Beyoncé's new country music album will highlight the historical and ongoing contributions Black artists have made to the genre that some say has long shut them out.
"My last dream was, I wanted to live to see a Black woman at the top of the country charts because I had never seen it," said Randall, who became the first Black woman to write a No.1 country hit in 1994, in an interview with ABC News. "I thought I would be retiring at 65 and not see it" until Beyoncé's latest single came along.
"Black folks had been in country music from the beginnings of the genre," Francesca Royster, author of "Black Country Music," told ABC News in an interview.The banjo was created by enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Caribbean and North America by combining African and European instrument forms, according to The Smithsonian Institution, and has since become a staple in country, folk and hillbilly music.
The popularity and widespread reach of blackface minstrelsy, "where white artists were playing Black music in blackface," also played a role in the later inspiring what would become staples of country music's sound, said Royster. Hank Williams, Sr. and Hank Williams Jr. have long acknowledged the importance of Payne, an unknown Black street musician, in mentoring Williams Sr.
Johnny Cash met successful blues musician Gus Cannon on the streets of Memphis while working at a home appliance store. However, Pride too faced challenges - in the 1960s, his race was kept a secret from RCA Records Nashville until after his deal was signed. His race was also kept a secret from country radio disc jockeys until his songs proved regularly be successful, the museum noted.Linda Martell became the first Black woman to perform at the Grand Ole Opry stage in the late 1960s and early 1970s, cutting an album and several country chart hits, enduring racism that she said led to the downfall of her career.
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