“ALPHABETICALLY YOURS” SERIES 15 (O) – By Des Kelly
And so, we come to “The Storyteller” as he was called.
Tom.T.Hall, born in May, 1936 in Kentucky, another multi-talented performer. He sang, of course, (in story-telling vein), played guitar, banjo, mandolin & even a saxophone, at times, started to be “noticed” by the Nashville hierarchy in 1963, and he wrote his first “hit” for Jeannie C.Reilly (the girl more likely), the called her, titled “Harper Valley P.T.A.” This song became a No1 hit for Jeannie & from then on, Tom also began to score his own hits, 10 of which, went to No.1, catapulting the story-teller into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He had 26 more songs climbing into the top-ten, got married to Iris Dixie Dean (who he fondly nicknamed Miss Dixie), and had one son, named Dean. Tom.T.Hall “returns” in this particular Series of mine, later on, but here is something that most of my readers wouldn’t know. If you watch him perform, he seems to be quite “laid-back”, holding his acoustic guitar up against his chin sometimes, as he plays his own accompaniment with chord-perfection, but the fact of the matter was that he was a perfectionist, rather difficult to work with, & sometimes gave his other backing musicians a hard time. This takes nothing away from the “Star” that he was. When he was not doing any stage-work, he was writing short stories, as a Novelist, or, as he now states, (in retirement), “Miss Dixie & I still write songs together”. The song featured on this Series 15 is :-
“Old dogs, children, & watermelon wine”.
This is followed by a lesser-known, but still enjoyable song by a Liverpool Group called “The Beatles”. John, Paul, George and Ringo, a song “credited” to Lennon/Macartney, but actually penned by Paul McCartney, the main songwriter of the group. The title of the song was a rather silly little family phrase of a friend of Paul, “Obladi-Oblada”, a catchy Latin/Rock rhythm, quite easy on the ear.
