JUKEBOX: In Defense of the Great Tom T. Hall
Earlier this year when Bob Dylan was deservedly honored at the MusiCares Person Of The Year Awards, he gave a typically fascinating, yet curious, speech where, aside from thanking all those who helped him along the way in his career, he also called out his critics, albeit mostly ones from 50 years ago. Personally it reminded me of the episode of the classic Irish comedy series Father Ted, where Ted, upon receiving the all-coveted Golden Cleric Award for priests, decides to name every single person “who fecked him over” in the past. Old Bob did just that too, naming and shaming the likes of Leiber and Stoller, Merle Haggard and Ahmet Ertegun, who apparently “didn’t think much of my songs.”
Out of all these, Dylan took the most time to criticize one artist in particular: legendary country singer/songwriter Tom T. Hall. In his speech, Dylan recalled reading an article back in the day, where Hall “was bitching about some kind of new song, and he couldn’t understand what these new kinds of songs that were coming in were about.”
Dylan then decided to lay into one of Hall’s songs called “I Love.” “An everyman song. Trying to connect with people,” he explained. “Trying to make you think he’s just like you and you’re just like him. We all love the same things. We’re all in this together. Tom loves little baby ducks. Slow-moving trains and rain. He loves big pickup trucks and little country streams. Sleep without dreams. Bourbon in a glass. Coffee in a cup. Tomatoes on a vine and onions. Now listen, I’m not ever going to disparage another songwriter. I’m not gonna do that. I’m not saying that’s a bad song, I’m just saying it might be a little over-cooked.”
Dylan went on to say that when Kris Kristofferson came along, it blew Tom T. Hall’s world apart. “God forbid he ever heard one of my songs,” he continued. “If ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’ rattled Tom’s cage and sent him into the looney bin, my songs surely would have made him blow his brains out.” It’s doubtful that anything like this really happened considering that Hall was actually something of a mentor to Kristofferson and championed many other new artists. One can only assume that Dylan was hurt that he wasn’t similarly encouraged by the country great.
Tom T. Hall’s name may not be instantly recognizable the way the likes of Haggard, Cash, Kristofferson, George Jones, or Willie Nelson are, but he’s certainly in the same league. He also comes from that same tradition of storytelling in song that similarly influenced Dylan (Hall was nicknamed “the Storyteller,” after all). So, in order to stick up for Tom T. Hall, who’s, to me, an amazing talent and just as a unique and brilliant a songwriter as Dylan himself, this week’s JUKEBOX takes a look back at some of the best songs Hall wrote for himself and other notable country artists.
1) “Harper Valley PTA,” Jeannie C. Riley (1968)
Hall’s tale of a trendy, mini-skirted widowed mother standing up to the hypocritical members of her teenage daughter’s small town PTA is easily his biggest crossover hit and, like many of Hall’s songs, based on a true story. It made a huge star out of the then 23-year-old Jeannie C. Riley and went on to sell over six million records, topping both the Billboard and country charts and winning her a Grammy to boot. The song was so popular it even spawned a movie of the same name in 1978 and a short-lived TV series, both starring Barbara Eden.
2) “DJ for a Day,” Jimmy C. Newman (1963)
The first artist to have a big hit with a Tom T. Hall-penned track was Jimmy C. Newman with the song “DJ For A Day” in 1963. With lines like “I’d play the saddest song you ever heard on your radio” and “I’d dedicate my love to you with every song I play,” it was pure country heartbreak that would have made Hank Williams proud. The song went all the way to #1 in the country charts and led to Hall moving to Nashville, with just $46 in his pocket and his guitar on his back, in order to try and make it as a songwriter.
3) “Hello Vietnam,” Johnny Wright (1965)
This song, sung by Kitty Wells’ husband Johnnny Wright (and featuring backing vocals from his missus) is probably best known these days as the opening song in Stanley Kubrick’s classic war film Full Metal Jacket, but back in 1965, it was a huge hit despite the fact it, rather unusually for the time, appeared to support the Vietnam War.
4) “Greenwich Village Folk Song Salesman,” Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood (1968)
Proving he also had a sense of humor, this little ditty was a fun spoof of the New York folk scene with Nancy & Lee pronouncing it “Green-wich” throughout with a giggle. “The place was full of happy, hopped-up hippies at the time,” Nancy sings with a smile, making it entirely possible that Dylan may well not have appreciated this Tom T. tune either.
