Country Music’s Tom T. Hall: A Classical Liberal’s Songs of the Appalachian People from Musing From Mystic Maverick
“I’d find the young men in the far off places of the world/I’d bring them home to see their fathers, mothers and their girl.” – “The World The Way I Want It” – 1968 Tom T. Hall song
”I was born in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains,” country songwriter, singer and musician Tom T. Hall once said, “and spent my whole life trying to get out of there.” But he achieved worldwide acclaim and success writing songs and singing about the people who lived there. Hall and his late wife Miss Dixie, a prolific bluegrass songwriter until her passing in 2015, will be inducted in the Bill Monroe Bluegrass Hall of Fame on September 22.
Hall was born on May 25, 1936 in Olive Hill, Kentucky. One of 10 children, he grew up in a house with “a porch from which to view the dusty road and the promise of elsewhere beyond the hills – the birthplace of a dreamer.” His mother died of cancer when he was 13. Several years later when his father, a bricklayer and minister, was injured in a shooting accident, Hall dropped out of school to look after the family. Hall began playing guitar when he was four and was deeply influenced by a local musician who died at 22 of tuberculosis. The song he wrote about his musical mentor, “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died,” later became a hit.
Playing bluegrass with a neighbor’s traveling cinema led to a broadcasting stint with the Kentucky Travelers on a program on WMOR, Morehead, Kentucky. Hall broadcast regularly as part of the Kentucky Travelers. When the band broke up (members were drafted into the Korean War), he continued at the station as a DJ, then joined the Army in 1957.
Songs like “Salute To A Switchblade” and “I Flew Over Our House Last Night” relate to his Army days. Upon leaving the military in 1961, he returned to WMOR and worked as both a DJ and a musician.
Nicknamed by Tex Ritter as The Storyteller for his unique songwriting style, Hall prepared for his craft by reading Sinclair Lewis, Twain, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dickens, Greek mythology, Socrates, Plato and James Joyce and studying journalism on the GI bill in Roanoke, Virginia. He wanted to write books. All of his reading prepared him as a wordsmith for his songwriting. Hall’s songwriting has been compared to Chekhov’s short stories. He wrote from personal experience, places he had been and people he had met, sometimes anonymously.
With intelligence, wit and humor, he wrote about the simple struggle of the individuals he grew up with, knew and observed to survive economically. “That’s just the way things are for the working people,” says Hall. “They want to hear songs about themselves.
“Since day one of the Declaration of Independence, the American working man, whether through war, inflation, or depression — they’ve just been jerked around from one calamity to another. And so that’s where the songs come from. It’s not easy out there if you wonder where the next refrigerator payment is coming from, or if your kids are going to eat, or if they’re going to close down the plant where you work. There’s not a lot of security out there.”
In 1964, he moved to Nashville and soon met Iris ‘Dixie’ Dean at a BMI Awards ceremony. Miss Dixie had emigrated from England, was the editor of Music City News and songwriter who had lived with Mother Maybelle Carter. Hall and Miss Dixie were married from 1968 until her passing.
Over the years Hall’s opinion on war evolved. It was a subject he referred to not infrequently since it was a pivotal part of the lives of the people he was writing about – “Ballad of Forty Dollars,” “Day Drinkin,” “In Our Little World,” “Salute to a Switchblade,” “Last of the Drifters,” “Thank You, Connersville, Indiana,” and “Pay No Attention to Alice,” among others. He also wrote songs specifically about war and his lyrics reflected a change of perspective as time went on. After serving in the Army, in 1965 he wrote a song Toby “Boot in Your A**” Keith would love: the pro-war “Goodbye Sweetheart, Hello Vietnam.” This chart topper for Johnny Wright was used as the title theme for Stanley Kubrick’s film “Full Metal Jacket.” In 1966’s “What We’re Fighting For,” a hit for Dave Dudley, Hall acknowledged American protesters, but the song defended the Vietnam War as necessary to keep communism from America’s shore. The line “There’s not a soldier in this foreign land who likes this war” hinted at Hall’s budding departure from a hard core pro-war stance.
