Nashville Country Hall of Fame to highlight Black country artists

A quarter century after releasing groundbreaking work tracing the many ways Black Americans have created, contributed to, and been influenced by country music, on May 31, 2024, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, in collaboration with Warner Music Nashville, will release an expanded, 82-track version of “From Where I Stand: The Black Experience in Country Music.”

The CD set is packaged in a hard-bound booklet and illustrated with traditional quilt designs created years ago by the women of the Gee’s Bend community of Alabama, with cover type by visual artist and designer David Jon Walker. Each era of music is represented with a quilt from roughly the same time period as the music. The set is now available for preorder on the museum’s website.

Originally released in 1998, the updated CD collection will span a century of music (with a fourth disc titled “Reclaiming the Heritage” that presents a fresh wave of Black artists in country and Americana who emerged through 2020) and be accompanied by a free-to-access online experience via the museum’s website. It will also include essays by recording artists Rhiannon Giddens and Rissi Palmer alongside the original essays by distinguished music scholars and journalists.

The box set’s online experience is a free educational resource containing all the incisive essays, archival photographs and videos and historical track notes for each selection. In addition, supplemental resources from the museum’s archive and resources for educators will be available. 

The online experience will also include music that was unable to be licensed for the physical box set release, including Beyoncé and the Chicks’ collaboration on “Daddy Lessons,” Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” and Al Green’s version of “For the Good Times.”

Information on the ‘From Where I Stand’ concert

On Tuesday evening, June 18, many artists represented in the box set will celebrate the project’s release in a one-time-only concert in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s CMA Theater. The concert, co-produced by Rissi Palmer and Shannon Sanders and presented by Amazon and Riverview Foundation, will be held on Tuesday evening.

Artists performing in the concert include Blanco Brown, Cowboy Troy, Tony Jackson, Hubby Jenkins, Miko Marks, Wendy Moten, Rissi Palmer, Darius Rucker, The War And Treaty and Barrence Whitfield. 

Beginning May 31, tickets to the free concert can be reserved on the museum’s websitebased on availability.The concert will be filmed and released this fall on the museum’s website.

Background on the box set’s origins

Black country recording artist Cleve Francis and American Baptist College executive Nelson Wilson inspired and urged the creation of the original set, which they saw as a disturbing gap in music history. “It’s a part of our history that’s been hidden from us,” Francis told the Washington Post upon the set’s release.

Via her essay in the box set, Giddens adds, “The most beautiful thing to me about the Black country renaissance is that its stars, who are finally starting to get the recognition they deserve, are truly using country music the way that, to me, it was born to be used. Their music reflects and highlights a cultural viewpoint that has been traditionally suppressed, shows the best of the American narrative, and, in the end, tells the important stories of now, for the generations of tomorrow.”

Box set’s tracklisting

Disc 1 – The Stringband Era

1. DeFord Bailey – “Pan American Blues”
2. DeFord Bailey – “Muscle Shoals Blues”
3. Taylor’s Kentucky Boys – “Gray Eagle”
4. Georgia Yellow Hammers – “G Rag”
5. Andrew & Jim Baxter – “K. C. Railroad Blues”
6. The Dallas String Band – “Dallas Rag”
7. James Cole String Band – “Bill Cheatem”
8. Peg Leg Howell & Eddie Anthony – “Turkey Buzzard Blues”
9. Charlie McCoy & Bo Chatmon – “Corrine Corrina”
10. Mississippi Sheiks – “Sitting on Top of the World”
11. Mississippi Sheiks – “Yodeling Fiddling Blues”
12. Memphis Sheiks – “He’s in the Jailhouse Now”
13. Mississippi Mud Steppers – “Morning Glory Waltz”
14. Lead Belly – “The Midnight Special”
15. Lead Belly – “Rock Island Line”
16. Nathan Frazier & Frank Patterson – “Eighth of January”
17. Murph Gribble, John Lusk & Albert York – “Apple Blossom”
18. DeFord Bailey – “Fox Chase”

Disc 2 – Soul Country

1. Wynonie Harris – “Bloodshot Eyes”
2. The Orioles – “Crying in the Chapel”
3. Big Al Downing – “Down on the Farm”
4. Ivory Joe Hunter – “City Lights”
5. Ray Charles – “I’m Movin’ On”
6. Ray Charles – “I Can’t Stop Loving You”
7. Bobby Hebb – “Night Train to Memphis”
8. Solomon Burke – “Just Out of Reach”
9. Fats Domino – “You Win Again”
10. Esther Phillips – “Release Me”
11. Joe Hinton – “Funny How Time Slips Away”
12. Arthur Alexander – “Detroit City”
13. The Supremes – “It Makes No Difference Now”
14. Bobby Hebb – “A Satisfied Mind”
15. The Staple Singers – “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”
16. Joe Tex – “Half a Mind”
17. Etta James – “Almost Persuaded”
18. Joe Simon – “The Chokin’ Kind”
19. Ivory Joe Hunter – “He’ll Never Love You”
20. Dorothy Moore – “Misty Blue”

Disc 3 – Forward with Pride

1. Charley Pride – “The Snakes Crawl at Night”
2. Charley Pride – “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone”
3. Charley Pride – “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’”
4. Linda Martell – “Color Him Father”
5. Otis Williams & the Midnight Cowboys – “How I Got to Memphis”
6. La Melle Prince – “The Man That Made a Woman Out of Me”
7. Stoney Edwards – “She’s My Rock”
8. Stoney Edwards – “Hank and Lefty Raised My Country Soul”
9. Stoney Edwards – “Pickin’ Wildflowers”
10. O. B. McClinton – “Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You”
11. Jo Ann Sweeney – “I’ll Take It”
12. The Pointer Sisters – “Fairytale”
13. Ruby Falls – “Show Me Where”
14. Lenora Ross – “Lonely Together”
15. Big Al Downing – “Touch Me (I’ll Be Your Fool Once More)”
16. Professor Longhair – “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)”
17. Dobie Gray – “From Where I Stand”
18. Cleve Francis – “Love Light”
19. Aaron Neville – “The Grand Tour”
20. Barrence Whitfield – “Irma Jackson”
21. Ted Hawkins – “There Stands the Glass”
22. Herb Jeffries – “I’m a Happy Cowboy”

Disc 4 – Reclaiming the Heritage

1. Carolina Chocolate Drops – “Ruby, Are You Mad at Your Man?”
2. Rhiannon Giddens – “At the Purchaser’s Option”
3. Darius Rucker – “Wagon Wheel”
4. Darius Rucker – “Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It”
5. Valerie June – “Workin’ Woman Blues”
6. Our Native Daughters – “Black Myself”
7. Mavis Staples – “Touch My Heart”
8. Tony Jackson – “I Didn’t Wake Up This Morning”
9. Rissi Palmer – “Country Girl”
10. Miko Marks – “It Feels Good”
11. Kane Brown – “Heaven”
12. Kane Brown – “Worldwide Beautiful”
13. Yola – “Ride Out in the Country”
14. Allison Russell – “Nightflyer”
15. Wendy Moten – “’Til I Get It Right”
16. Cowboy Troy – “I Play Chicken with the Train”
17. Blanco Brown – “The Git Up”
18. BRELAND – “Cross Country”
19. Brittney Spencer – “Bigger Than the Song”
20. Mickey Guyton – “Black Like Me”
21. Keb’ Mo’ – “Loving Arms”
22. The War and Treaty – “A Lesson in Leavin’”