So Long, Tom T!
August 21, 2021 1:05 AM Subscribe
Farewell to songwriter Tom T Hall, who wrote one of the most absolutely perfect “fuck you, you smug, highfaluttin’, morally super hypocrites” songs in history. I’m talking, of course, about “Harper Valley PTA”, which was a hit song on the country charts back in 1968, and snuck onto pop radio as well, I do believe. Always LOVED that song, ever since I first heard it at the tender age of 11. Ever hear it? Give it a spin. And after that, maybe raise a glass of your favorite beverage to ol’ Tom, and, extra points if it’s beer.
Is this a good song ?
Some might say it doesn’t read very well, on paper. And they’d probably be right. But phrased within the melody Tom employed to deliver his lyrics, and delivered in his relaxed and utterly unpretentious style, I’d say, yeah. It’s a good song. No favorite of mine, or anything, but... a good song.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:26 AM on August 21, 2021 [12 favorites]
Some might say it doesn’t read very well, on paper. And they’d probably be right. But phrased within the melody Tom employed to deliver his lyrics, and delivered in his relaxed and utterly unpretentious style, I’d say, yeah. It’s a good song. No favorite of mine, or anything, but... a good song.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:26 AM on August 21, 2021 [12 favorites]
By the way, that dobro player on the live rendition of Harper Valley PTA is a total NASHVILLE CAT. Badass.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:29 AM on August 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:29 AM on August 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
I see he wrote a couple of books on how to write songs - this being the most available.
posted by rongorongo at 1:46 AM on August 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by rongorongo at 1:46 AM on August 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
Old Dogs and Children and Watermelon Wine
The Year Clayton Delaney Died
posted by TrishaU at 2:19 AM on August 21, 2021 [3 favorites]
The Year Clayton Delaney Died
posted by TrishaU at 2:19 AM on August 21, 2021 [3 favorites]
snuck onto the radio?! it was made into a movie and a TV show!
posted by chavenet at 2:39 AM on August 21, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 2:39 AM on August 21, 2021 [7 favorites]
This is sad news. His Songs Of Fox Hollow record was on heavy rotate when I was very young, next to Free To Be You And Me and Peter Paul and Mommy.
posted by klausman at 3:43 AM on August 21, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by klausman at 3:43 AM on August 21, 2021 [4 favorites]
snuck onto the radio?!
Read what I wrote. I said it snuck onto POP radio. From the country charts. That’s fucking unusual. It was pretty much a first. You dig?
Sigh... Really tiresome when people don’t actually read what’s written.
But thanks for those links, that’s great.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:45 AM on August 21, 2021 [3 favorites]
Read what I wrote. I said it snuck onto POP radio. From the country charts. That’s fucking unusual. It was pretty much a first. You dig?
Sigh... Really tiresome when people don’t actually read what’s written.
But thanks for those links, that’s great.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:45 AM on August 21, 2021 [3 favorites]
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posted by fourpotatoes at 3:45 AM on August 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by fourpotatoes at 3:45 AM on August 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
Discovered him via the DBTs many years ago and have been in love ever since. The three entire episodes Cocaine and Rhinestones devoted to Harper Valley PTA are well worth a listen.
posted by yerfatma at 6:01 AM on August 21, 2021 [11 favorites]
posted by yerfatma at 6:01 AM on August 21, 2021 [11 favorites]
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Sneaky Snake was a pillar of my childhood. This makes me sad.
posted by pearlybob at 6:14 AM on August 21, 2021 [2 favorites]
Sneaky Snake was a pillar of my childhood. This makes me sad.
posted by pearlybob at 6:14 AM on August 21, 2021 [2 favorites]
Sneaky Snake was a pillar of my childhood.
Wait, the same person wrote both Harper Valley PTA and Sneaky Snake? Consider my mind blown.
Looking through his song list on Wikipedia, I see a lot that I recognize, even though before this post I'd never known of him. That is an impressive career and I'm sorry to learn this only after his passing.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:42 AM on August 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
Wait, the same person wrote both Harper Valley PTA and Sneaky Snake? Consider my mind blown.
