King and Red Stewart the Special
Record in nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
I wonder if the song isn't could you give me
the artist or is that too? I can give you
a bunch of them.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Originally recorded by Cowboy copas Pee Wee King and his
Golden West Cowboy so it's really old, right, And then
artists like Otashred and Eli Fitzgerald, Patsy Kline, Elvis Presley
all did a standard of it.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Okay, suck the version? Oh no way you get this?
You ain't nothing but a hond on no Tennessee waltz?
Speaker 2 (12:35):
What on earth can you play some of that Tennessee waltz?
I don't the most covered song of all time, and
I don't know that song.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
I thought I knew a lot about music until now.
A lot of music I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Of a lot of Hank Williams senior. Yeah, and also
some guy recording himself with a fiddle.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
And uh, what what was his name? Henry what Winkler?
One bo Henry.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah, well that's another episode of Eddie and Boby talking
about music.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Wow. I learned a lot there. Hey, thanks for talking
about music with me. Man anytime, dude.
Speaker 6 (13:06):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor,
and we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
First, thank you for coming over. This is cool for
me because when somebody that I adore adore somebody and says, hey,
you should really talk to them, I'm like, all right,
let's go. And then I started actually researching about you.
So Charlotte and the Gods are my best friends, like
so we're so close to it, and I my company
may here, may not, like we switch out and and
(13:42):
take care of each other like internal like lang, like
we grew up the same way. So he called and
he said, hey, told me you writing this book. And
the book that I read was the because I've written
a couple of books to Alice, this was the like
the publicity book. So all the chapters are like zero
zero zero zero, So I forget the places.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
And like go back.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
But you have such a wonderful story yourself, and I'd
like to start with just talking about a couple of
personal things, a couple things that I had pulled from
the book that I was like, I got to talk
about this because I'm interested in this that even if
there weren't microphones, I would ask you about. So I
was part of the Charli Pride documentary because it was
(14:22):
a massive Charlie Pride fan. My grandma was My grandma
grew up and she was country music. So it was
pushed on to me. But you had the chance to
Actually I never get to meet him.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I got to meet him from nineteen eighty three, from
the beginning of when I came down here, and I
got to spend some really sweet time with him at
the very end of his life. Yeah, you said that
you were in that Charlie Pride.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
I was.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah, and so was I and it was really funny.
And for your listeners, who don't mean I've been in
country music forty one years where we are today. I
remember when George and Tammy lived here in Franklin, wrote
and I would come back and drive past their house.
But so I was in the Charlie Pride documentary in
my role being a professor at Vanderbilt teaching about country music,
(15:03):
and so I was in the second VIP section, not
the good one. But I was really there.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Not good VIP.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
There's levels of VIP. You're always in the top one,
so you didn't know about the other one. But so
I was lucky to be there and so thrilled to
actually just be And Tanne Tucker, I remember she was
in the first one, as she deserved to be, And
there was a seat by me, and Charlie Pride walks
in and he comes and sits at his own documentary
in the second VIP section to sit beside me, And
(15:34):
of all the honors I have received, I almost cheer
up to this moment. He died, not I think within
a year of that that he sat there, and when
I came on, he's pointing to me. And when I
arrived in Nashville in.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Eighty eighty three, that what herote about.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
He had already been at the top of the charts
twenty nine times, twenty nine times. He was about to
go up with his last time to the number one spot.
And I remember being askcap dinner of black tie and
walking across the room to see him. He has no
idea who I am, and he stood up. I teasily
say maybe he just had to go to the bathroom.
(16:09):
I don't. Maybe because I was one of the only
black ladies in the room, maybe because he just had
that good hod trading. He stood up and we had
to encounter each other from eighty three to the end
of his life, and it meant so much to me.
He got a Lifetime Achievement award and I was getting
my hair DoD and Garth. I got a phone call
from Garth Brooks's manager, Bob Doyle, and it was Charlie
(16:33):
Pride is getting this big award and Garth wants you
to be on the stage with him and talk to
him about Charlie Pride. And that was when COVID was
still going on. I have the breast cancer things, so
I was really afraid of going out. That's how much
Charlie Pride meant to me. That I got on my
mask and got on that stage and took it off
and we just had Garth that I had an amazing
conversation about Charlie Pride because his voice he carves layers
(16:59):
of mean. He didn't write, and I'm a songwriter. I
don't sing, but I've been hearing about Charlie Pritt. I
was born in Detroit in nineteen fifty nine. I remember
when he came out as black in Detroit City, his
audience didn't know that. It was talked about so much
that even as a little girl in black Detroit, I
heard that gossip right then at his voice on the radio.
(17:20):
It was just so utterly universal, kissing Angel, good morning lot.
