Turn It Up - Beyoncé Forebears Edition

Some Black country favorites from beyond the usual suspects

Beyonce’s Country Carter inspired a raft of articles last week listing earlier instances of Black artists making country music. Shouts outs to Ray Charles and Tina Turner, the Pointer Sisters and Darius Rucker and Millie Jackson, are always great to see, of course, but at this point they are perhaps already pretty obvious and, in any event, barely break the surface of what’s a deep, foundational Black country well. (This New York Times piece was probably the most prominent of this type but there were many others.) As a result, we’ve been inspired to plunge at least a little deeper here for our weekly listening recommendations, emphasis on “a little.” Truth is, we could track this theme every week and still never reach bottom. But, for starters, here are several examples of what we hear as Black Country before Bey, focusing specifically on artists associated with other genres who kept it country at some point - or many - throughout their careers. David’s up first today, then Charles, and as always there are plenty of reading recommendations, both Beyoncé related and not, to close.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe with the Anita Kerr Singers – “There’ll Be Peace in the Valley” (single, 1952)

An unheralded antecedent for a lot of modern country music at midcentury comes from Black music and especially black gospel. Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s version of “Peace in the Valley” is an exemplar. Thomas Dorsey wrote the song for Mahalia Jackson. Black quartets such as the Flying Clouds of Detroit picked it up and from there the Black-inspired white quartets who, decades later, became retroactively dubbed “southern gospel,” found their way to the song. Think the Statesmen, Blackwoods or Jordanaires. In 1951, country star Red Foley had a stately, very peaceful major hit with the song. By contrast, Sister Rosetta’s version, kicked off by Tharpe roughing up the intro lick and troubling her mind with bluesy responses as she goes, anticipates the road to a peace that’s still ahead. Sister Rosetta’s shouted declarations of what she believes she will one day experience soar atop the softly-tenderly cooing of the Anita Kerr Singers, and glorying in that simple contrast and less-is-more rhythmic pulse anticipates the country pop of Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Patsy Cline, Esther Phillips and so much more. –DC

Mahalia Jackson – “Satisfied Mind” (single, 1955)

In the 1950s, gospel legend Mahalia Jackson was one of the best-known and most beloved Black artists alive. She regularly appeared on national radio shows, was signed to Columbia Records, and cut sides aimed at the pop market. Her version of the Porter Wagoner hit “Satisfied Mind” is another gospel forebear of the Nashville Sound: more generally inspirational than explicitly Christian, stripped down to a spare rhythm section, with twangy guitar fills, and the very white-registering Jack Halloran Singers serving as proto-Jordanaires. Wagoner’s version is great, as he plays a generous sort intent on teaching you a life lesson and it leans, just a tad, to the preachy side. Mahalia, singing with less note-bending than she might have on a pure gospel side, is generous too, but warmer. She’s just sharing what she’s learned, too, but she’s a bit humbler about it—and leaning to vulnerability. –DC   

Ivory Joe Hunter – “Since I Met You Baby” (from Ivory Joe Hunter, 1957)

With mid-century original “I Almost Lost My Mind,” east Texas native Ivory Joe Hunter modeled a melody style that country acts have borrowed from ever since and that fit comfortably alongside the many C&W covers he also liked to croon. By the time he titled his final album I’ve Always Been Country in 1973, his songs were country standards. “Since I Met You Baby,” to pick just one example, topped the country chart for Sonny James in 1969. Beyond his smooth husky croon and songwriting catalog, though, there’s also his deceptively simple, always elegant piano playing. Listen to the not-quite-slip-note intro to his hit 1957 R&B crossover “Since I Met You Baby,” and see if you don’t exclaim: “So that’s who invented the Nashville Sound!” –DC     

Othar Turner – “Sitting on Top of the World” (from Memphis Music & Heritage Festival Live 1989, 2014)

