Tom T. Hall: 1936-2021

I found out the news that Tom T. Hall passed away when I arrived from home in the latter half of yesterday. It was by pure luck that I decided to check the internet Friday evening after spending most of yesterday watching national news. I went to the social media sites I frequent and learned that Tom T. Hall had passed away at age 85. It's eerie because I had recently watched a vintage clip on YouTube of Tom T. from the late '60s on an episode of The Del Reeves Show. I've always liked the songs of Tom T. Hall and I've known of his music for more than 30 years. I first heard of him through television. On the weekends there used to be a lot of country music television shows that aired on a local channel...and I'd see him in television commercials for Tyson products. I also think I saw him doing a commercial for Purina as well...but I'm for certain I've seen commercials he did for Tyson in the early 1980s. If you are familiar with his songs then you're very, very familiar with his speaking voice. Ralph Emery once described the vocal performances of Tom T. Hall as being the closest thing to sung narration. Tom T. had a style all his own...it was like rhythmic narration. No, I'm not saying it was primitive rap music, but it was definitely a narration set to music. As I struggle to find a proper description let's simply say, as I previously stated, he had a style all his own. His songs were not filled with a lot of instrumentation and almost all of the songs he wrote were based on something that had happened in his life. He once had an album out called I Witness Life. His songs had such descriptive storylines that he was nicknamed The Storyteller...and it's a nickname that remained with him throughout his career and into retirement. If you are of a certain age, or, like myself, you love hearing classic country music...well, once you hear the nickname The Storyteller you know it's a reference to Tom T. Hall. He was born in Olive Hill, Kentucky on May 25, 1936.

Some of Tom T.'s classic songs run the gamut from heartbreak, aspiration, inspiration, social comment, good fortune, misfortune, and the simplicity of living simply without a lot of trappings and grandeur. "I Love" is the song that had the biggest commercial impact in pop music for Tom T., the singer, as it crossed over from country to pop in late 1973 / early 1974. "I Love", statistically, was his biggest hit as it reached number 1 on the country music chart here in the U.S., for 2 weeks, and it the top in Canada on their country music chart while it peaked just outside the Top-10 on the pop music charts here in the U.S. and in Canada. 

Tom T. Hall was, of course, equally known as a songwriter. While "I Love", written by Tom T., spent several weeks at number 1 country and was a Top-20 pop hit, therefore becoming his biggest hit as a singer, his biggest overall hit came with a song he'd written but was a hit for Jeannie C. Riley. That hit, "Harper Valley, P.T.A.", was massive. It hit the country and pop music charts here in the U.S. in 1968 and it was a smash hit nearly all over the globe. Sales reportedly reached 6,000,000. Tom T. had been a pretty successful songwriter throughout the early and mid 1960s. Mercury Records, in 1967, issued "I Washed My Face in the Morning Dew". The song became a Top-40 country hit...his first chart appearance as a singer. It was followed up by two more chart hits in the first half of 1968 and then, perhaps in the aftermath of Jeannie C. Riley's massive success with "Harper Valley, P.T.A.", Tom T.'s name was elevated to a more higher profile and when Mercury Records issued their fourth single on Tom T. late in October of 1968, "Ballad of Forty Dollars", it became a Top-10 hit early in 1969. 

Tom T.'s albums were produced by Jerry Kennedy throughout the latter half of the '60s and into most of the '70s. Tom T. would eventually move to RCA Records...releasing an album referencing the change in record labels: 1978's New Train Same Rider. He released several albums and singles for RCA during a three year period, until 1980, when television took up a lot of his time. Ralph Emery had retired from hosting the syndicated country music show, Pop! Goes the Country following the 1979-1980 season. Tom T. became the program's new host...unlikely selection some may have thought...but he remained the host of the series for two seasons, 1980-1981 and 1981-1982. Did you know Tom T. Hall recorded a duet album with Earl Scruggs? Oh yes he did! Columbia Records released the album, The Storyteller and the Banjo Man, in 1982. 

Tom T. returned to Mercury Records and released his first solo album in three years in 1983: Everything From Jesus to Jack Daniels. The album reunited him with record producer, Jerry Kennedy. 