Looking through his song list on Wikipedia, I see a lot that I recognize, even though before this post I'd never known of him. That is an impressive career and I'm sorry to learn this only after his passing.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:42 AM on August 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
I said it snuck onto POP radio. From the country charts. That’s fucking unusual. It was pretty much a first.
roger miller had quite a few crossover hits before that - patsy cline's crazy was in 1961 (written by willie nelson) - hank williams, tennessee ernie ford ...
crossover was more common than you think
posted by pyramid termite at 6:57 AM on August 21, 2021 [5 favorites]
roger miller had quite a few crossover hits before that - patsy cline's crazy was in 1961 (written by willie nelson) - hank williams, tennessee ernie ford ...
crossover was more common than you think
posted by pyramid termite at 6:57 AM on August 21, 2021 [5 favorites]
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Sad to read of his passing last nite.
A country station I often listen when I'm on the road outside of Chicago is 95% insufferable modern country. Enduring the dregs for the 5% diamond-in-the-rough is worth it, no more than the time that Tom T's Old Dogs & Children and Watermelon Wine came on as I was driving through a rainstorm on the interstate (also linked upthread, thx TrishaU)
I'd never heard of him before, and instantly I needed to hear more of him -- his slow painting a picture of a moment in time ("There wasn't anyone around, 'cept this old man and me/The guy who ran the bar was watching Ironsides on TV") was light years away from the nonsense tribal signifiers (pickup trucks! Dirt roads! football games!) that seem to mindlessly pile up in modern songs. Combing through his other albums, I was struck by similar great storytelling, skilled phrasing, & comfortable melodies... and just how familiar he made it all feel.
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 7:09 AM on August 21, 2021 [4 favorites]
Sad to read of his passing last nite.
A country station I often listen when I'm on the road outside of Chicago is 95% insufferable modern country. Enduring the dregs for the 5% diamond-in-the-rough is worth it, no more than the time that Tom T's Old Dogs & Children and Watermelon Wine came on as I was driving through a rainstorm on the interstate (also linked upthread, thx TrishaU)
I'd never heard of him before, and instantly I needed to hear more of him -- his slow painting a picture of a moment in time ("There wasn't anyone around, 'cept this old man and me/The guy who ran the bar was watching Ironsides on TV") was light years away from the nonsense tribal signifiers (pickup trucks! Dirt roads! football games!) that seem to mindlessly pile up in modern songs. Combing through his other albums, I was struck by similar great storytelling, skilled phrasing, & comfortable melodies... and just how familiar he made it all feel.
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 7:09 AM on August 21, 2021 [4 favorites]
crossover was more common than you think
Point taken. We could have a lively discussion about the degrees of crossover, however. Concerning Harper Valley PTA, when considering this...
One of his earliest successful songwriting ventures, "Harper Valley PTA", recorded in 1968 by Jeannie C. Riley, hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot Country Singles charts a week apart, sold over six million copies, and won both a Grammy Award and CMA Award.
... I’m not so sure how the other examples you’ve mentioned will hold up, by comparison.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:23 AM on August 21, 2021 [3 favorites]
Point taken. We could have a lively discussion about the degrees of crossover, however. Concerning Harper Valley PTA, when considering this...
One of his earliest successful songwriting ventures, "Harper Valley PTA", recorded in 1968 by Jeannie C. Riley, hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot Country Singles charts a week apart, sold over six million copies, and won both a Grammy Award and CMA Award.
... I’m not so sure how the other examples you’ve mentioned will hold up, by comparison.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:23 AM on August 21, 2021 [3 favorites]
Gonna put in a plug here for the Cocaine and Rhinestones episode about Tom T. Hall, which brought me from knowing nothing about him to wanting to track down a million songs.
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posted by ActionPopulated at 7:54 AM on August 21, 2021 [10 favorites]
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posted by ActionPopulated at 7:54 AM on August 21, 2021 [10 favorites]
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Compare with the Margie Singleton version of HVPTA, Riley's bombastic delivery really made it hit material. Though the two key modulations are present in this version too -- I had wondered if they added them during production to increase the oomph factor.
Also, Harper Valley Hypocrites is my new band name.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:56 AM on August 21, 2021 [2 favorites]
Compare with the Margie Singleton version of HVPTA, Riley's bombastic delivery really made it hit material. Though the two key modulations are present in this version too -- I had wondered if they added them during production to increase the oomph factor.