5) “I Washed My Face in the Morning Dew,” Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton (1968)
Written for but turned down by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, this song was then picked up by Porter & Dolly for their second duet album and features some of Hall’s most thoughtful lyrics. “It was inspired by an old folk medicine tale: if you wash your face in the morning dew, it will help remove blemishes from your skin,” Hall explained. “I changed it around to mean that the morning dew would purify your soul.” Hall also recorded his own version for his debut album, Ballad Of Forty Dollars, while Johnny Cash also beautifully covered the song for the tribute album Real: The Tom T. Hall Project in 1998.
6) “(Margie’s At) the Lincoln Park Inn,” Bobby Bare (1969)
Hall’s reputation as an observer of the human condition is perfectly demonstrated with this somber number about an ordinary family man who is about to cheat on his wife with the Margie of the title, who is waiting for him discreetly at the local inn. “It’s about the reputation. It digs a little deeper behind what’s obvious,” Hall told CMT in 2005. “The guy’s a Boy Scout counselor, he teaches at Sunday school, his wife belongs to the bridge club, he’s capable of fixing his little boy’s bike…and all of this. But behind that façade of domesticity and civility, Margie’s at the Lincoln Park Inn. That’s a big story there.” Perfect country music fodder, in fact.
7) “A Week In a Country Jail,” Tom T. Hall (1969)
After Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison live album made a huge splash in 1968, Stonewall Jackson hoped to cash in on its success by asking Hall to write him a prison song. Hall didn’t think he’d be able to do it having never been incarcerated but then remembered a time when, after a simple traffic violation, he was detained for a week in a small-town jail due to the judge’s mother suddenly dying. Hall kept the song for himself and it became his first #1 on the country chart.
8) “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died,” Tom T. Hall (1971)
In “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died,” Hall paid tribute to his childhood hero, Lonnie Easterly, a neighbor of his who lived on Clayton Hill next to a family called the Delaneys (which is how he came up with the name). Easterly was a big inspiration to him as a boy and, as he says in the lyrics, the young Hall thought he was “the best guitar picker in our town.” Years later Hall accidentally happened upon a rock band whose guitarist turned out to be Easterly’s son and naturally he wrote a song about that, too, for his 1978 album Places I’ve Done Time.
9) “(Old Dogs, Children, and) Watermelon Wine,” Tom T. Hall (1972)
One of Hall’s most beloved songs, like much of his songwriting, is based on a real-life experience, this time a late night conversation with an old porter in an empty bar who told him his life story, and what he had learned through it all was that “ain’t but three things in this world that’s worth a solitary dime but old dogs and children and watermelon wine.” The next day, on the plane home, he wrote this classic song about it. Last year, Rolling Stone included it on its list of the 100 greatest country songs of all time.
10) “I Can’t Dance,” Gram Parsons (1973)
It’s no secret that Gram Parsons loved traditional country music, so it’s no surprise that he would have included a Tom T. tune on what would be his final album, Grievous Angel, providing it with a foot-stomping, upbeat moment that I’m sure would have made Hall proud.
11) “I Love,” Tom T. Hall (1973)
This is the song that offended Bob Dylan, here performed by the man himself on a TV show in the mid ’70s. It’s definitely Hall at his most cheesy and sentimental, but there’s also a homespun sweetness to it that’s hard to deny. Dolly Parton beautifully performed it with Hall on her ’70s TV show(the clip is sadly no longer available on YouTube) calling it “one of my favorite songs ever in the world.” What’s not to love?
12) “I’m Not Ready Yet,” George Jones (1980)
George Jones has covered many Tom T. Hall songs over the years, but this version of Hall’s 1968 track may well be his finest. It appeared on Jones’ classic album, I Am What I Am, from 1980 and followed “He Stopped Loving Her Today” up to the top of the country charts.
13) “That’s How I Got to Memphis,” Rosanne Cash (1982)
Rosanne”s dad Johnny Cash joins in at the very end of this performance but her excellent solo cover of the Tom T. Hall song is found on her 1982 album Somewhere in the Stars. Bobby Bare first had a hit with the track back in 1970 but it’s since gone on to be covered numerous times by everyone from Bill Haley to Solomon Burke to, most recently, the Avett Brothers.
14) “New Moon Over Jamaica,” Johnny Cash & Paul McCartney (1988)
Did you know that Tom T. Hall, Johnny Cash, and Paul McCartney wrote a song together? Well, here’s the proof. It was for Cash’s 1988 album Water From The Wells Of Home that saw him collaborating with everyone from Emmylou Harris to the Everly Brothers. McCartney visited Cash at his home in Jamaica in the mid-’80s, where Hall was also visiting at the time, and at Johnny’s suggestion, the trio wrote this song together, capturing the setting that inspired it. Hall can be heard singing backing vocals on the track along with Linda McCartney.
