Singer, songwriter, guitarist

Nicknamed "The Storyteller" because of the narrative nature of most of his songs, country singer-songwriter Tom T. Hall "has broadened and deepened the country river significantly," according to Patrick Carr in Country Music, and "is one of the major architects of the music's modern form." Whether writing songs for other artists' interpretation, such as the famous "Harper Valley PTA, " or singing his own compositions, including the classics "The Year That Clayton Delaney Died" and "Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine," Hall has been a successful part of the country music genre since the 1960s. Yet he is not the "typical" country artist. Though some of his best-loved songs are simple, many others are sophisticated examinations of issues in story form, and Hall has attracted fans from the world of literature and politics, including author Kurt Vonnegut and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter.

Hall was born May 25, 1936, in Olive Hill, Kentucky, to a minister and his wife. Though he formed a musical group in his late teens that eventually performed on a local radio station, Hall did not initially consider music as a career. Rather, he wanted to become a writer or a journalist, but there were many obstacles in his way. When Hall was sixteen, his father was accidentally shot, and the young man had to quit school to help support his nine brothers and sisters by working in a factory. After an eight-year stint in the U.S. Army, where he picked up his high school diploma, he enrolled in Roanoke College in Virginia to pursue this goal. Though he admired authors such as Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, Hall soon came to believe that he was better at writing country songs than stories or articles. While working as a disc jockey in Roanoke, he sent some of his compositions to Nashville, Tennessee. Music publishers liked his work, and one company in particular, New Keys, urged Hall to relocate to Nashville. He did, and his first song recorded, "D.J. for a Day," was sung by Jimmy C. Newman.

"D.J. for a Day" did well for Newman, but Hall's most successful composition for another singer was 1968's "Harper Valley P.T.A.," recorded by Jeannie C. Riley. The song has sold over six million copies, and inspired a television movie and a series. Like many of Hall's musical narratives, "Harper Valley" is based on real incidents; apparently a woman in the songwriter's hometown threw wild parties, and the more upstanding citizens criticized her to such an extent that her child was singled out for extra discipline at school. The woman finally went to a P.T.A. meeting and publicly pointed out the hypocrisy of these so-called responsible people.

By the time "Harper Valley" was released, Hall had begun recording his own works on the Mercury label. He had resisted a recording contract for years, wishing first to gain a reputation in Nashville as a songwriter. But finally, during the late 1960s, Hall gave in—with astounding results. Through the next two decades his number of releases rivaled the most prolific country singers. His early hits include 1968's "The Ballad of Forty Dollars," depicting the memorial service of a man who died without paying back the money he owed the narrator, and 1969's "A Week in a Country Jail," describing the interesting conditions of the title locale. But perhaps Hall's most famous earlier release was the 1971 smash, "The Year That Clayton Delaney Died." Like "Harper Valley, " it sprung from a true story, and the song is a tribute to a drunken guitar player fallen on hard times who taught Hall to play as a boy. As he confided to Carr, "It started out with just me sitting down with a guitar and thinking, 'Well, I want to thank Clayton." Another of Hall's songs, the philosophic "Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine," was taken from a conversation the songwriter had with an old black man in a bar in Miami, Florida. Reportedly Hall's own favorite from among his many hits is 1974's "I Love," in which he lists all the things most dear to him.

Some of Hall's hit songs, however, have strayed from the narrative mode to become singalong favorites. The gospel-flavored "Me and Jesus," while it advocates an individualistic approach to religion, is primarily a toe-tapping, feel-good song. So is the simplistic "I Like Beer," which has proved even more popular in Germany than in the United States. Carr reported that at least sixty different singers in Germany have recorded versions of the song. Hall's work has also earned him many fans in Poland; "people defy the authorities to buy his records on the black market and thank him for his music by sending him watercolor portraits of himself, [and] even Polish money," according to Carr.

During the 1980s, after Hall had switched from Mercury Records to RCA, his songwriting career fell somewhat into decline. "Now," he admitted to Carr, "there are so many writers and publishers; everybody's writing songs. Where there were maybe a dozen guys who were really putting the hot tunes together when I started in Nashville, now there must be hundreds." Hall also attributes his dry spell to a change in taste among country fans. Undaunted, he put more of his concentration into his prose, authoring the autobiographical history of country music The Storyteller's Nashville, and the novel The Laughing Man of Woodmont Cove. He also keeps active in charity work with his wife Dixie, but he continues to compose. "I've got the songs," Hall told Carr, "and one day next week someone will pick up that one tune that's just right for that one singer, and it'll be Number One."

—Elizabeth Thomas