This line from “Strawberry Farms,” the haunting 1969 ballad about his childhood — “Bobby had a brother, he got killed in the war/I asked him but he didn’t know what for” went farther than he ever had questioning the validity of war:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_LfTBffM1c
1970’s “Girls of Saigon City” tells the sad story of a vet who after receiving a Dear John letter paints the town with Vietnamese prostitutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRCP58fRuEA
“Mama Bake a Pie, Daddy Kill a Chicken,” also from 1970, is about another war vet, his legs blown off, coming home, a whiskey bottle under the blanket in his wheelchair, whose girl has left him for another.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5LGEsdA81o
In 1972 Hall told the tale of a man named John who due to health reasons didn’t fight in World War II. The town folk call him a coward and John responds by going on a shooting rampage, gunning down his accusers. After he is arrested and convicted of murder, John eats his last meal. Facing the electric chair, the condemned man tells the warden who is about to hit the switch, “Turn It On, Turn It On, Turn It On.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPLzSmEvZis
The “Tom T. Hall Sings Miss Dixie and Tom T. Hall” bluegrass CD includes “A Hero in Harlan” about the all too familiar but tragic story of a soldier returning home in a casket. Here Hall performs the song at the Lincoln Theatre in Marion, VA in 2008 (this author went to that performance). It was aired by PBS in its Song of the Mountains series:
Personal experience taught Hall painful lessons about the devastating human cost of war. “I lost a brother in the war and had another one all shot up. I had three brothers in the Korean War. One of them got killed and my other brother brought him home when I was a very young man – and I was struggling with that at the time. I think [the practice was] that if two brothers were in a theater and one got killed, the other one would bring his body home. It was a nice thing. You don’t want to lose them both.”
Hall’s breakthrough as a songwriter crossing musical genres came in 1968 with “Harper Valley PTA” recorded by Jeannie C. Riley. The smash hit about hypocrisy in a small town reached #1 on the U.S. pop charts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOZPBUu7Fro
In 1968 Mercury Records signed Hall to their label, the artist then added a middle initial and became Tom T. Hall. The fretted dobro played by producer Jerry Kennedy became the signature sound of Hall’s records. Along with his uniquely crafted songs, his folksy personality and self-effacing humor endeared Hall to his record fans and concert and TV audiences. (This author interviewed him in the 1990s. On stage he kiddingly referred to me as the reporter from “The National Enquirer” who was going to do an expose on him.)
Those familiar with his extensive song catalog would likely conclude the author and performer to be a classical liberal or libertarian. He says himself, “I’m obviously kind of a liberal. Most of the folks around here (where he lives) are Republican.” At the age of 71 he referred to himself as “sort of an old hippie.”
This demo recording of Hall’s song about the JFK assassination, “The World Lost a Man (John F. Kennedy),” includes the line “He was not a man who spoke in fear”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u9o_srXf94
“Politics with me is sort of like football: in the beginning, it’s dangerous and vicious and a mean game. Not for cowards.” His hit, “Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine,” was written on a napkin on an airplane after an encounter with a janitor at a bar he met when performing at the 1972 Democratic Convention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqV9NZSGIa4
Here he is singing the song many years later:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45u0kdUgFgo
Hall often wrote about social injustice in songs such as “America The Ugly,” “I Washed My Face in the Morning Dew,” “The Man Who Hated Freckles,” and “I Want to See the Parade,” never suggesting the solution would derive from the government but rather from a change in the hearts and minds of individuals.
In “100 Children” (“Don’t blow up the world/Don’t kill all the flowers/Your God may be dead but ours is alive/We think without Him we cannot survive”) he tackles politics, faith and war:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1utJDGHaq8
His musical mark has made in the 1970s, a very different age for the music business and getting songs played on the radio. “It’s also a time when…radio had not yet been formatted into absolute submission, where they were okay with playing ‘I Love’ and ‘I Care’ (two songs from the album that became number ones). They weren’t demanding a certain kind of song or a certain kind of subject matter. It was a more open time. A lot of the ideas on this album in particular…I guess today they’d be considered green, liberal, left-leaning ideas. You know, take care of the ecology, because we want to be able to hear birds sing.”
Hall’s own spiritual beliefs indicate he has pursued his own path on his own journey. “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t a songwriter. Maybe it was a reincarnation thing or a gift. My father never preached against jewelry…polish on nails. With that attitude, he was a real rebel because about 90% of the sermons you heard back then were about haircuts, smoking tobacco and wearing short skirts. None of that stuff is in the Bible. You take a guy and put him in a robe. Then you have a bunch of guys following him around with candles. All the ritual. Society demands you submit yourself to ritual.”
Hall never shied away from writing about the Christian culture and beliefs of the Appalachian people, weaving the theme of redemption for sinners into songs like “One More Song for Jesus,” “Everything From Jesus to Jack Daniels,” “Trip to Hyden,” “The Man Who Shot Himself,” and “I Don’t Want My Golden Slippers.”
His best known Christian song is “Me and Jesus,” recorded here at his 2008 high school homecoming in Olive Hill (this author was there):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDCH5OIJWIc
Hall began announcing his retirement in the 1980s: (“How do you know when to retire? You volunteer to do a benefit and they don’t want you”). While he did cut back on personal appearances and traveling to perform concerts, he continued to write and record songs.
In their later years together, Hall and Miss Dixie supported up and coming bluegrass artists, created Good Home Grown Music Publishing, started Blue Circle Records, and recorded these developing musicians in the Halls’ home studio at Fox Hollow. Taking a mandolin and tape recorder on the road, the pair used the same process to think of songwriting ideas. The couple would get in their car and “just take off and drive the blue highways, and stop off in little towns and write songs, talk to people in the beer joints, pool rooms, cafes, back porches, lean on fences,” country stores and churchyards.
