Alice Randall is nationally known as author of The Wind Done Gone, her 2001 reinterpretation of Gone With the Wind, that focuses on Black perspectives. Prior to her debut novel, Randall wrote numerous songs, (including Trisha Yearwood’s #1 hit, "XXXs and OOOs") that were recorded by mainstream country artists who are all white. Randall has been one of the few Black female writers on Nashville’s Music Row.
On April 12, Oh Boy Records will release, My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall, an 11-track collaborative album that celebrates the Black female experience in Country and Folk music. The new project includes contributions from Rhiannon Giddens, Valerie June, Leyla McCalla, Allison Russell, Sunny War, Adia Victoria and more.
“Because all the singers of my songs had been white, because country has white-washed Black lives out of country space, most of my audience assumed the stars of my songs were all white." Randall writes in a release. "I wanted to rescue my Black characters. This album does that; it centers black female creativity, but it welcomes co-creators and allies from a myriad of identities. This is the good harvest: abundant love and beauty for all.”
The first preview of the new album is Adia Victoria’s re-imagined version of “Went For A Ride” and shared: “To join the circle of Black women coming together to re-imagine the songs and stories of Alice Randall was the definition of blues work. This is the work of reclaiming, re-conjuring, re-centering and resurfacing Black, Southern storytelling that has too long been denied its due outside the “qualifier” of Whiteness. The Storybook of Alice Randall allows for a closer listening—a truer listening—to the lives and stories of the Black Southern women I always imagined living the lyrics in Alice’s songs.”
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