Ben Preiss
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I suppose you could compare her to Tiger Woods, since the country music scene has about as many African Americans as the golf scene did when Tiger started… No there are less. Rissi Palmer’s self-titled album comes out October 23, and its first single “Country Girl” has already hit No. 54 on Billboard’s Hot Country charts. Rissi gets a lot of surprised looks when she steps out on stage in Nashville but everyone relaxes when they hear her sing.  Rissi Palmer still laughs about the looks she saw on people's faces when she stepped on stage in some of Nashville's honky-tonk bars.
"There's not a lot of black people in these places, so a lot of times it was like, 'Is it R&B night here? What's going on,'" she says.
"But then when they heard our set and what we were doing, they'd say, 'Oh, she's for real. Wow.'"
She's not looking for favors, she says, just a fair shot. She recalls how Nashville music executives would gush over her demos, then back off when they discovered she was black. Palmer doesn't blame racism, just the realities of the market.
"It was a question of, 'Is this marketable? Is this something country listeners will buy into? '"
(news.yahoo)References: whudat, news.yahoo Filed In: |
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