Also, Harper Valley Hypocrites is my new band name.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:56 AM on August 21, 2021 [2 favorites]
Wot, no love for Faster Horses? A song which hides under its bluff exterior an endless vacuum of nihilistic consumptionism. And a real cute story, too!
Tom T wrote all the great songs Shel Silverstein never got around to.
posted by tspae at 8:08 AM on August 21, 2021 [6 favorites]
Tom T wrote all the great songs Shel Silverstein never got around to.
posted by tspae at 8:08 AM on August 21, 2021 [6 favorites]
Fun fact: my daughter was conceived during the initial network television broadcast of the movie Harper Valley PTA.
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posted by MexicanYenta at 9:17 AM on August 21, 2021 [5 favorites]
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posted by MexicanYenta at 9:17 AM on August 21, 2021 [5 favorites]
Read the transcript last night of the Cocaine and Rhinestones episode about Tom linked a few comments above; it's fantastic. As is "The Year Clayton Delaney Died," one of my all time fave story songs. RIP to one of the greats.
posted by mediareport at 9:20 AM on August 21, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by mediareport at 9:20 AM on August 21, 2021 [3 favorites]
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posted by JoeXIII007 at 9:30 AM on August 21, 2021
posted by JoeXIII007 at 9:30 AM on August 21, 2021
Harper Valley PTA has been coming up at karaoke lately. It's awesome.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:09 AM on August 21, 2021
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:09 AM on August 21, 2021
a) He was one of the great story writers in America--not song writers in Nashville, but in terms of emotional impact, charchater devolpment, plotting, and ambivalent desire--as good as Cheever or Carver or Ann Beattie, but mining similar emotional territory. I think the difference b/w him and his compartriats, is that Hall was not committed to showy or self concious or even autobiographical forms--listening to songs like Margie's at the Lincoln Park Inn (maybe the most writerly of country cheatin' songs, and for me, one of the most devestating.); or Homecoming (the juxtaposition of old and new Nashville, and how he sings about cattle); or Mama Bake A Pie/Daddy Kill a Chicken, sublimate everything to a charachter study.
b) So the political work that occur in some of the texts---told via wry jokes, or dark statements, or that interiority of personhood--that it often moves from recetiation and singing, engage with the history of the form--he has the cheatin' song, and the momma song, and the veteran song, and the drinking song, but they are all Hall songs because of how open ended, how ambivalent, he is about the people he is singing about--about how amoral they are.
c) But that doesn't mean that he cannot be sentimental. I think that sometimes these work together (There is an essay to be written, about Wither's Grandma's Hands and Halls' Grandmother's Whistling), but I think that sometimes people think his most sentimental work is work that was beneath him--but I wonder if doing the 70s work of charachter, he allowed himself to be tender and vulenrable to himself. I tihnk that there is a kind of soft, small pleasure in admitting what one likes, what one desires--even if he had to couch it in an old man cliche (Old Man Women and Watermelon Wine), maybe his best song is I Love--because it uses that power of observation to construct a list that feels so deeply intimate and personal--a love song where the lover is one in the midst of all kinds of creation, human and otherwise, it's a little wry, where he rhymes "bourbon in a glass. and grass"--but he is also deeply sincere, and sentimental while making an argument in favour of sentimentality.
I bet a bunch of very smart people will write very smart things about Mama Bake a Pie, or Homecoming or Margie or Ships Go Out, and they have already, and those are genius songs, and genuine American masterpeices, but I Love... makes me weep every fucking time.
posted by PinkMoose at 11:05 AM on August 21, 2021 [7 favorites]
b) So the political work that occur in some of the texts---told via wry jokes, or dark statements, or that interiority of personhood--that it often moves from recetiation and singing, engage with the history of the form--he has the cheatin' song, and the momma song, and the veteran song, and the drinking song, but they are all Hall songs because of how open ended, how ambivalent, he is about the people he is singing about--about how amoral they are.
c) But that doesn't mean that he cannot be sentimental. I think that sometimes these work together (There is an essay to be written, about Wither's Grandma's Hands and Halls' Grandmother's Whistling), but I think that sometimes people think his most sentimental work is work that was beneath him--but I wonder if doing the 70s work of charachter, he allowed himself to be tender and vulenrable to himself. I tihnk that there is a kind of soft, small pleasure in admitting what one likes, what one desires--even if he had to couch it in an old man cliche (Old Man Women and Watermelon Wine), maybe his best song is I Love--because it uses that power of observation to construct a list that feels so deeply intimate and personal--a love song where the lover is one in the midst of all kinds of creation, human and otherwise, it's a little wry, where he rhymes "bourbon in a glass. and grass"--but he is also deeply sincere, and sentimental while making an argument in favour of sentimentality.