I mean, so there was just so much in every time,
every song.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
What do you think aside from how good he sounded it?
And I want to give my incorrect, probably opinion and
correct me one hundred times. And if i'm if you
feel differently about it, because again I'm coming from it
in my perspective as a white dude that grew up
in a segregated black and white town. M hm, So
my perspective isn't always going to be correct, Like I'm
not coming from the center of it. I'm coming from
(17:54):
near the outside of the edge. And so but I
also know that so if I say something you're like,
you know, I don't feel like that's actually a like,
let me know, why do you feel. Charlie Pride was
extremely valuable to country music in general, but he literally was.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
A brilliant singer. The way he bit notes very similar
to George Jones. He got that bit how he ben
did it. But all that truth, the passion, you know.
But he was important to country music for so many
different reasons. But remember his audience fell in love with him.
They didn't even know he was black, so they didn't
fall in love with him because he was blacky. He
had that juke blox voice. He had that I call
(18:36):
it that Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday morning paradox. Like
he had all the sin in him and all the sacred.
And when you got all the sin and all the
sacred in it, you got a great country song. He
was raggedy and right. But to me, part of the
genius of Charlie Pride that I hadn't thought of back
when in nineteen eighty three eighty four is when he
stood on the stage. He stood like an athlete.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
He was such an athlete, like he was a professional athlete.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
He was a baseball player. He had been in the
Negro leagues, he even had some time in the bigs,
And he was an athlete. He reminded some people of
what cash is Clay. He stood on the stage as
a man and not as a performer. He was delivering
the reality of a grown man's life, and I think
(19:21):
people got it. Men, women, people got it. They were
attracted to the power, the power in his stance. He
was so charismatic. I mean, the man had a twinkle
in his eye to the end. And that last time
I was sitting beside my husband and husband I'm now divorced,
and at the end of the documentary I could tell
(19:43):
something was he needed to get to the bathroom and
we were on this stair stadium type seating and I
asked him, do you need David to help you get there?
Absolutely yes, and he he accepted the help. David walked
him out. Was proud to be his walking stick. But
even with walking, he still had his swagger. He's so
(20:04):
still gorgeous. He still had it.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
The reason that they had asked me to be a
part of the Charlie Pride documentary. Again, there's a lot
of country music from when country music and gospel really
were crossing over, and so that's what I listened to
a lot as a kid because my grandmother adopted me
for a long time, so her music was my music.
You know, everything from you know, Andy Griffith's gospel records
(20:28):
to Ray Charles modern sounds, the country music like all
of that area. But Charlie pride to me was I
loved his songs. But I also am a massive sports fan,
so I know I knew he had like a double
life where he was such an athlete. But his story
of all of his music being sent out places and
(20:49):
never having a picture on it because he did not
want to be judged or have someone not give him
equal treatment because he was a black man, and the
fact that they had to keep that up for a
long time, Like that's what I talked about, and how
there must have been such a range of emotions internally
inside of him. One to understand like this, Okay, if
(21:11):
the record level was going to do this, this may
be lead to success, but too I would imagine you
probably want to be who you are at the same time.
And from my understanding, like that was always something that
plagued him a bit.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Well I said that phrase he went incognigro. People did
not know he was black. But I also think he
was very strategic man. He was a businessman aside from
being a musician. One of the things he was a
role model to me about. I've got to tell you
in a moment, he's in my first family of Black
Country is He came in about real estate. He came
and invested in publishing. He came in and supported other writers.
(21:47):
He was a man among men, And I don't always
like that because I say about country small towns are
smaller for girls, all girls. That that was business men
were running this town when Charlie Pride came to town and
he found a space in that business life. But he
had that visionary sense that he was both an artist
and a business person. He understood it's a music business.
(22:08):
If you want control of your fate, you've got to
get control of some part of the business.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Where do you think that came from his acumen? Like
what part of his life do you think that really developed?
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Being probably very.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Poor and hard, coming up really hard, and having nobody
trying to help him. I mean, one of the stories
I don't know if it's true or not that I
wasn't able to document, but supposedly when he was in
the negro leagues at one time somebody traded him for
a bus. Like being treated like an object and knowing
you weren't. But what I love is that brilliance that
(22:45):
that he It's like he was so successful in one
area that he was able to translate it into another. Sure,
and this so Americans stand. So you know, to me,
I call it country as corn bed Charlie Pride, because
you know, people want to talk about it. Most people
didn't even realize. It's just on the radio with somebody
who said they then they fell in love with Charlie Pride.
