Photograph Source: Mercury Records – Public Domain

Dolly Parton represented a golden age of country music which included Johnny Rodriguez, Charlie Pride, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty, Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Barbara Mandrell, Don Williams and countless others, many no longer with us.

One legend, with whom Dolly performed in Fayetteville, North Carolina, was Tom T. Hall, remembered as the “Storyteller.”

Hall, who died in 2021, is usually remembered for writing “Harper Valley P.T.A.” which became a hit for Jeannie C. Riley in 1968. Admonished for wearing miniskirts, the mother in the song outs her very hypocritical attackers. (“And Mr. Baker, can you tell us why your secretary had to leave this town?”)

But Hall had other sage and inimitable songs like “Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine,” which recites the wisdom of an elderly janitor Hall meets in a bar.

“Ever had a drink of watermelon wine?” he asked

He told me all about it, though I didn’t answer back

“Ain’t but three things in this world that’s worth a solitary dime

But old dogs and children and watermelon wine

He said, “Women think about they-selves, when menfolk ain’t around

And friends are hard to find when they discover that you’re down

He said, “I tried it all when I was young and in my natural prime

Now it’s old dogs and children and watermelon wine”

He Liked Beer

Many remembers Hall’s paean to the world’s most down-to-earth alcoholic beverage “I Like Beer”–and those who saw him at the Arizona State Fair in 1986 know it was true.

“Whiskey’s too rough, Champagne costs too much, [and] vodka puts my mouth in gear,” says the song over an Oktoberfest-like chorus in the background intones “He likes beer.”

But his autobiographical and wistful “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died” in which Hall remembers a guitar picker he knew as a boy is also timeless.

Clayton was the best guitar picker in our town

I thought he was a hero and I used to follow Clayton around

I often wondered why Clayton who seemed so good to me

Never took his guitar and made it down in Tennessee

I remember the year that Clayton Delaney died

Nobody ever knew it but I went out in the woods and I cried

Well I know there’s a lotta big preachers that know a lot more than I do

But it could be that the good Lord likes a little picking too

In Hall’s 1976 “Fox On the Run” which he did not write but covered, he turns a young boy’s heartbreak into bluegrass catharsis with the help of banjoes and fiddles.

She walks through the corn leadin’ down to the river,

Her hair shone like gold in the hot mornin’ sun,

She took all the love that a poor boy could give her,

And left me to die like a fox on the run.

Like Dolly, Tom T. Hall never wavered from his country roots where his talents grew and are showcased to this day.