(uplifting music) - [Alison] On this week's episode of "The A-List," I learned how country music magic is created.

- And I literally got into my little car, raced over there, run past the receptionist into the actual recording studio where she's working on her own album with all these pickers, and our producer, and I remember the first word I said to her: this is my best chance, my biggest chance, Wynona has not shown up.

I need you to come over to the studio right now and record on her tracks, in her key, and help me have this hit song.

- Join me as I talk with songwriter and author Alice Randall.

Coming up next on "The A-List."

(upbeat music) If you are a fan of country music, you've no doubt felt the impact of Alice Randall's work.

For four decades, she has devoted her creative energy into writing songs for some of the biggest names in country music.

She is the first Black woman to write a number one country song, a professor and writer, and residence at Vanderbilt University, and a bestselling author.

In April of 2024, she released her newest book: "My Black Country," which she describes as her love letter to Black country music and the first family of Black country.

And this celebration of Black artistry comes with a soundtrack, a compilation of Alice's songs, reimagined by Black country artists who are pushing the boundaries today on music row and beyond.

I had the chance to sit down with Alice at Oh Boy Records, a place where she Feels right at home.

Well Alice, welcome to "The A-List."

- Alison, I'm thrilled to be here with you.

- Well, and we are thrilled to be in the house where Alice was built almost at Oh Boy Records, and we are just talking about how much this place means to you.

- It absolutely does for so many different reasons.

I love being in Oh Boy.

The deepest reason is when you get a chance to read my Black country, or if you have read it, you'll know that a John Prine song was this song that carried me.

I pulled myself, it was a rope out of hell for me.

That song Angel from Montgomery, very hard time in my life, that song carried me through.

And John Prine is just absolutely one of my favorite songwriters, period and country songwriters.

So when it came to be a chance to make an album of my own work, there was no place I wanted to be more than Oh Boy Records.

But what's also exciting is when I moved to Nashville 41 years ago to be a country songwriter and publisher.

Almost all the publishing companies and record labels were in Little Houses.

There's a wonderful song called "16th Avenue."

It looks so quiet and discreet, but a lot of lives were changed out on a little one way street.

This Oh Boy is in a beautiful old house, and it reminds me of my beginning days, and it's a circling back and this whole album and time in my life is a circling back, the things I started a long time ago.

They're coming into Full Flower now.

So that' really.

- Well and it's perfect for me because when I think about you and your career, and I have read your book, voraciously, it was like a nectar.

I was just taking in every essence of it.

It felt like so much, I felt like I might be in one of your college classes at Vanderbilt, but I just think, oh boy, what a life you have led.

One of the things you constantly talk about is the real erasure of Black country music, songwriters, singers, that it's been erased so often, and for so long it's hard to know where Black country history starts.

- Absolutely.

This book is an act of reclaiming, and this conversation, I'm thrilled to be in conversation with you to put the colors back in the lines, back in the details, back in.

The first family of Black country for me is Defor Bailey, the pop is the Papa.

Lil Harden is the mama.

Ray Charles is their genius child who drops in 1963 modern songs in country and western music.

Of course, the great great Charlie Pride is DeFor's side child.

I say that because he's country as cornbread Charlie Pride, Defor Bailey will be the first Black member of the Opry and Opry's first superstar period, not Black superstar, but superstar, Charlie Pride will be the second Black member of the Opry.

But we cannot forget Herb Jeffries.

I call him Little Stepchild 'cause she and Louis Armstrong discovered him.

But he will be in the '30s and '40s, "The Bronze Buckaroo."

So he's important as a Black singing cowboy who actually starred and produced Black Cowboy Westerns in the '30s and '40s.

But he also represents all the Black and Brown real life cowboys.

Other scholars that estimate the 20 to 30% of cowboys were Black and Brown.

And that's another part of the race history.

But we've got that first family of Black country that's Defor Bailey, who in 1927, will play the first sounds we hear right after the phrase Grand Old Opry was used for the first time on WSM Radio.

Someone said that we've been listening to Grand Opera and now we're gonna listen to the Grand Old Opry.

Then D4 Bailey played Pan-American Blues.

That was 1927.

And then in 1930, in Los Angeles, California, Lil Harden Armstrong, Black woman born in Memphis, Tennessee, will play "On Blue Yodel Number 9."

which many people consider to be the most iconic country single of all time.

It was probably the first million selling country single.

And there are three geniuses on it, Jimmy Rogers, who everybody knows, but Louis Armstrong and Lil Harden Armstrong also played on that song.