They didn't even know he was black. Like that, he
(23:06):
quote unquote sounds white to a lot of people. And
that's one of the things when I talk about my
book My Black Country, I talk about a first family
of Black country, and the two the MoMA and pop
of that is Defour Bailey and Lil Harden. But one
of the things about Lil Harden that's so interesting is
she played on this song called Blue Yodel Number nine.
Everybody knows that song. It was the first million seller.
(23:28):
It sounds like what people think a hill billy, old
hill billy record should sound like. But the reality is
two black people played on it, Lil Harden and Louis
Armstrong and Jimmy Rodgers. People think they know what black
people sound like, but they don't. Always they didn't know
Charlie Pride is a stone black man.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
We were talking about the book before you came in,
and I was talking about how you were talking. You
had mentioned the First Family, and I think you said
Ray Charles was like the kid genius, the child genius
something Will d Ford's brilliant child. Yeah, like he was
the kid genius. What'd you love about Ray Charles?
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Oh? I love the way he plays a piano. You
talk about the gospel piano. My aunt had lost a
baby in a house fire before I was born, and
she basically had descended into a bottle. And when I
was born, she came out of that. But what really
really helped her She used to cha cha around the
living room with me to Ray Charles the first year
(24:26):
I was born. It was just for a thrill. That
became one of the theme songs of my life. But
when modern Sounds in Country and Western dropped that song,
Bye Bye Love, it was an entire grammar of love
for her. One of those songs is was written by
Felice and Buddolo O'Bryant and pleeere one of the greatest
women songwriters country ever knew. But she's also a great
(24:48):
rock songwriter. Bye Bye Love. Ray Charles had the most
extraordinary song since but when he plays his piano, it
takes you to church. And what I'll say in the book,
I talk about but that piano that came from Arizona
Dreams a blind woman who played in the Kojik church
(25:09):
out in Los Angeles, the way Jerry Lee Lewis pounded
his piano, the way Ray Charles pounded his piano. Even
Aretha Owes a lot to a black woman called it Arizona.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
My Black country. The book in general, the entire project.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Is this something that you set out, I'm going to
write this specific book or was it a different like
collections of stories that you've had over an amount of time.
Because I've done both kinds of books. I've just set
out and wrote, I want to write this book, and
then I've also had a bunch of stuff that I've
accumulated and went, oh, this makes sense together.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Where did this book come from?
Speaker 1 (25:43):
But you're a real writer because it's a little bit
of both of those things. That's that process.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
You know.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
When I first came here forty one years ago out
of Harvard, of all strange things, where I was listening
to country while I was typing papers, I knew I
wanted to talk about people like Defour Bailey and Lil Hardened.
Black people have been a race from the history of
country and the banjo, because I sincerely love country music
and I love it as a profound American art forum
(26:09):
that has been, in my opinion, co created by black
and white people. And like you, you know, I was
born in Detroit, Michigan, when it was a really segregated city.
My black Detroit was Detroit was a majority white city,
but my world was completely black. The wasn't just a
popsicle truck that went down the road. It was a
watermelon truck in the summer. It was might as well
(26:32):
be in Detroit, Alabama. But those people, my aunt, my grandmother,
my mother, they all listened to countries. So I have
known that black people listened to country because if you
were in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi back in the forties, there
was no black radio to listen to. You can go
to a juke joint, but if you listen, we're on
radio right now. Black people, including Ray Charles, listen to
(26:55):
country on the radio. That's why I'm honored to be
on this show, because this is the show. Radio is
what introduced Ray Charles to Defot Bailey. That's where he
first heard Defot.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
When I do my stand up shows, I talk a
bit about the history of country music, and I tell
the story about how generationally, we'll say generationally every decade,
every fifteen years or so, in country music, the same
argument of well, that ain't country happens. Regardless, it's cyclical,
(27:28):
it happen. And anybody that I've talked to, from Kenny
Rodgers to Garth to they all will have the same
story of when they came to talent and since they
were a bit different, they were told that's not country.
And so but what I rooted in and usually now
I'm from a rural town in Arkansas, So I say
this about other rural, semi uneducated white dudes who go, well,
(27:52):
that ain't country, they have no idea that really, what
real country is is the combination of Europeans with a
fiddle and the slave ships with string banjo. Like that's
if you want to say what exactly is country, it's
those black artists and it's those Europeans, and that's what
got the music to the hills to even start to
(28:14):
be created. Like to me, that's what the original country
music is.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Absolutely and I would just add this.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
One thing, please tell me I love it.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
So it's a Celtic, English, Irish, Scottish ballot forms plus
the Black influences, plus Evangelical Christianity. You need that, that
the Black Church, and that belief in God in heaven
because if not, if you don't have that, you may
have a blues song. You may have a country blues
and if you don't have the black influences, you may
have a folk song. And all of those are real.
