Songfacts®:

• "Call Me a Fool" is a lush, slow-burning soul-country ballad by Valerie June featuring Carla Thomas, the Queen of Memphis Soul. It's taken from June's fifth album, The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers, which - true to its name - is equal parts stardust, sermon, and Southern gothic.
• "Call Me a Fool" is Valerie June telling the world in her unmistakably cosmic drawl: "Yes, I'm dreaming. And no, I don't care what you think." It's a song for the romantics, the misfits, the stubborn optimists who still believe peace is possible and true love is worth chasing. June summed it up this way:
  
  "Have you ever been a fool for a dream? It might have been a little dream like a kiss from a lover or a big one like the dream of peace that Dr. King, John Lennon, and so many others have had for humanity."
  
  She urges us to lean all the way in, saying: "No matter how big or how small your dream may be, keep believing, and let the world call you a fool!"
• The track is preceded by Carla Thomas reciting an African proverb:
  
  Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet
  
  June, in true mystical contrarian form, flips the meaning. Where the proverb preaches caution, June declares boldness. She'd rather dive in headfirst, dream and dignity be damned.
• Thomas recalled the session to Uncut magazine, saying producer Boo Mitchell (son of Memphis soul legend Willie Mitchell) called her up:
  
  "Valerie's in town, would you like to come to the studio and meet her?"
  
  Thomas obliged, and when she got to the studio, Valerie invited her to be on the record.
  
  "It was a very spur-of-the-moment thing," Thomas said. "But we never know what blessings the spur of the moment may bring."
• While June is known for her eclectic blend of Appalachian folk, banjo balladry and psych-soul mysticism, "Call Me a Fool" swings more decisively toward R&B. Thomas noted: "It had more of a beat... I have a feeling it was because it was recorded in Memphis with Boo Mitchell. I said to her, your roots and my roots in this area really helped us along - it's closer to R&B. It has that Memphis quality."
  
  And it does. From the lush horns to the stately rhythm section, it's the kind of song that feels like it could've been pressed at Stax in 1967 and still works on a 2020s playlist alongside Solange and Brittany Howard.
• "Call Me a Fool" was critically embraced and honored with a Grammy nomination for Best American Roots Song in 2021. It also earned June a Song of the Year nomination at the Americana Music Awards. And in a moment of full-circle grace, Valerie June presented Carla Thomas with the Lifetime Achievement Award for Inspiration at the 2021 Americana Honors, celebrating not just a song, but a sisterhood of soul across generations.