I can’t be the only person who heard that whistle-and-rhythm breakdown in “Texas Hold ‘Em” and flashed instantly to Othar Turner. The north Mississippian was a master of the pre-blues style known as fife-and-drum, what critic Jon Pareles described in Turner’s New York Times obit as shaping “the sound of a Civil War military band into music with clear African roots: a syncopated drumbeat behind sharp, riffing melodies in pentatonic modes.” Othar and his drummers’ version of “Sitting on Top of the World” (check out the way he worries the word “worry”) demonstrates the style while also nodding to Black string band the Mississippi Sheiks, who cut the song in 1930 and may have written it in response to Al Jolson’s same-titled hit. Country music is big like that, gloriously synthetic. –DC

Rihanna – “Desperado” (from Anti, 2016)

At first Rihanna evokes country for me here more with images than sounds. Her title alone will prompt twang-minded listeners to recall classics by both the country-rocking Eagles and that Gulf-coast Texan Guy Clark. The themes push in a similar direction. An outlaw, unwilling to be tied down, is hitting the road, while Rihanna, unwilling to be left alone, says “I’m goin’ witcha,” like she’s a contemporary Patsy Montana. She may ors may not want to be a cowboy’s sweetheart but for sure she’s hot to ride shotgun with a fellow desperado. That country-radio-perfect opening couplet—“Desperado / Sittin’ in an old Monte Carlo”—surely made the Nashville songwriting community groan as one with envy. Once all those connections are branded in my brain, the record begins to sound country to me too: A loping rhythm with rusty tin-cup accents and a snapping bullwhip. She even drawls “sight of love” so severely it sounds like “saddle up.” It’s all very cinematic, like a modern spaghetti western. History is unlikely to record it this way, of course, but, for me at least, “Desperado,” out on Rihanna’s Anti a couple months ahead of Beyonce’s “Daddy Lessons” on Lemonade, is where this current genre-fluid, black country moment kicked off. –DC

Arthur Alexander – “Detroit City” (single, 1967)

Arthur Alexander not only launched the Muscle Shoals recording scene, but his deeply affecting songs – drawing equally from Eddy Arnold, Ray Charles, and Ben E. King – mapped the deep overlaps between country and Black pop at the dawn of the soul era. While some of his songs, including the classic “You Better Move On,” became country hits for other artists, his occasional nods to others’ country material were just as rich a demonstration of his fluency with country sounds and sensibilities. (Sounds which, by the late 1960s, he and his Shoals crew had helped establish.) The best of those, maybe, is his version of Bobby Bare’s early hit “Detroit City,” written by Danny Dill and Mel Tillis. Over the subtly Latin-inflected rhythms that propelled many of his recordings, Alexander wraps his quavering baritone over lyrics of displacement that – as others have noted – gain resonance when sung by such a gifted Black singer. There are few more definitive country-music sentiments than “Oh, how I want to go home,” and there’s perhaps no one who delivered them with such poignant sadness. A country-soul foundation, by any measure. – CH

Irma Thomas – “Dance Me Down Easy” (from Safe With Me, 1979)

Back in 1979, just prior to Urban Cowboy and at the moment when country and R&B charts pulsed with similar rhythms, New Orleans soul queen Irma Thomas released this bright star of a single. Written by Billy Burnette and Larry Henley, “Dance Me Down Easy” is a dazzling showcase for Thomas’ playful poise, as she bounces across a slick disco-country groove provided by crack Muscle Shoals musicians. With vibrant production from Dan Penn, then entering his third decade as a country-soul architect, Thomas’ “Dance Me Down Easy” remains an enduring, line-dancing pleasure that nods forward to current work by Tanner Adell, Blanco Brown, and – sure enough – Beyoncé. – CH

Ruth Brown – “Tennessee Waltz” (from The Real Ruth Brown, 1972)

By the time Ruth Brown got to “Tennessee Waltz” in 1972, both song and singer were legends in their own time. “Tennessee Waltz” was a standard, recorded by everyone from Patti Page to Sam Cooke among countless others. And Ruth Brown was a standard-bearer, whose run of hits in the 1950s and 1960s established Atlantic Records and helped define the sound of R&B. Meeting here like old friends, Brown draws out the song’s drama with a performance that contains entire histories of Black vocal traditions (gospel to jazz to pop and beyond), over supple background by the all-star team of Bernard Purdie, Richard Tee, Ron Carter, and David Spinozza. Where many readings of the song foreground lamentation, Brown – who frames it with spoken passages that bridge the gap between Luke the Drifter and Millie Jackson – instead calls out her supposed friend with humor, defiance, and even a bit of a threat. It’s funny, sad, honest, messy, affirming, and beautiful all at the same time. And if that ain’t country… - CH

