Lee Ann Womack on Working With John Legend, Singing at Maya Angelou’s Funeral
Lee Ann Womack has a traditional country sound, but she isn't bound by genre lines. When the singer stopped by the Taste of Country Nights studio recently, she opened up about an R&B collaboration, also revealing that one huge civil rights activist is a huge fan of hers.
Womack collaborated with John Legend on an episode of 'CMT Crossroads,' and she added a little soul to her songs in the process. The pair found that the best way to lean on one another was to listen to the other artist's collection.
“We listened to each other’s catalog, you know, and narrowed it down along with the help of some people at CMT," Womack tells ToC Nights host Sam Alex. "They pretty much let John and me do the whole thing.”
Womack also spread the country music love when she performed at the funeral for Maya Angelou, a very important civil rights activist who also spent time dancing to and singing calypso music. Angelou was apparently a big fan of Womack's music, and the experience meant a lot to the Jacksonville, Texas native.
“She was a big fan and particularly loved the song ‘I Hope You Dance,’ it meant a lot to her in her life and I didn’t know this until she died," Womack explains. "And then we got a call from her family saying she … had a list of things she wanted."
One of those things was a request for Womack to perform the beautiful song at her funeral. Womack, of course, obliged.
"I loved her as a person, I didn’t really know her as a celebrity … just to get to meet her family and them laughing about how she played the song so much and played it for everybody who came through the door and that sort of thing," she shares, " ... Just to get to meet her family … was the best part of the whole thing for me."
Sam Alex is the host of Taste of Country Nights radio, a syndicated night show which airs on more than 60 Townsquare Media Group stations nationwide.
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