Various Artists (from the album My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall

Various Artists (from the album My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall

Various Artists (from the album My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall available on Oh Boy! Records) (by Danny McCloskey)
A Cavalcade of Stars was an early television show, the first program that featured Jackie Gleason as a host, debuting in 1950. While the term Cavalcade of Stars began was short-lived in a past entertainment history, the banner needs waved high for the collection of songs making up My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall. The album is an A-team guest list, beginning with the woman whose music is tributed in My Black Country. Alice Randall is Nashville royalty. She has been submitting songs on Music Row in the Country market for 41 years, placing a #1 on a co-write (with Matraca Berg) for Trisha Yearwood’s “XXX’s and OOO’s”. Additionally, Alice Randall expands beyond the world of music, working as a lecturer and speaker as well as an author for The Wind Done Gone, a parody of Gone with the Wind, and her memoir, My Black Country. Produced by Ebonie Smith (Sturgill Simpson, Janelle Monae, Hamilton), My Black Country is the musical companion to Alice Randall’s autobiography of the same name. The album partners the songs that have carved out a career for her on Music Row with the strongest black female voices in the current musical world.
Leyla McCalla opens My Black Country with “Small Towns (Are Smaller for Girls)” while Rhiannon Giddens spins a reel for “The Ballad of Sally Anne” and quiet Folk chords hush the acoustic guitar notes darkly sparkling underneath Sunny War’s “Solitary Heroes”. My Black Country reimagines Country songs with a Country Folk texture when a banjo leads the way into Alison Russell’s singing of “Many Mansions” while Valerie June shares the tale of a lifelong friend with “Big Dream” and Adia Victoria follows a heartbeat rhythm in “Went for a Ride”. Miko Marks caresses “I’ll Cry for Yours (Will You Cry for Mine)” with an Americana Soul backed with street parade horns as Alice Randall’s daughter, Caroline Randall Williams, closes out My Black Country with a Soul poetry reading for “XXX’s and OOO’s”. (by Danny McCloskey)
Listen and buy the music of My Black Country from AMAZON
 
For more info, check out the My Black Country website