With trepidation, the two physically ventured three miles deep into a real coal mine. They describe this occurrence in this video, with their harrowing experience inspiring them to write “Blow Out the Candle, Laura”:
In 2011, prominent roots artists got together to re-record Tom T. Hall’s 1974 children’s album, “Songs About Fox Hollow” at Hall’s home studio. A visit from his nephews inspired Hall to write the songs. “This was just another trip around the farm with these kids…I was just doing the same thing I’ve always done. I didn’t make up songs about Fox Hollow. I was walking around with these kids finding them. They were already there. Sneaky Snake was here. The Mysterious Fox was here. The One-Legged Chicken was already here. I just hadn’t seen ‘em as songs until (I was with) my little nephews.”
In total, Hall recorded 27 albums and had seven #1 country hits including “A Week in a Country Jail”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p4nQHCRod8
Amongst his numerous awards and honors, Hall became a member of the Grand Ole Opry in 1971; won a 1973 Grammy for his notes on the album Tom T. Hall’s Greatest Hits; was inducted in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1978; inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008; and received the icon award at BMI’s 60th anniversary in 2012. “My buddies hear I’m an icon, they think you’re a gay communist,” he joked during his acceptance speech. For 10 years he and Miss Dixie were voted the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music Association Songwriters of the Year.
He recorded the bluegrass albums – “Magnificent Music Machine” in 1977 with appearances by the legendary Bill Monroe and J.D. Crowe and “The Storyteller and the Banjo Man” with Earl Scruggs. Hall wrote an album of songs for “The Story of Bonnie and Clyde” for Lester Flatt and Scruggs. “They were all on the cover with their machine guns,” said Hall. “Looked like a Tea Party rally.”
His most recorded song is “That’s How I Got to Memphis” performed here in 2011 at Nashville’s Blue Bird Café:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA3XOdvo1MU
A multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, piano and drums, here he is picking banjo on the John Prine penned “Paradise,” a rare occasion performing a song written by someone else:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfKgjNKfMIs
One of his biggest hits was 1973’s “I Love”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FgNBy-dh5E
Late in his career he was still writing and performing brilliant songs that evoke deep emotion, appearing in this 1996 video of “Shoes and Dress That Alice Wore.” It’s about a man who betrays his wife, she then kills herself, and he keeps her dress hanging in the closet to remind himself of his infidelity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC-2k25iY6A
Hall’s favorite philosopher is Spinoza. “I think the nature of songwriters is that they are philosophers and philosophers have a bent towards poetry and songwriting, so I think the two run around together. Looking for universal ideas, a way to say things, get the story across as a means of entertaining, provoking thought. In looking for songs, you also find yourself looking for little signals and clues about life. I look for small incidents in my life that taught me a lesson.
“I have always thought the best life would be a manageable mad thing. If you could somehow be weird and wonderful and strange and still kind of not get in anybody’s way, hurt anybody’s feelings or cause anybody any economic disadvantage. If you could get through life like that, that’s your best shot. Don’t try to be too sane. And if you could get there, then you could be honest. That’s the first virtue. Humility is a good virtue.”
After Miss Dixie’s passing in 2015, an estate sale was held in 2016 at Fox Hollow in Franklin, Tennessee to sell the furnishings (including furniture handcrafted by Hall), musical instruments, antiques, collectables and mementos accumulated during the couple’s 47 years together.
http://www.michaeltaylorestatesales.com/old_site/blog/2016/11/in-the-spotlight-tom-t-hall-estate-sale/
Recent new reports indicate Hall is frail and his poor health prohibits him from traveling to Bean Blossom, Indiana in September to be inducted into the Bill Monroe Bluegrass Hall of Fame on his and his late wife’s behalf.
Mr. Hall, all of us who are profoundly grateful for your music wish you a very happy 82nd birthday. We love you and thank you for all the wonderful music that lifted our souls and touched our hearts. May God bless you.
References:
www.Bluecirclerecords.com
www.tomthall.net
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Tom+T+Hall+in+Concert&&view=detail&mid=A29027C18F185D50B6D2A29027C18F185D50B6D2&&FORM=VDRVRV
http://www.nashcountrydaily.com/2014/06/01/tom-t-hall-talks-retirement-and-living-the-simple-life/
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1979/11/19/master-of-the-country-music-lament/80a4fcd8-038b-42f0-9a2a-9c411fbe7d11/?utm_term=.c543d1b6a18d
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https://americansongwriter.com/2011/08/tom-t-hall-is-for-the-children/
https://www.alancackett.com/tom-t-hall
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http://www.herald-dispatch.com/_recent_news/tri-state-natives-bobby-bare-tom-t-hall-part-of/article_f1e99c34-f709-11e7-bf29-b3e92b17c339.html
http://virginianewssource.com/VNS/tomthall.html
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