(28:45):
But I think you're so right, and it's important to
know when we're arguing about what is country, we're really
arguing about what is America, because country claims itself and
is in some real ways America's music.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
And I like normal, peace, normal.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
There's no such things normal, but like common, hardworking people's anthems.
And that feels like that's where it started, because you're
looking at immigrants, and you're looking at people that are
forced to come here, and it gets no more hard
working than people who are either forced to find a
new life or have to move from their old life
(29:21):
because it's so hard.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Absolutely, life is hard. Is one of the rules of
country music. I look this not to get into the wild.
But sixteen carriages to me when I heard that song,
I hear the relationship to sixteen tons, and I assure
you that song, which is a country stone country classic,
But I would go up in Detroit. These men, black
and white working on the assembly lines, they knew everything
(29:44):
about sixteen times. They weren't digging coal in a West
Virginia coal mine or Alabama, but they were working assembly
line that same way. Merle Haggard, hungry eyes. This resonates
across lives when people are living hard lives. Johnny Cash,
I shot a man just to watch him die. All
(30:05):
kinds of mothers have felt that same pain. Country is
hard music for hard people, which is one of the
things I love about it. And my four Country rules
are what makes us on country. Life is hard, God
is real, the road, liquor, and family are significant compensations,
and the past is better than the present.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
The third one is kind of funny.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
The road, liquor and family are significant compensations for the
fact life is hard and blues there's no significant And
is it true? I read somewhere and sometimes you read
things aren't true that one of your first interviews was
Darius Rucker.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
It was my very first ever Well, I read that.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
And one of the things I tried to that song
of his from Hooting the Blowfish, let Her Cry. That's
a country song, but I was saying, because it has
a prayer in it, his mama, it is God in it.
That changes everything.
Speaker 7 (30:58):
Oh Mama, please hell? I mean yes, yeah. And this
woman is about to go use YEP drugs, but he
is asking God, He's begging his godden mama. There is
nothing more stone country than asking your mama and God
to help you get through something.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
And I think a lot of that too, because he's
South Carolina, right, a lot of it. And I think, again,
you're you're the expert. So but I feel like regionally,
even for me growing up before streaming music hit, you
could really only get what was around music wise, so
the influence was whatever's in the store or unless you
(31:33):
signed up for one of those eight pennies for twenty
ced deals and then you get like a Chili Pepper CD.
But it was all country music all the time. So
if you lived in South Carolina, if you live like Darius,
if you live in Arkansas like myself Georgia, if you so,
regardless of what music you liked all that regional influence
(31:54):
was built in. So when HOODI comes down and they're
a rock band, there's so much country influence because Darius
is from Charleston, South.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Carolina, absolutely, and what's going on in those southern college scenes,
they cross pollinating through the sports teams, through the SEC.
There is so much of that rooted countriness in that.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
What was the goal when you started writing the book?
What did you want to when someone finished it? What
did you want them to have?
Speaker 1 (32:20):
I wanted them to have an understanding of how black, white,
and indigenous people came in together and built this thing
we call country and that we love, and that it
already has been baked into it these cross collaborations, and
it's the cross collaborations that actually make it amazing. I
also wanted to go back and celebrate. I think life
(32:42):
is hard and God is real, and those are some real,
centered think truths that we all be better off holding onto,
in my opinion right now. And I didn't answer your
question when you asked me five years ago. I had died,
got diagnosed with cancer, and that's I thought, I've got
to do this book. I've got to tell this truth
(33:03):
of what I've been researching for forty some years, and
how this, how this hard This music helped me get
through that moment and helped me get through hard moments
before that. I love country music because country music has
helped me get through so much over the years. And
so many other.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
People can ask where you started, not page one of
the book, but where you started with the book, because
it's always a fundamental jump off point, something that's very
important to your foundation. Where did you start this book
from in your heart, in your head, I'll.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Cry over it. Daddy don't go in that var that
I wrote my first country song in a motown cherry tree.
And I also knew as I got older in Harvard,
the other kids didn't have didn't write songs like Daddy,
don't go in that bar because my daddy was an alcoholic.
He was actually a great father too, and he would
jump into bar get a drink. I don't even know
what was on the other side of the door. And
(33:58):
one day I said, Daddy, don't go in that v
just reading the sign, and he took me in with him,
and it's like that Guy Clark song. He taught me
how to drive when he was too drunk. To. But
I later, maybe a year after that, I was sitting
up in a little cherry tree in Detroit looking out
the highway, and I started turning that into a song.
I was singing to the birds, Daddy, don't go in
(34:19):
that var Please don't leave me alone in the car.