Parliament – “Little Ole Country Boy” (from Osmium, 1970)

Well, yeehaw indeed. The third track on Parliament’s debut album is a curio: written by the group’s early producer Ruth Copeland, its yodeling, down-home imagery, and steel guitar (from a young Paul Franklin) is perhaps a far cry from the otherworldly re-imaginings of the P-Funk multiverse. But, in another sense, its stomp and signifying are quite at home aboard the Mothership. (It also resonates as a comedic inverse of fellow explorers Sly & The Family Stone’s country sojourn “Spaced Cowboy,” a hazy highlight of 1971’s doomy There’s a Riot Goin’ On.) Fuzzy Haskins’ breathless recitation, which includes a graphic description of police brutality and unfair imprisonment within its seemingly humorous (and kinda sexist) storyline, gives way to a chorus defined both by its memorable simplicity and a slightly off-kilter sound reminding you that these brilliant weirdos are always ready to turn your expectations inside out. Lil Nas X could cover it – maybe he should. - CH

The Supremes – “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” (from The Supremes Sing Country, Western and Pop, 1965)

The Supremes’ 1965 Sing Country, Western and Pop is one of the many albums released in the aftermath of Ray Charles’ first Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, both to capitalize on its success and to stake a wider claim for country in the R&B mix. While the trio works their magic with honky-tonk ballads, I’m a fan of this souped-up Motown Sound refit of the Sons of the Pioneers’ eerie tone poem. The original breathed deeply with the mysterious peace of isolation under Western skies. But Ross, Ballard, and Wilson dance with those tumbleweeds as they travel across the plains. Over stabbing piano and booming drums, the Supremes turn “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” into an ode to new possibilities. “I know when night has gone, a new world’s born at dawn,” Ross sings, her voice rising with the promise and energy that defined the Motown Sound, whether rooted in the Motor City or riding out towards new horizons. - CH

Stevie Wonder – “I Ain’t Gonna Stand for It” (from Hotter Than July, 1980)

In the early stages of pre-Cowboy Carter crate-digging, a friend reminded me of this gem from Hotter Than July. Stevie Wonder had recorded country before – check out his great cover of “Sixteen Tons” – and inclusive definitions of the music should certainly encompass the lonesome twang of his harmonica, the warm acoustics of his ‘70s ballads, or the hard-times funk of “Livin’ for the City.” But this glistening glide – which glimmers with the sparkle of country’s disco moment and the grown-folks smile of artists like Conway Twitty – points toward the ‘80s overlaps that would, among other things, lead to such success for Wonder’s friend Lionel Richie as he scored Kenny Rogers hits. The breakdown is maybe a bit groovy for Nashville, even when it aimed for the dance floor. But plenty of country artists in this era - Conway, Kenny, Dolly, Barbara Mandrell, et cetera – could easily have slid up in the saddle and rode “I Ain’t Gonna Stand for It” all night long. – CH

Reading recommendations:

-Rodney Carmichael talks to Tierra Whack, for NPR

-Keith Harris on seeing Sleater-Kinney for the final time, for Racket

-Barry Mazor on the new Sierra Ferrell, for Wall Street Journal

-Alice Randall on Beyoncé and Black country, for Time.com

-Katja Vujić talks to Alice Randall about her My Black Country, for The Cut

-Panama Jackson on Cowboy Carter, for The Grio

-Taylor Crumpton on Cowboy Carter, for Daily Beast

-Carl Wilson on Cowboy Carter, for Slate

-Chris Willman on Cowboy Carter, for Variety

-Sheldon Pearce on Beyoncé and Jay-Z, for NPR.com

-Candace Norwood on Beyoncé and black country music fans, for The 19th

Also, be sure to check out our Black Country Bookshelf, which we’ve just updated with a couple of things we’d forgotten about!

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