In the photo off to the left it's me and the box set that Mercury Records released in 1995 on Tom T. Hall called Storyteller, Poet, Philosopher. When I began purchasing my own music in the mid and late 1990s Tom T. Hall was more or less out of print and there was hardly anything available at retail stores. This 1995 box set is something I came across at a larger music store in a shopping mall several dozen miles away. I bought the box set, as you can see, and I immediately discovered a whole lot of Tom T. Hall recordings that I'd never heard before. The booklet gave me a lot of information about him beyond what I'd already knew. In the beginning of this memorial blog entry I mentioned that Tom T. had written and sang so many songs...and nearly all of them are based in real life experiences he'd had. You can hear the reality hit home on so many of his songs. One of the many wonderful songs from Tom T. is "The Ballad of Bill Crump". The song is simply about a man who was a great craftsman and Tom T. had this ability to make you, the listener, care for the people he was telling you about in his songs. If you're a Tom T. fan then you'll all recall the name, Clayton Delaney. Tom T. told us about "The Year Clayton Delaney Died". Although none of us I suspect have ever seen or met Clayton Delaney...or have met the person that the song is actually based on...Tom T., through his songwriting talents, has us mourning the loss when we listen. The songs he wrote and directed toward children such as "I Care", "Sneaky Snake", "One Hundred Children", and "The Mysterious Fox of Fox Hollow" just to name three, are intelligent and they lack a lot of the other ingredients that populate songs that were 'written for kids'. In other words Tom T. didn't talk down to kids or give lengthy, moral lectures. "One Hundred Children" could be seen as social commentary but I always took it as being aspirational. Speaking of social commentary...Tom T. could infuse contemporary happenings into his songs if he wanted to. There are several that leap to mind: "Watergate Blues", "The Monkey That Became President", and a song that Dave Dudley had a big hit with, "What We're Fighting For". Tom T. had previously written another social commentary recording, "Hello Vietnam". That song spent three weeks at number one for Johnny Wright in 1965. 

A lot of Tom T.'s early songwriting hits came from recordings released by Dave Dudley...and the two of them eventually released a duet together, "Day Drinking", which Tom T. wrote. Some of the songs Tom T. wrote that became hits for Dave Dudley: "Mad", "Listen Betty I'm Singing Your Song", "George and the North Woods", "This Night Ain't Fit for Nothin' But Drinkin'", and "The Pool Shark". Bobby Bare had hits with Tom T. songs "Margie's At the Lincoln Park Inn" and "That's How I Got to Memphis". Jimmy C. Newman had a hit with "D.J. for a Day". A song Tom T. wrote in 1967 would become a hit for George Jones in 1980, "I'm Not Ready Yet". In addition to all of the songs that Tom T. wrote for himself as well as for other recording artists he was also an author of books. A couple of his books were The Storyteller's Nashville and later, The Laughing Man of Woodmont Coves and What a Book!. 

He was elected to the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame in 2002. He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008. When he was elected he was part of the larger group of country music artists that were going into the Hall of Fame that year. The Class of 2008 included not only Tom T. Hall but Emmylou Harris, Pop Stoneman, and The Statler Brothers. One of the ironies is the B-side of The Statler Brothers hit, "Flowers on the Wall", was a song written by Tom T. called "Billy Christian". 

Tom T. was elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1978. He was given the Icon Award from the International Bluegrass Music Association in 2012. He and his wife, Dixie, were elected to The International Bluegrass Hall of Fame in 2018. In 2019 Tom T. was elected to the National Songwriters Hall of Fame.

What a lot of people might not know about Tom T. is he had a love for Bluegrass music. He actually started out playing Bluegrass, locally, but didn't professionally record Bluegrass until many years into his recording career. He put out an album in 1976 titled The Magnificent Music Machine...an album chock full of Bluegrass flavored songs. "Fox on the Run" leads off that album. The title track was written by his brother, Hillman Hall. The album features a duet with Bill Monroe on "Molly and Tenbrooks". In 1982, as previously mentioned, he released a duet album with Bluegrass legend, Earl Scruggs titled The Storyteller and the Banjo Man. In 1997 Tom T. issued the Bluegrass flavored, Home Grown...and from that album came his single, "Bill Monroe For Breakfast". It was his final studio album for Mercury Records. A decade later, in 2007, he released Tom T. Hall Sings Miss Dixie and Tom T. This became Tom T.'s final studio album of his career...but he remained moderately active within the Bluegrass community as a writer. He passed away at the age of 85 on August 20, 2021.

Tom T. Hall had a fascinating career...and he had a fascinating life...and all of us got to hear a glimpse of the things he experienced as he witnessed life. 

Tom T Hall: 1936 - 2021