And you talked about that early gospel. When I came
to town, there's a man called Archie Jordan had written
a huge song called What a Difference She Made in
My Life. It was one of those gospel songs that
was a country song. He touched that one and said,
that's the hit. I said, that happened to me. He said,
I know. I said, how can you know? He said,
(34:41):
you can't invent something like that. So all my biggest
songs x's and o's that happened to me. So I
started with Daddy, don't go in that var And you
know I became friends with in my life now Bobby Braddock,
he wrote DI V O RC and he stopped loving
her today. I heard that in the back of my mind.
(35:02):
That's what kept that song alive. I was making the
same kind of wordplay, letter play that Bobby did because
I learned it from country.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
How long did you hold on to that song because
obviously you're singing it, you have it, You hold it
until it actually came to where you were having somebody
listen to it and record it.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Because that one I didn't. I couldn't let it go. Okay,
that one, it was so everything for me and my
father and him taking me inside. I could never collaborate
on that song. Another song I brought here about a
reckless Night, about a girl and the girl and a
boy make love and the green grass. They meet in
the choir, make love in the green glass. He's still
(35:46):
in the choir, and she shunned with her baby outside
the choir. That was the first song I had recorded.
That was the first when I brought here that I
could collaborate with with Mark Sanders and Bobby Braddock. He
listened to the chorus of that. He said, you never
get to get two lines as good as your first two,
so just use those the ones you have twice. So
that but by then on that I was turning bar
(36:09):
was just too much my life. I could never turn
it into art. But when I wrote the art of
this memoir, I knew it's the cornerstone.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Yeah, So I'm just thinking about your career.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Were there other black songwriters here at all that you
would see regularly?
Speaker 1 (36:29):
No, there was not. As far as I knew at
the time, there had never been another black woman writer.
You know, Oblee Clinton. It depends on how you look
at it. There weren't here. Phil Withers, I believe, is
a country songwriter, Grandma's Hands, railroad man. I knew he existed.
I knew Lionel Ritchie existed. I was not seeing these
(36:50):
people anyway regularly, and as far as I knew, I
never saw any other black women. D four Bailey had
died the year before I go. I knew he had
written songs. Charlie Pridde is amazing, But one of the
few things Charlie Pride did not do was write a
lot of songs. George Jones is not known for writing songs,
but he did. Roseanne Cash was actually a huge influence.
(37:14):
I could tear up about her.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Charlotte made me a picture of him and her together
a few days ago, and he said, do you know
Roseanne Cash? And I said, I know, I'm from Arkansas.
I said, I know over her, but I don't know
Roseanne Cash. And so were you were you there with him.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
I brought her that that was my book launch, got
it and I have known you gave me no context.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
He just sent a picture of him and Roseen Cash.
It was like, do you know her? I was like,
I know over, but.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
What is Roseanne? That's really so much about that.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
I've known Roseanne since the first year I came here.
I was listening to her when I was at Harvard.
She had her first album out in about seventy eight,
and I was in college seventy seven to eighty one.
I came here. One of the first things I got
to do was work on a series of Johnny Cash
videos and get to meet him. But I cross strung
with past with Roseanne, and particularly we were doing some
environmental activism she was getting started with and she had
(38:02):
a video production company early on, and that video company
actually gave me the chance to write what became a
Reba McIntyre Video of the Year. But my closest thing
with Roseanne her daughter, Chelsea, considers me one of her
top mentors and I am, and she produced my podcast.
I've loved Chelsea through, but Roseanne and I've known each
(38:24):
other the whole way through. And so she had eleven
number ones as a woman writer, I teasally said her
seven Year Ach was one of the songs that helped
me leave my husband, my first one. So I have
been following Roseanne's path, and she's also a memoirist, and
she has been watching me across a distance. I actually
(38:44):
did more work with Rodney along the way, but Roseanne
and I have truly come together and done in these
later years some important things together, and both of us
are great admirers of the other's daughter and Chelsea. I
love Chelsea, she loves Caroline, and when she's up in
(39:04):
New York. When I was launching this book, I asked
her if she would come and be in conversation with me,
and she said yes. And that's one of the most
important yeses any woman ever gave me in country. The
other one was Trisha Yearwood as a whole nother story.
But Roseanne and I will this her story to tell more.
But she now knows that her mama was black, part black,
(39:28):
and she didn't know that growing up, and so that's
been an interesting, small a conversation that we've had. So
I will, she reasily say, if you want to depend
on how you look at it with her eleven number ones.
She was the first, but she didn't know she was
a black woman, and the audience didn't see her that way.
