Tom T. Hall, Country Music’s ‘Storyteller,’ Dead at 85

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Tom T. Hall, Country Music’s ‘Storyteller,’ Dead at 85
Country Music Hall of Fame member wrote classics like “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” “That’s How I Got to Memphis,” and “(Old Dogs, Children and) Watermelon Wine”
By JON FREEMAN

Tom T. Hall, the Country Music Hall of Fame member known as “The Storyteller” for his detailed narrative songs like “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” “I Love,” and “That’s How I Got to Memphis,” died Friday at his home in Franklin, Tennessee. He was 85. Hall’s son Dean confirmed his father’s death.

Born Thomas T. Hall on May 25th, 1936, in Olive Hill, Kentucky, Hall began playing music at a young age and performed with a bluegrass band, the Kentucky Travelers, while he was a teenager. He joined the Army in 1957 and sometimes performed on the Armed Services Radio Network while stationed in Germany. After returning to civilian life, Hall was working as a radio DJ in Virginia when a publisher heard his song “D.J. for a Day” and brought it to Jimmy C. Newman, who took it to the Top Ten. Hall’s first Number One came in 1965 with Johnnie Wright’s version of “Hello Vietnam.”

Hall began to record his own compositions as well, signing with Mercury Records in 1967 and joining the Grand Ole Opry in 1971 as he was beginning to pile up hits under his own name. Among his Number Ones from the era are the barroom memory “(Old Dogs, Children and) Watermelon Wine,” “I Love,” “Country Is,” and “Faster Horses (The Cowboy and the Poet).” His plainspoken delivery and slice-of-life tableaus were easily approachable, ranging in tone from humorous to hefty on Seventies albums like Rhymers and Other Five and Dimers, The Storyteller, and Country Is.

“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,” said 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.”

Still, one of Hall’s best-known songs was “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” which Jeannie C. Riley turned into a CMA award-winning crossover smash in 1968. Its narrative about a miniskirt-wearing single mother who righteously admonishes the hypocritical busybodies at her daughter’s school also spawned a movie and television series. Hall’s hits for other artists included Dave Dudley’s “The Pool Shark,” Bobby Bare’s “That’s How I Got to Memphis” and, in 1996, Alan Jackson’s “Little Bitty.”

Read more at: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/musi ... y-1215055/