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'Do you think when you shake the country tree Charley Pride is the only black man who's gonna fall out?' 'There are 35 million African-Americans in the United States,' she says. He remains the only black country singer signed to a major label - not, says Frankie, because there are no others out there, but because a combination of reflexive racism and commercial timidity has kept black performers offstage.
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So far, however, none has emulated the success of country's only black megastar: Charley Pride has racked up 36 number one singles, and sold 70m albums around the world.
#Black country singer series#
They call it America's music, but it don't look like America.'įrustrated by the lack of opportunities for African-American country singers, Frankie set up the Black Country Music Association, which has helped dozens of upcoming singers record demos and perform at a series of showcase gigs. 'I mean, what the hell is wrong here? Every type of music is integrated but country. But I feel like the country music industry never asked us to come to the party,' she says. She's a human firecracker of emotion: when the subject of black people in country music arises, she fizzles with enthusiasm - and occasionally pops with rage.
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Just because we're black doesn't mean all we listen to is rap, gospel, blues and jazz.' Frankie is a 50-year-old single mother: by day a waitress, and by night a pianist on the Nashville bar circuit. Country deals in universal themes - love, infidelity, despair, redemption - and its lyrics reflect a rural working-class experience shared equally by blacks and whites.Īs Dwight packs away his guitar, Frankie explains: 'Black people have always sung country music. But since the first 'hillbilly' records from the early decades of the 20th century there has always been a black presence in country.Įven under segregation, musicians of all colours influenced each other, and in the South the genre is woven into the fabric of life. 'You ever think you'd hear a song like that coming out of a brother?' she asks.Ĭountry is often seen as the whitest, most segregated of all styles: the redneck soundtrack of the racist South. Sitting next to me at a table by the low stage, Dwight's songwriting partner Frankie Staton leans over and grins. His last tune begins as a mawkish lament for his late grandfather, but transforms into a hymn to the American South: 'Let the angels of Dixie sing/ May that old flag stand proud/ And may the stars ever shine in the South.' His songs are set amid the truck stops and honky-tonks of his North Carolina home, and they are peopled with figures not usually associated with black America: stock car racers, ranch riders and Harley Davidson bikers. Over the background clatter, Dwight's baritone carries the barest hint of melancholy - a touch of the blue yodel. It's the fact that he's the only black man in the room. It's not the Texan heels, or the high-crowned Stetson it's not the acoustic guitar or the outlaw twang in his voice. D wight Quick stands out amid the weeknight cowboys singing for the tourists in the lounge bar of a Nashville hotel.