And I'm not trying to say anything about her identity
sure here, but I just am so proud that Roseanne
(39:50):
and Cash would come out because she was a songwriter
that was ahead of me when I was here, and
as a woman writer meant so much to me.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Such a big deal, especially to kids, because it's like
kids need to see that things can't exist and they
are part of that existence. But who what was your
representation in country music that you saw, because again, it
feels like you're the only black woman in town, writing
in rooms or writing with folks.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
That's how I've been at that. My Black Family, my
mythic Black Family, D four it Lil Harden.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
I knew that liter you got to go to history
for representation.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
I had to go to history. I had Emily Dickinson.
I have that Mobiindi song that starts out hope as
a thing with feathers that poaches on the soul that
is now Alison Russell has covered. That's Emily Dickinson. I
had to remember when nobody believed in Emily Dickinson. She
died with I think only having had six poems published.
We now know Emily Dickinson is one of perhaps the
(40:47):
greatest American poet, the greatest American woman poet. I had
to believe maybe I was going to die without getting
a song recorded. Now I did get my first one
recorded two years after getting here, and it's interesting to
me that Bobby Braddock and Bob Bigdill, these are the
two in my time, those are two of the greatest
songwriters here Roseanne. Both of them supported me in different ways.
(41:10):
Bobby and I would actually write a big song together.
Bob McDill, who wrote good old boys like me, Amanda.
He took me seriously, but I did not have anyone
who looked like me in the room. I was the
unexpected body. I don't know if I could tell this
or should tell it. You know one of my favorite writers.
I'm not going to call his name, but really a
person I came here thinking this is one of the
(41:30):
great country poets. He met me, shook hands, stood back
four feet from me, and said, I'm not going to
say exactly what he said. I've been at this too long.
If I have to compete with in were girls from
Harvard Cutts, and I stepped right towards him and I said,
I am, and you do. But I never spoke to
that man again. That was one of the worst things
(41:53):
anyone has ever said to me in my life.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Do you feel like that was a common feeling amongst
the older male white writer in town, or even the
younger male They just didn't say it.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
I can't judge me. Steve Girl said he thought it
was so wild. He wanted to help me be a
big writer. Certainly Bob McDill and Bob B. Braddock sat
there and helped me. I think I think a lot
of people thought. I think a lot of people use
that word a lot of places, and I think a
lot of people thought it was just impossible. But on
(42:25):
the other hand, of all strange things, Merle Haggard loved
the way I talked about his songs. I remember getting
to dance with him one of those October weeks at
a Sony party on the and talk about Hungry Eyes
and what his poetry meant to me and him. He
had a song about an interracial love relationship or I
always get the title way back. You know that people
(42:46):
are more complex than they seem there's an old joke,
and I don't know, I'm gonna tell it. It's they said,
you know, I came up from Harvard. They say, up
North people love black people in general and hate them
and particular, and down South they hate black people in
general and love them in particular. What was wild is
under the surface, there's a lot of love and country
(43:10):
for anybody who really loves country and knows it. And
what people understood about me is I knew my country music,
and they began to think if I thought it was
blacker than they thought it was, maybe it was. Does
that make sense? I knew so many songs I knew
Lefty Frizel.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Did you feel like you had to prove yourself constantly,
because that's what I hear That's what I hear you saying,
is that you knew a lot and sometimes maybe people
didn't think you wouldn't know a lot since you weren't
white and from the South.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Oh. I felt like if I was willing to try
to prevent yeah, I was doubted, and that the whole
Harvard thing didn't help either. Frankly that but you know,
on the other hand, one of the reasons I loved
but I did love about country music. There was more.
There's more genius here than there was at Harvard, and
(44:00):
I'd be fair and that Ray Charles, because being educated
is not the same as being intelligent. And one of
the things I love about country, I don't recall a
change of any size. I love he stopped loving her
to dead. It's going to be horrible for a moment,
but good dynamic stasis. In almost all of Western literature,
(44:22):
we love it when the hero changes grows, But in
real life people often die without changing. And a country
song will scare you about that. That song of Bobby Breddicks.
They hung a wreath upon his door. Soon they'll carry
him away. He stopped loving her today. That song inspires
(44:42):
you to do something.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Because you don't because you don't want to be that.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
You don't want to be that, you don't want to
just be stuck there. Country talks about the hard truths
of hard loves. I was teasing say, rock and roll
is about chasing women, chasing men. Country is about finding
some love when you're twenty five years in it, like
Conway in that with your hair all up and curlers
and that faded something down. I just love to lay
(45:07):
you down. There's nothing in punk rock hard in that,
or Roseanne saying take the baby, grab the babies, and
the clothes on your back right now, Hardy wait in
the truck. The Dixie Chicks when they're talking about the
viral with some Black Eyed Peas. There's some hard things
(45:28):
going on in people's lives, and I am totally anti violence,
but there is Country has never shied away from the
actual reality of how hard it is to make a living,
how hard it is to keep the love going. But
I love That's one of the things I love about
this new song, Texas Hold Them. It's about keeping the
(45:52):
love going way into the thing. The Country has always been.
