My Black Country: The songs of Alice Randall (Oh Boy, 2024)

Alice Randall is an author, college professor and country music songwriter. Over the past 40 years, Randall, who is African American and a long-time Nashville resident, has written/co-written hit country songs for artists like Trisha Yearwood ("XXX's and OOO's"), Glen Campbell, Moe Bandy, Judy Rodman, Holly Dunn, Radney Foster and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Like most Music ERow songsmiths, Randall is not a household name.

Despite all her success, her songs have mostly been recorded by Caucasian singers. "My Black Country," with an accompanying memoir, attempts to address that. The record features 11 of her songs, each one performed by African American artists including Valerie June, Allison Russell, Rhiannon Giddens and Leyla McCalla. Randall says "My Black Country" aims to re-claim the black perspectives that are baked into each of her songs.

This is evident, especially in songs like June's rendition of "Big Dream," Russell's "Many Mansions," Sunny War's 'Solitary Hero" and Russell's "Ballad of Sally Ann." As someone who has loved Mark O'Connor's version with the New Nashville Cats from years ago, Russell's version caused a rethinking about the song in an entirely different way. Randall's daughter, Caroline Randall Williams, closes out the album with a very compelling, narrative version of 'XXX's & OOO's,' more of a tribute to her mother and to the way African American women see themselves now vs when that song was a hit, rather than a remake of the song that Yearwood to to the top of the charts.

"My Black Country" is an important work for many reasons. It not only exposes the work of a legendary country music songwriter to a wider audience, but also re-frames the many hit songs, sung by many of today's best-known artists, to remind us of the long-standing influence that African American culture has on American country music.