Prelude: Back to the studio
1. What is Black country?
Portrait of a Black man playing an early American banjo
The birth of Black country
2. In a Motown cherry tree: learning to write hillbilly songs
The Supremes sing country at the Copacabana
Florence Joplin, erased foremother of Black country
3. D.C. daze: small towns (are smaller for girls)
Saved by Lil Hardin and The Johnny Cash Show
Close encounters with trippy hippy country
Seeking the safety of foreign soil in a small southern town called D.C.
Roberta Flack and audacious Black country love
Swamp Dogg, essential Black country eccentricity
1976 bicentennial year Black country
4. Encountering: the first family of Black country and other allies
5. Scaling music row citadel: screaming like a banshee in Belle Meade
Dressing for success at the uniquely quiet Bluebird Café
Charley Pride at a black-tie banquet in a Nashville ballroom
Making a power move at the weenie roast
In the Ryman with Roy Orbison and a chicken dressed up like Johnny Cash
The Fairfield Four, Black gospel at the Ryman, and hallelujah, my first cut!
Kossi Gardner, unheralded Black country genius with funeral-organ roots
Unpacking Opryland (theme park, hotel, stage) cultural war zone
Midsummer's first hit, the last days of DeFord Bailey, and other victories
6. Big dreams: big hits, big mistakes
Quincy Jones and The Cosmic Colored Cowboy
The capital of Black country, Los Angeles
The mayor of Black country, Ray Charles
Los Angeles Black gospel, a taproot of Black country
Herb Jeffries, the bronze buckaroo, rides, sings, and films Apple Valley
7. The second-best gift my bad mama gave me: Mother Dixie
The Wooten Brothers, the greatest Black country brother band of all time
Maya Angelou's country cameos
The Thing Called Love: a white country movie with Black country denouements
8. Revived the rails: cowboys, Pullman porters, and soiled doves
California Zephyr, running with Lil from Bettie
Iowa: more trains, planes, and automobiles
Redemption remembered in the Black Northwest
Vindication, plain but not simple
The Pointers, the Panthers, the Barbary Coast
The Coast Starlight, riding a spine of the Pacific, to the City of Angels
A train whose name should be changed
Nat Love, cowboy, porter, memoirist
The original singing cowboys were Black
Kansas City, Charley Pride, and baseball
Lil, the territory bands, and letting go
9. The archive and the academy: creating a new country canon
Lil Nas X enters the academy
Rissi Palmer enters the archive
Rhiannon Giddens, creator and curator
Allison Russell writes a cornerstone for the canon
10. Far yonder: beyond Motown and Music City
Linda Martell, a reckoning
Aretha Franklin, a benediction
Circling back, DeFord Bailey
A new Nashville now, Mickey Guyton
Circling back, Charley Pride
Circling back, Lil and the linchpins in a wild woman's town
Encore: a songbook performed in a wild woman's town.