Morgan Wallen and the Harsh Reality of Being a Black Country Music Fan
I feel like a nappy-headed stranger in a genre I’ve loved all my life.
The late singer Charley Pride, country music’s first Black superstar, once shared how the legendary Webb Pierce had welcomed him to the genre. “It’s good for you to be in our music,” Pierce had told him. Pride’s response? “It’s my music, too.”
I understand his sentiment. As a lifelong country music fan, I’ve often reacted the same way to side-eye welcomes by self-anointed gatekeepers. That’s how I felt when a shopkeeper in London in the 1990s nearly had a stroke when I brought the international version of Shania Twain’s CD Come on Over up to the counter. “I never would have expected you to buy this album,” he said, proving that Black stereotypes were alive and well across the pond.
That’s how I felt a few years later when the audience at a Lee Ann Womack showcase in L.A. gasped when I reminded her of the words to a song she forgot mid-performance. It was a cute moment, but I’ve always wondered if their reaction would have been the same if it was a White guy who had prompted her by singing the lyrics to Don Williams’ “Lord, I Hope This Day Is Good”?
I’m not sure how accepted Pride felt by the time he died of Covid-19 complications at…