- So it's hard or challenging at least to figure out the history of Black country, but not so hard to figure out your own as it relates to country music.

- Great question, Allison.

You are so right.

My 41 years.

I was there, and so I came in 1983, I was born in one Riverside Music City, Detroit.

And then I migrated to another one after being at Harvard where I started listening to Country intensively as an undergraduate.

And so my own career spans four decades, and it's as a writer and a publisher.

And that's interesting to me, that inspired by Anna Gordy, I did found a publishing company that still exists to this day, Midsummer Music.

And that was, I'm very excited that I published Mark or we published Mark Sanders, who's now in Nashville Songwriter Hall of Fame.

I'm thrilled.

He wrote, "I Hope You Dance" and other things.

But his first Top 10 was a song we wrote together, "Girls Ride Horses Too."

And that song was originally recorded by Judy Rodman.

And what's excites me about Judy Rodman aside from her having a great voice, she was on MTM Records, Mary Tyler Moore records.

Most people don't know that Mary Tyler Moore started a country record label, and it really focused on what I would call feminist country.

And I had two songs on that label.

One was "Small Towns Are Smaller For Girls."

And as I like to say, when I arrived here in 1983, Music Row was a very small town.

And if small towns are smaller for girls, it was hard for women to get on the radio hard, for women to get publishing deals.

It was an even smaller town for Black girls.

And when I arrived here as a young Black woman, 23, 24 years old, I was the unexpected body in every room I entered.

And that was not always easy, but it was ultimately very fruitful because I did get songs recorded in the '80s and '90s oughts and tens, and now all these amazing songs recorded, rerecorded in the '20s by a terrific, extraordinary producer from Memphis, Tennessee, Ebony Smith, most of your viewers will know her from, she was the engineer in "Hamilton."

And I think probably most of us have seen and heard "Hamilton" a lot.

So you've heard Ebony's genius, even if you didn't know it.

- And you talk about being the first and a pioneer or the only in so many spaces.

And while looking back, I know you are celebrated for that, I think people, through reading your book or even just meeting you and hearing your interviews understand that was not just a a struggle.

It was lonely.

- It was lonely, it was isolated.

I knew that I was coming to work, in some ways it felt like behind enemy lines, because one of my, as I said, being born in Detroit, Michigan in a music city.

I knew that, and I haven't gone to Harvard.

I knew most people at Harvard didn't know the banjo was an African instrument and that Black people had been foundational to the development of country music.

So I knew that this information had been erased from published archived culture.

And so I knew there was some work to be done.

I think because I had been born into such a vibrant Black community, I remind myself a little in music of Zora Neal Hurston, who grew up as a novelist in an all Black town.

My Black Detroit was so Black, I knew so few white people.

I went to an all Black private school.

I mean that Detroit has such a vibrant Black community, you could go to an all Black Lutheran school.

So I felt like I had the right background to tolerate being around people who didn't appreciate me, because I had felt artistically appreciated.

I've been born the same year in place as Motown Records.

I had a complete faith in Black genius, so if people wanna look at me and believe I couldn't do it, I would look back to Anna Gordy and say, yes I can (laughs).

- And you keep mentioning Anna Gordy, I have to insert here, is your father played a huge role, not only influential in your life and inspiring you to pursue your dream, but also the fact that he focused on Anna Gordy, not Barry Gordy, when the rest of the world only were was talking about Barry.

- Absolutely.

My father was a very unusual man.

He was an alcoholic as well as being a great father.

And so he would pull in front of a door, and jump in for a moment to go, as it turns out, to get a drink.

I didn't know what he was doing on the other side of the door, but I did know that often when he was pulling up in front of this door one day he's pulling in and leaving the car and saying he'll be back by the time the clock hands get to this point.

And he was always back before the clock hands got to the point he pointed out to.

But this darkness was falling this particular day.

I did not want to, it was a little bit cold.

I did not want to be alone in the car.

And I said, daddy, don't go in that B-A-R. 'Cause I could see the neon sign there.

I didn't know what a B-A-R was, I hadn't been inside of a bar, but I saw when the sign.

But fast forward as a writer creative.

About a year later, I'm sitting in one of my favorite perches, which is in my aunt's cherry tree where I sing along to the birds while watching our version of a river, which was not a river, it was a John Sea Lodge freeway.

I'm watching the cars roll by, singing to the birds up in my cherry tree, and I start singing this little song that has the lines, daddy, don't go in that B-A-R, please don't leave me alone in the car.

