The Black Songwriter Who Took Nashville by Storm
Before Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” Won Song of the Year at the CMAs, Hit Maker Ted Jarrett’s Music Topped the Country Charts
Singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman made history last year when she became the first Black artist to receive the Country Music Association’s Song of the Year Award, after Luke Combs remade a song she wrote—the 1988 hit “Fast Car”—and it soared to No. 1 on the Country Airplay chart.
If only the late, great Black singer-songwriter Ted Jarrett had been alive to witness Chapman’s achievement. Like Chapman, Jarrett sticks out as a kind of oddity—the rare Black musician who wrote a country No. 1 and became renowned for it. That there are not …
