Tom T. Hall
Storyteller, Poet, Philosopher
Mercury
Tom T. Hall sings country songs with such ease, you'd think the words and melodies flowed like blood through his veins. Maybe they do. Born in 1936, the son of a Baptist preacher in rural Kentucky, Hall quit school at 15, but he always loved music and writing, and couldn't stay away from either. After years as a bluegrass musician, DJ and radio copy writer, Hall moved to Nashville in 1964 and soon became one of the industry's most respected songwriters--and eventually a much-loved singer as well.If you want to know what the fuss is all about, spend a couple of hours with this excellent two-CD, 50-song retrospective of Hall's impressive catalog. Listen to him sing about his life and times--and those of countless other people he's encountered during his travels. His friendly voice half sings, half speaks tales of army buddies and children, down-and-outers and big-time dreamers, as easily as your favorite uncle might spin a yarn while sitting around the supper table.
At first, the stories--about a hitchhiker he picked up last week, or a janitor sweeping a barroom floor--seem like nothing out of the ordinary. Yet hidden inside these everyday experiences are moments of subtle but extraordinary beauty. The truth is right in front of us, his songs seem to say, we just don't always see it. Hall's brilliance is that he's as straightforward as he is insightful--he understands the people he's singing about as much as those he's singing to, and his easy way with language comes across as both charming and powerful. You immediately recognize the emotions hidden behind his clever turns of phrase.
The focus of this set is Hall's 1970s material (none of his '80s albums are represented), though it stretches as far back as 1967's "I Washed My Face in the Morning Dew" (his first single) and includes a duet with Johnny Cash, "The Last of the Drifters", that appeared on Cash's 1988 album, Water from the Wells of Home. There are also two unreleased tracks, "Give Her My Best" and "Levi Jones", from the mid-'70s.
In country music history, the 1970s was a time of exceptional songwriting that pushed boundaries: "outlaw" stars Willie and Waylon, long-haired renegades such as Kris Kristofferson and Billy Joe Shaver, intospective poets such as Townes Van Zandt and Mickey Newbury. While Hall certainly shared many of these artists' frustrated sentiments, he wasn't a fringe artist, instead working more from the inside establishment. He was clean-cut and charming, an Army vet and a family man--solid mid-American stock.
Yet he spoke his mind. His songs are sometimes straight-up fun ("I Like Beer"), other times deeply tragic ("Mama Bake A Pie", about a Vietnam vet's homecoming). He sang about social issues (class divisions in "America the Ugly", the death penalty in "Hang Them All"), but just as quickly turned his pen inward ("I'm Forty Now"). The fact that Hall could say so much about this country and the people in it--and without ever resorting to a preaching or condescending attitude--made his appeal wide and strong.
Hall is a literate songwriter with a sharp eye for detail. "Show don't tell" is what writing teachers always say, and Hall does it well. The "hot bologna, eggs, and gravy" gives an extra dimension to the time he spent "A Week in a Country Jail", and the image of a little boy's bike adds to the guilt and pain of "Margie's at the Lincoln Park Inn", a masterpiece of a song that speaks clearly of adultery without ever saying the word out loud.
"I Witness Life" was the title of an album Hall released in 1970, and it's as good a phrase as any to sum up the frank, honest approach of this down-to-earth storyteller, poet, philosopher, and songwriter.
--Kurt Wolff
No Depression, Vol. 1, No. 4, Summer 1996