Alice Randall

My Black Country book reading and music with Alice Randall
Date: Thursday, August 8, 2024
Time: 4:00PM
Location: Francine Kelly Gallery at Featherstone Center for the Arts
Fee: free

​Join us on Thursday, August 8th at 4PM in the Francine Kelly Gallery for an engaging experience with author Alice Randall. She will be reading from her new book, My Black Country. We will be playing music from the companion compilation album My Black Country and refreshments will be served.

Alice Randall is a New York Times best-selling novelist, award-winning songwriter, educator, food activist, and now memoirist. A graduate of Harvard University, she holds an honorary doctorate from Fisk University, is on the faculty at Vanderbilt University, and credits Detroit’s Ziggy Johnson School of the Theater with being the most influential educational institution in her life. She is widely recognized as being one of the most significant voices in 21st century African-American fiction, the only Black woman in history to write both a number one Country song (Trisha Yearwood’s “XXX’s and OOO’s”) and an ACM video of the year (“Is There Life Out There?” starring Reba McEntire).
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“Alice Randall, award-winning professor, songwriter, and author with a “lively, engaging, and often wise” (The New York Times Book Review) voice, offers a lyrical, introspective, and unforgettable account of her past and her search for the first family of Black country music.
Country music had brought Randall and her activist mother together and even gave Randall a singular distinction in American music history: she is the first Black woman to cowrite a number one country hit, Trisha Yearwood’s “XXX’s and OOO’s”. Randall found inspiration and comfort in the sounds and history of the first family of Black country music: DeFord Bailey, Lil Hardin, Ray Charles, Charley Pride, and Herb Jeffries who, together, made up a community of Black Americans rising through hard times to create simple beauty, true joy, and sometimes profound eccentricity.
What emerges in My Black Country is a celebration of the most American of music genres and the radical joy in realizing the power of Black influence on American culture. As country music goes through a fresh renaissance today, with a new wave of Black artists enjoying success, My Black Country is the perfect gift for longtime country fans and a vibrant introduction to a new generation of listeners who previously were not invited to give the genre a chance.”
—Simon & Schuster
www.alicerandall.com

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