Hall of Fame
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Hall is best known for writing “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” probably the only country song to inspire a movie and a sitcom. But in his nearly four-decade career he has also worked as a radio jingle writer and DJ, written four novels, and toured college campuses lecturing on literature with old pals like Alex Haley, accumulating a diverse but rabid fan base along the way. As a performer he’s had his share of top-five hits–“A Week in a Country Jail,” “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died,” and “I Love,” to name a few–but his bread and butter has been the thousand or so songs he’s written for the likes of Jones, Waylon Jennings, Flatt & Scruggs, Gram Parsons, Bobby Bare, Loretta Lynn, Alan Jackson, and even Perry Como.
In late 1996 Linn and Bass met with Luke Lewis, the head of Mercury’s Nashville department. “He knew it wasn’t going to be a big moneymaker, but he thought it would be cool to have because Tom T. Hall was on Mercury,” says Linn. Lewis made Linn and Bass a verbal offer, but before it could be put into writing it was overruled by bean counters in New York. After six more months of protracted negotiations, Linn and Bass decided they’d rather put the record out themselves.
With so much more left to rediscover, the Tom T. Hall Project is ongoing: Linn and Bass are considering a second various-artists collection, and plan to release a CD of trucker fave Dave Dudley singing Hall’s songs in late spring.