Something something wishing on a star.

Daddy, don't go in that B-A-R. And that was the first country song I ever wrote.

And it was part of a gestalt and experience I would have over and over again, that starts with something too hard to bear.

Being left alone with the falling dark gets turned into something beautiful, a song that makes the hard bearable.

And that's exactly what happened to me writing my first country song and through all the country songs I would eventually write, something Too Hard to Bear, became a sound and a song that made the hard bearable.

- [Alice] Alice's knack for translating her personal experiences into lyrics that resonate with listeners around the world has served her well throughout her career.

And there may be no better example of the universality of her songwriting than the Tricia Yearwood hit "X's and O's."

You're also the first Black woman to have a number one country music hit, to have written a number one country music hit, which I know is still something that is celebrated today.

But the story behind it to me is all about timing.

Explain if you can, the Brendan Tartikoff ascension and how that led you to Trisha Yearwood.

- Well, X's and O's is 30 years old this summer.

That's really exciting.

And it spent two weeks at number one in 1994.

But first of all, as many people from my era, if you know the song shows Miami Vice, Friends, The Bill Cosby Show, Brandon produced all those shows.

He was the President of NBC at the height of NBC, brilliant man in television.

And Brandon gets the idea that he wants to do a television series about the ex-wives of country stars called X's and O's.

And they are interview all these normal writers to do it.

And ultimately I get to be the writer to co-write this, to write this series and this treatment.

But what I really want to do is write the theme song.

So when I negotiated that contract, I said I wanna be music supervisor and write the theme song.

And I got that in the contract.

And we make this, it is gonna be a movie of the week as a backdoor pilot.

I choose my favorite person to co-write with Metrica Burke.

And we sit down to write this song, and we sit down to write this song, and we sit down to write the song, and we don't get anything good.

It is the Sunday night before a song really needs to be turned in Monday or Tuesday.

And I called my publisher and I said, I didn't get it.

We didn't get it.

What we did isn't good.

I was so sad.

She was so mad.

The next morning I get in the shower, I'm not even in the shower good, I think before the phone rings and it's my daughter's school that telling me that something she had to have that day at school, I had left out of the backpack.

I get back in the shower and I'm thinking, you got a picture of your mama in heels and pearls, you're trying to make it in your daddy's world, that ain't a kid.

It's not working kid.

You've got a picture of your mom in heels and pearls trying to make it in your daddy's world.

And then I realized, that's my song.

It was just, it was literally, it came to me just like that.

I finished the shower, I went to my daughter's school first, I did and got her whatever it was the, so whatever she needed.

And then I raced over to Matrice's house.

I didn't even call her 'cause I didn't think at that point she probably wasn't speaking to me either.

I don't know remember that.

But I just, I begged in the door and I told her the very first lines, it came to me like phone rings, baby cries, TV dies, guru rise.

Good morning honey.

The second verse came to her as fast as the first verse had come to me.

And it was this amazing song about trying to keep up the balance between love and money.

For me it was taking care of a child and creating, for her, it was a new marriage and a beautiful big old house that they were renovating and creating, and everybody wanted to sing the song.

We got it finished on time.

- You finished it in 90 minutes.

- In about 90 minutes at Mare's house on Blair Boulevard.

It was so exciting.

That song helped.

So it was 90 minutes, we finished the song, and everybody wanted to record it.

I will not name names except for the one that we chose, which is Wynonna, who is so amazing.

Wynonna comes in the studio, she sings the bejesus out of the song, and she's gonna come back and do the overdubs.

We're finishing it.

We've got great players on it.

It is extraordinary.

We can tell this is our hit.

This is a big hit.

This song, you can tell this song was, we knew it was amazing.

We knew it was something.

We're in the studio for the overdubs, and Wynonna does not come, and Wynonna does not come, and we're not hearing it.

And again, this is 1994, there's cell phones, but not like we have 'em today.

And she doesn't come.

And finally we hear she's not coming.

She's collapsed on a plane back to Nashville.

I knew Nashville's a very small town in 1994, I knew where Tricia Yearwood was in her own session, and Garth funds his studio, and I literally got into my little car, raced over there, run past the receptionist into the actual recording studio where she is working on her own album with all these pickers and our producer, and I remember the first word I said to her, we know each other back to our first husbands.

This is my best chance, my biggest chance why Nona has not shown up.

I need you to come over to the studio right now and record on her tracks in her key and help me have this hit song.

And she literally just said yes.