Speaker 4 (45:55):
About that the Bobby cast will be right back. This
is the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Was this just happened to be timed that Beyonce put
her record out and then the book was there because
the timing's perfect.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
I think it's a God thing. I think there is
some proof that God loves. There is God to get
It is totally Uh, there was no there was no
plan to it, that was any part of my plan.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
Sure, it has been.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
As I said, my whole thing started five years ago
when I thought I might only have you know, if
I only had a live amount of time to live
what I want to do. I started writing country songs
and getting the recorded thirty nine years ago. So this
album of songs that are re recording of songs that
have been recorded, it's been in the making thirty nine years.
It's a literal god thing of the universe coming together
(46:54):
that then it also shows that there's a common cause.
A lot of people all over the world love country music.
And one of the things I have experienced this as
I love that Dolly Parton, who's one of my favorite
songwriters of all time, and Willie Nelson, who's one of
my favorite songwriters of all time, are on this album.
(47:18):
But Anne Linda Martel because it's like a great, big
family reunion and the whole family's invited. And I feel
a little tearfully about that of being on your show
right now, because the Bobby Bone Show is the biggest
radio show in country. And when I was a young bride,
I was Marrie in eighty five, my first husband Black,
(47:38):
we got sent off to the he was a foreign
service officer to Manila in time for a revolution. And
I used to have friends in Nashville white friends Mark Sanders,
who would tape the country down I'm little cassettes and
send it to me in Manila because it's the only
way I could hear it. And I would play it
on a cassette player in the Philippines even during your
(47:59):
revolution and wait to hear those songs and wait to
see what it jumped up on the chart, what haddn't
And now people are doing that with yours thirty year countdown.
It's that same spirit. It's part of a family reunion.
Everybody loving this music all over the world.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
So I have three final questions for you, Hope, I'm
not keeping you too long, Okay, Bill to be here.
Three final questions for you. What do you think has
been successful by country music from its creation to now?
What's the common theme that has been successful and has
maintained even though everybody complains about it changing all the time.
Do you still believe it has the four principles or
whatever you like? What's the common thread in successful country
(48:38):
music that has happened since day one to now?
Speaker 1 (48:42):
It gives people those three compensations that they need for
the fact life life is hard, because it gives you
with the even when people are talking about the bro company.
Some countries, sometimes all you need to do is shake
your booty. Sometimes you just need the distraction from how
hard it is that it has. It recognizes life is hard,
(49:04):
and it's giving people either the wisdom or the distraction
to make it through another day.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Where do you think country music has lost? It's the
exact opposite question, but the same. Where do you think
it's lost its realness or it's you know, from its uh,
from its from its beginning that you kind of wish
it would go back to, and it might because it
happens to cycles.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
What do you wish would happen?
Speaker 1 (49:32):
I don't think it should be chasing trying to be
the coolest rock thing. I think it is grown folks
music for grown people. That and some grown people are
six years old because their life is so hard. And
so when it moves away from wisdom completely doesn't have
any God or faith in it, It is going the
wrong direction. It is trying to be something it will
(49:53):
never be because part of country music is it's wise,
it's wise and it's.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
True perspective is what I feel about is a lot
of country music, right, Yeah, you don't, you don't give
perspective how easy things happening.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
No, that's why that song, the hardy song Wait in
the track is so important, because that is about having
a series of bad choices to make and making the
best bad choice.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
Final question about the book especially, I have a lot
of friends that they don't really read. They act like
they read, but they like to read just a little
bit so they can act like they So if I
were to be like, hey, I want you to read
this book, and they're gonna lie to me and say
they're gonna read it, but they're really just going to
read one chapter of the book. Now, I know it's
it's it's a terribly hard question, but I know they're
(50:37):
not gonna read the whole book.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
I'm be honest with you.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
Well, one they can listen to the audiobook.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
And you're not gonna do that. I'm ya, what's gonna
happen right now? They're gonna go, They're gonna go, I'm
gonna read it.
Speaker 2 (50:45):
But what can I What can I serve them that
they're going to finish reading this section of the book
and they're going to go, oh dang, I felt that,
and it's actually going to inspire.
Speaker 3 (50:55):
Them to read more, Like I need you to hit
them with something.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
I think it's chapter eight. That's the one where you're
going across country and you're hearing about the black cowboys
and had some wild sex and some deep business stuff
in it.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
It's got everything.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
Okay, that might be it, because what my friends do.
