Holly G has been quite busy during the pandemic times — she created the Black Opry in April 2020, while the rest of us were still wiping down our groceries. With a goal of inviting everyone sitting outside the traditional Nashville music table, the Black Opry has taken off, from New York to an upcoming Nashville show in December. Holly G discusses her favorite one hit wonder with Sloane Spencer, and shares an unlikely history of how Linda Martell came to record her one hit wonder, “Color Me Father.” Plus, they discuss the politics of country music in a musical scene where some got unfairly pushed aside over the years, and how the Black Opry hopes to diversify Nashville in short order. List of links The Black Opry Black Opry on Twitter Linda Martell Rolling Stone feature on Linda Martell Linda Martell's CMT award coverage in the Tennessean Plantation Records Shelby Singleton “Color Him Father” by Linda Martell Documentary by her granddaughter Marquita Thompson Grand Ole Opry Hee Haw Linda Martell on Hee Haw Original “Color Him Father” by the Winstons The Amen Break by the Winstons, most sampled drum break in music The vocal version of “Amen” (similar to what Sloane Spencer grew up singing in church in Atlanta) “Amen Brother” by the Winstons Carolina Beach Music Richard Lewis Spencer Curtis Mayfield Otis Redding Frankie Staton Black Opry Revue in NYC Black Country Music Association article in Rolling Stone Black Country Music Association’s old Blogspot site Exit/In Black Opry Revue show What is a songwriters’ round? Jewly Hight’s NPR piece on AmericanaFest Black Opry House AmericanaFest music conference and festival Cam Maren Morris Leslie Fram at CMT Darius Rucker Jimmie Allen UMG Nashville Cindy Mabe — the record label exec’s letter regarding Mickey Guyton, 2021 (full text at the bottom of the article) Music mentions Rissi Palmer’s Color Me Country Lizzie No (who is a guest on our other podcast, Bubble Bottles) Mickey Guyton Miko Marks Brittney Spencer Reyna Roberts Extras Listen to One Hit Wonders on Spotify! Check out our Patreon bonus episode featuring Charley Crockett's cover of Billy Swan's “I Can Help” Don’t forget to give One Hit History a five star rating! Transcript [00:00:00] Sloane: Hey, y'all, this is Sloane Spencer, and you found us at One Hit History. You might know me as the founder of the pioneering long form Americana podcast called Country Fried Rock, which these days is really just sort of my online Twitter persona. One Hit History asks music people, “What's your favorite one hit wonder?” [00:00:19] This has been my favorite backstage conversation for nearly 25 years. It always brings up incredible deep conversation and connections with music. It's a nice short story because the person that we're chatting with today, I found via Twitter, which has the great retweet feature and amplifies incredibly important content -- sometimes. [00:00:41] And I got lucky with this one. We're chatting with Holly G of Black Opry. Gonna have Holly tell you more about what they have going on these days. And if you're not already following them, stop by BlackOpry.com. [00:00:53] Tell me what you're up to these days. [00:00:56] Holly G: Yeah, I just started Black Opry actually in April of this [00:01:00] year. Is it still 2020? Yeah. And everything kind of like spiraled out of control in the best way. I had all these plans, like two or three years down the road, and everything that I had planned for so far away has begun to happen. We just did AmericanaFest back in September and we rented a house and we invited everybody that was a Black person in country, music, BiPOC, queer people, anybody that was sitting on the outside of the Nashville table. [00:01:25] We invited everybody over and everybody jammed out,