She looked at me for a moment, everyone was looking at me like I'm crazy.

And she said, yes.

She left her own, it still makes me tear up.

She left her own recording session to come and sing on this record that she wasn't initially invited to sing on.

And she did such a spectacular job.

- I think what's also just a stark reality, a hard reality to remind ourselves of is that the narrators of history of anything are the ones who have the power to frame that story.

So even though Tricia Yearwood was singing your words, it really wasn't your story, and now, or wasn't understood as my story, it wasn't understood as your story.

And I mean we can say that about really any Black writer who was writing and then got erased from sort of the panel or the album cover, whatever that looked like.

- Oh, absolutely.

And "Small Towns are Smaller for Girls," which when Holly Dunn sang it, people are imagining white girls in white small towns, but there's plenty of Black girls who live in the small towns of America.

That was the hard part.

It wasn't even just that I was erase from my songs, it was that my heroes and sheroes, my sheroes who had, I were often Black women that I had met and I had to make peace with not getting that recognition.

Until, now we're sitting in Oh Boy Records here, Ebony Smith, a young woman, gets together 11 artists and I say it and I mean it, riding to the rescue of my legacy.

And they all signed up to rerecord these songs and bring the color, bring back the rest of the story.

- This is the My Black Country album?

- Yes.

- The companion piece to the book.

Is the book a is the book a companion piece to the album?

Which came first?

- Oh, the book came first.

- Okay.

- The book, but the songs, the oldest song in there was recorded probably in '89.

The songs way preceded the book.

But I started writing the, in some ways I started writing the book 41 years ago.

I really start focusing on writing the book in 2019.

And you know, you go a long time.

The joy was, as long as these songs have been out in the world, they've been helping people get through the day.

And I do think of myself as writing necessary music.

And when I sat down to write the book, the memoir, My Black Country, I wanted to write a necessary memoir.

And two of the things that I, one was to tell the untold story of Black people in country music.

One was to tell the story, of a child who had a very difficult and abusive mother who got past that.

I love the trauma to transcendent story.

I am a person who experiences a lot of hard won happy.

And I think you make it easier for other people to fight for their own hard won happy by sharing that journey.

So that was really one of the other things I very much wanted to do with the book.

And what I love to do with the album, the companion album, is music helps people get through the hard times, is that I climbed a John Prine song, Out of Hell.

I hope that people will find songs on this album that help them through hard days and also just help them have great days, and also do that other thing, just be better people.

- So for every aspiring country music singer or writer who is looking at you as not just the queen of country music, but the pioneer who paved that way, what is the hope you give them?

I know you're a big believer in country music because it's not just the hard times, but it's about the hope.

Absolutely.

- What's the hope that you give anyone aspiring to do what you did and to be what you've become?

- The hope I give is, one, it can be done.

Don't let anyone tell you you can't do it.

I actually say to songwriters, if you can do something else, do something else.

But if you can't do something else, do this.

Write only the songs you can write, and those will be necessary songs.

And what's wonderful about country, I tease, I think blues is very significant.

And my daughter is a sort of expert on blues aesthetic and I love blues, but I said my childhood was too hard for me to like blues.

I love country because country is hopeful, and that country will have that just go out and shake your booty dynamic to it do.

And it also has that celebration, it trusts in divine nature, divine God.

But write the songs only you can write.

And when you write that song, when you tell your own truth, it often turns out to be the truth of many, many, many people.

I also think that co-writing is great in country, because if something is true to two different people and co-write with people that are really different than you.

If two people who have lived very different lives can find a shared truth, that truth may be shared by thousands, if not millions.

I think that's been one of the secrets of my success.

I've written with people who've lived very different lives than I have, but we find what is common, and when we find something common between us, we find something common for everyone.

I also think in this time in America, country music is so important, because it tells us we, as a country, are at our greatest when we hear from all the voices.

Country is created with global influences.

It's time for us to realize that.

That country does not exist without African influences.

But country also doesn't exist without English, Scottish, and Irish influences.

And it doesn't exist without Indigenous influences.

And country has a global audience.

So it's time to celebrate the many threads needed to make this extraordinary tapestry, and use that as a metaphor for all of the country.

- Well, speaking of metaphors, in a world full of erasers, you're not just the mighty pen, you are a highlighter.

- Oh, I love that.

- Thank you for being with us, Alice.

- Alison, thank you.

I've never, I love the idea of being a highlighter.

- [Alison] You are.

(uplifting music) - [Narrator] Watch even more of the shows you love on the free PBS app.