They lie about reading books to me, They lie, did
you read this? They're like, yeah, they read like people.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
That's one of the grown up things that that's part
of the reality.
Speaker 2 (51:17):
Baby all to write a country song, I can't read,
or baby allied about reading? Thank you, No, this is
this has been amazing for me. Do you do you
teach in classrooms still?
Speaker 1 (51:32):
Yes, I am a professor.
Speaker 3 (51:33):
I know you're a professor. Yeah, and I do. I
told everybody what you did before you came in.
Speaker 1 (51:37):
Okay, well, I'll be teaching two things. I'll teach black country.
In the fall. I teach about two of the most
fun things in the South, southern and soul food and
country music.
Speaker 3 (51:46):
I when you teach sulfo, do people cook it?
Speaker 1 (51:49):
Do you do they cook? They read cookbooks. We also
read theory, but yes, they actually have to cook and
serve the food. So in the so, I do think
I teach about two of the most important things that
Southerners are most proud of and where American culture is
that it's greatest, our great food and our great meats.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
Man, I wish I could eat because again, I went
to probably one out of four weeks I went, so
my town railroad tracks segregated. They had white quarters and
black quarters. Still today, No, it's still what's crazy, it's
twenty twenty four, still segregated, and about one out of
four because I went to the Baptist church, but I
would go over to Black church. And the thing about
Black church was it may started a but you might
(52:25):
all go home till two pm.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
Like it was all day, all day and all night.
But you also got fed, which at white church that
didn't hardly ever happen. A Black churches got fed well fed. Yeah,
And it was like at the time, I guess my
metabolism worked pretty well. I stayed skinny.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
I have a feeling if I went and was well
fed at the same Black church today, i'd put on
about forty pounds.
Speaker 1 (52:46):
Well, I'm still eating all that great food and I
carry it.
Speaker 3 (52:49):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (52:50):
But I'm enjoying every moment of the great music and
great food.
Speaker 3 (52:53):
I am not. I love I love the book.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
I'm going to try to What I'm going to try
to do is make my friends that I know like
to lie about reading read little passages of it that
hopefully inspire them to read other little passages of it.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
Well, I'm honored that you read it.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
Yeah, I know, I read it as the version that's
not even full, you know, when the pa they're not
as much.
Speaker 3 (53:15):
I brought one for you, a gift that would.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
Be I brought this one. And I love that you
and charlottage and are friends. One of the things I
love about country songs are Poncho and Lefty, the friendship
songs I and Paul. I love the great friendship songs
to country, and I think I've written some of them too.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
I love that that's my guy.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
Like if he needed a kidney and he would take
one from the white Devil what she calls all white people,
I would give him one of my white Devil kidneys.
Speaker 3 (53:39):
I would because I love them. I mean, that's that's
my guy, and he's.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
Been my main number one in all media, and we're
each other's confidant in a lot of ways, and we share.
You know, when people talk about their money. When you
grow up like we did, we don't who do we
talk about that with.
Speaker 3 (53:52):
We didn't know how to have it. We don't know
who to talk to about it. And that's what we like.
We trade that information because we trust each other. There's
so much.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
Well, i'm his old auntie now, and so since you
both are brother you're like some kind of soul twin brothers.
I will give you some space if you ever want
any over here.
Speaker 3 (54:09):
But he does call all white people the white devil.
And I'm like, you know, not all of us. He's like, nah,
it's the white devil.
Speaker 1 (54:16):
Well, you know, be like, not all, not all.
Speaker 3 (54:20):
You know.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
I'm going to tell you a little This end country
thing is that when my father was when I was
going up, my father used to say to me, if
I ever dated a white boy, the only question would
be who would he shoot first, me or the boy.
And then one day I had to tell him I
was dating someone that was white, and my father looked
at me and he said, I can't help but love
(54:41):
who you love. He turned on that don he was
because he loved body country music. That's what country family
it does. The hard thing.
Speaker 3 (54:51):
Well, thank you again, Alice. This has been amazing for me.
Speaker 2 (54:55):
And you know, we talked about a lot of you accolades,
the songs you wrote before you got here, and I
want to encourage everybody my Black country lie and say
you read it all, but just start a chapter eight
and then move from there. That'd be the way to
get most of my people.
Speaker 1 (55:07):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (55:07):
Thank you, Thank you. Please keep up the good work.
It is so needed and instrumental.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
And sometimes history can get away from us because we
either try to cover it up or make new versions
of it, or even forget because people behind us covered
it up or made new versions of it. So I
really appreciate the effort and the passion that you have
for this, and thank you for coming
Speaker 4 (55:25):
Over, Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production.
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