Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 148

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Popular Culture Review

taken around to various local towns as an assistant in setting up motion picture
shows:
Oh we rode the dusty trails together
At the Saturday Morning Picture Show
The dusty trails are gone now
And it hurts to hear it said
Pinto the Wonder Horse is Dead
(“Pinto the Wonder Horse is Dead,” 1970)
He was drawn closely to music by Floyd Carter, a guitar picker who became his
idol. Carter died of tuberculosis at the age of nineteen, the same summer Hall’s
mother died. In one song Floyd Carter became Clayton Delany (“The Year Clayton
Delany Died,” 1971):
I made Clayton a promise
I was going to carry on somehow
I’d give a hundred dollars
If he could only see me now
As a teenager Hall formed a small band and was also a disc jockey on
local radio stations. “Mecca” for Hall was Nashville, and at every opportunity, he
listened to WSM radio and the Grand Ole Opry. After joining the army. Hall
continued with his music. His song “Salute to a Switchblade Knife” (1970) recalls
leave time carousing the bars of Germany and the troubles that GIs could get into
if they were not careful.
A return stateside was a return to small time music gigs and more work as
a disc jockey. However, after experiencing a degree of modest success with the
recording of a song or two. Hall made his career definitive by moving to Nash
ville.
In Nashville he received a small weekly salary as a songwriter and began
to pump out songs Nashville style, but with his own storytelling twist. He also
discovered that his singing was a marketable quality, and a recording career be
gan:
Remember how I used to
Drink and play guitar
And I’d get up and sing for
All those folks at Jody’s Bar
Well I found out it ain’t too bad