I bet a bunch of very smart people will write very smart things about Mama Bake a Pie, or Homecoming or Margie or Ships Go Out, and they have already, and those are genius songs, and genuine American masterpeices, but I Love... makes me weep every fucking time.
posted by PinkMoose at 11:05 AM on August 21, 2021 [7 favorites]
Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken) appears breezy at first, but quickly becomes devastating, as it tells the story of a disabled GI returning from Vietnam and spending all of his energy trying to make his suffering bearable for everyone else.
People staring at me as they wheel me down the ramp toward my planeposted by DirtyOldTown at 11:19 AM on August 21, 2021 [8 favorites]
The war is over for me
I've forgotten everything except the pain
Thank you sir, and yes sir,
It was worth it for the ol' red, white and blue
And since, I won't be walking
I suppose I'll save some money buying shoes
The bottle hidden underneath the blanket, over my two battered legs
I can see the stewardess make over me and ask "Were you afraid?"
I'll say, "Why no I'm Superman, and couldn't find the phone booth quite in time."
A GI gets a lot of laughs
If he remembers all the funny lines
Mama bake a pie, Daddy kill a chicken
Your son is coming home, 11:35 Wednesday night
The letter that she wrote me said good-bye
She couldn't wait and lots of luck
The bottle underneath the blanket feels
Just like an old friend to my touch
I know she'll come and see me
But I bet she never once looks at my legs
Naw, she'll talk about the weather
And the dress she wore to the July 4th parade
Lord, I love her and I don't believe this bottle's gonna get her off my mind
I see here in the paper
Where they say the war is just a waste of time
One time I spent a week inside a little country jail
And I don't guess I'll ever live it down
I was sitting at a red light when these two men came and got me
And said that I was speeding through their town
posted by BeeDo at 5:09 PM on August 21, 2021 [2 favorites]
And I don't guess I'll ever live it down
I was sitting at a red light when these two men came and got me
And said that I was speeding through their town
posted by BeeDo at 5:09 PM on August 21, 2021 [2 favorites]
The movie was a staple on early 80s TV, I remember Barbara Eden very well in connection with it.
posted by Liquidwolf at 6:42 PM on August 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Liquidwolf at 6:42 PM on August 21, 2021 [1 favorite]
I’m talking, of course, about “Harper Valley PTA”
Lady Bunny's loving tribute is a good laugh.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:05 PM on August 21, 2021
Lady Bunny's loving tribute is a good laugh.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:05 PM on August 21, 2021
I’ve listened to the entire back catalogue of Cocaine & Rhinestones over the last couple of months (much to the chagrin of Ms. Kreiger, who is actually from the country, and can’t stand country), and if you’re here for this thread, go give it a shot right now.
posted by Kreiger at 1:57 PM on August 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Kreiger at 1:57 PM on August 22, 2021 [2 favorites]
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posted by Mutant Lobsters from Riverhead at 9:28 AM on August 23, 2021
posted by Mutant Lobsters from Riverhead at 9:28 AM on August 23, 2021
. sigh
posted by Fibognocchi at 8:11 PM on August 23, 2021
posted by Fibognocchi at 8:11 PM on August 23, 2021
« Older Serenity Now | Hey, Bézier Curves (SLYT) Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
I love little baby ducks, old pick-up trucks
Slow movin' trains and rain
I love little country streams, sleep without dreams
Sunday school in May and hay
And I love you too
I love leaves in the wind, pictures of my friends
Birds of the world and squirrels
I love coffee in a cup, little fuzzy pups
Bourbon in a glass and grass
And I love you too
posted by Narrative_Historian at 1:17 AM on August 21, 2021 [9 favorites]