Tom T. Hall. Photo: Courtesy Robert K. Oermann
Country music songwriter, singer, instrumentalist, and writer Tom T. Hall has died at the age of 85, according to his son Dean Hall.
Known as “the Storyteller,” Hall penned twelve No. 1 songs and over 26 Top 10’s throughout his career.
Born May 25, 1936, in Olive Hill, Kentucky, Hall wrote his first song at the age of 9 and joined his first band, the Kentucky Travelers as a teenager.
After enlisting in the military in 1957 where he often performed and sang original songs for the Armed Forces Radio Network, Hall began working as a radio disc jockey in Virginia and captured the attention of Nashville publisher Jimmy Key. Key placed one of Hall’s original songs, “D.J. for a Day” with Jimmy C. Newton who was able to put the track in the Top 10 1963-1964.
On the heels of the songs radio success, Hall moved to Nashville and began working on his career as a songwriter with early cuts by Newton, Dave Dudley, and Johnnie Wright. He went on to sign with Mercury Records in 1967 after being championed by producer and label executive Jerry Kennedy. His first single as an artist, “I Washed My Face in the Morning Dew,” was released in the summer of ’67 and the No. 1s began rolling in shortly after, carrying him through much of the 1970s.
All self-penned, Hall’s may hits included “A Week in a Country Jail,” “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died,” “(Old Dogs, Children and) Watermelon Wine,” “I Love,” “Country Is,” “I Care,” and “Faster Horses (the Cowboy and the Poet),” among others. He joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1971 and was elected to the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame in 1978.
Among other hits penned by Hall are Dave Dudley’s “The Pool Shark;” Bobby Bare’s “(Margie’s at) the Lincoln Park Inn” and “How I Got to Memphis;” and “Harper Valley P.T.A.” for Jeannie C. Riley which earned a CMA Single of the Year award and inspired a movie and television series, significantly boosting Hall’s profile in the process.
Additionally, Hall was an accomplished prose writer, winning the 1972 Grammy for Best Album Notes for Tom T. Hall’s Greatest Hits. His other notable works include The Storyteller’s Nashville, The Laughing Man of Woodmont Cove, The Acts of Life, Spring Hill, Tennessee, What a Book!, and How I Write Songs, Why You Can.
Following the release of the 1985 album Song in a Seashell, Hall took a ten-year sabbatical from recording, returning in 1996 with Songs from Sopchoppy. Included on the project was his original song “Little Bitty” which was recorded by Alan Jackson later that year, scoring another No. 1.
Later on, Hall and his wife Iris Lawrence, better known as Miss Dixie, focused on advancing bluegrass music and its artists careers. On their farm outside of Nashville the couple operated their own publishing companies as well as a state-of-the-art recording studio. Together, they won a dozen awards for Bluegrass Songwriter of the Year between 2002-2015 before Lawrence’s death in 2015.
Hall was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008 and was presented the BMI Icon Award in 2012 for his lasting influence on generations of songwriters.
“Tom T. Hall’s masterworks vary in plot, tone and tempo, but they are bound by his ceaseless and unyielding empathy for the triumphs and losses of others,” says Kyle Young, CEO, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “He wrote without judgment or anger, offering a rhyming journalism of the heart that sets his compositions apart from any other writer. His songs meant the world to Bobby Bare, Johnny Cash, George Jones and other greats, and those songs will continue to speak to generations. He was a storyteller, a philosopher, a whiskey maker, a novelist, a poet, a painter, a benefactor, a letter writer, a gift giver, a gentleman farmer and many more things. My bet is that we won’t see the likes of him again, but if we do I’ll be first in line for tickets to the show.”
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