“Old timer if you weren’t here to guide me,
I’d be lost and they’d never find my bones.”
When asked to write a song about prison for Stonewall Jackson (in an attempt to replicate the success of Johnny Cash’s At Folsom Prison and At San Quentin), Tom T. Hall realized that he didn’t have the adequate personal experience to write it the way he had begun writing story songs on Ballad of Forty Dollars. His only firsthand knowledge of the pen was a three-night stint for a traffic violation that was only that long because the judge’s grandmother died and delayed his case. He still wrote ‘A Week in a Country Jail’ but he didn’t even pitch it to Jackson because it didn’t sound like hit material—except it was. Hall’s version, released as the third single from his second album, Homecoming, became the songwriter’s first number one hit on the country charts. But it did more than provide Mr. Hall with popular success, it also sparked his creative juices and led him to seek out the detailed stories of others as songwriting fodder, a routine which he used time and again to make some of his most famous songs.
In 1968, Jeannie C. Reilly’s Hall-penned ‘Harper Valley PTA’ had rocketed to the top of both the country and Hot 100 charts. Hall followed up that scandalous story song with the release of his own performance of ‘Ballad of Forty Dollars’ which climbed as high as number four on the country chart. There was clearly an audience for his brand of richly detailed micro-story set to a country groove. ‘A Week in a Country Jail’ was the perfect follow-up, a fun jaunt bursting at the seams with character and wit as he fictionalized and put to music the story of his speeding ticket, his wasted phone call, the jailer’s wife and her hot bologna, eggs, and gravy.
But for some reason the bizarre decision was made to release ‘Strawberry Farms’ as the lead single from his sophomore album. ‘Strawberry Farms’ is a slight outlier on the album—a depressive, moody piece that sounds more like the softer side of late-60s classic rock than the steady country that Hall had been writing up to that point. It’s a reflection on the death of his mother and is far too much of a downer to have been a serious contender for radio play. It’s a decent song in its own right, but stylistically, it was a weird choice if the goal was to capitalize on the wave of success from ‘Harper Valley PTA’ and ‘Ballad of Forty Dollars’.
The next single, ‘Homecoming’, proved more marketable and is really quite unique. It’s about a performer returning home and telling his father about his adventures in the world of entertainment. An amusing contrast is drawn between the rollicking lifestyle of the touring musician and that of the simple country folk to which he once belonged. He answers his father’s unspoken questions (“No, we don’t ever call them beer joints/Nightclubs are the places where I work.”) and describes some of the peculiarities of his new way of life. He never speaks for his father, and so we are hearing only one side of their conversation, like listening to someone talk on the phone. He makes the touring life sound very exciting, but he also subverts it by speaking sadly of the townspeople who have lived and breathed and died while he’s been on the road. He laments his absence at his own mother’s death and funeral, admitting he drove slowly by her grave on the drive in. But then he tells his father that he can’t stay for long—he has to play a show tonight, so they have to get back on the road. But if his father will write down his phone number he’ll be sure to call.
Well, I knew you was gonna ask me/Who the lady is that’s sleeping in the car/That’s just a girl who works for me/And man, she plays a pretty mean guitar.
There were two more top ten hits from the album, but both of them were only hits when covered by other artists. ‘(Margie’s At) The Lincoln Park Inn’ is told from the perspective of a father who navigates his family life while a temptress waits for him at the titular inn. There’s a deceptively simple guitar fill that’s repeated and a subtle harmonica that really suit the lyrics—this man is full of loathing for himself and his unhealthy thoughts, but can’t seem to keep his mind from wandering to the wayward woman. I strongly prefer Hall’s version to that of his friend Bobby Bare—whose rendition, released as a single, is the one that climbed the charts. Bare’s version has some twee instrumentation that makes it seem much happier than the remorseful lyrics call for. When asked about the song in an interview with the New York Times, Bare had this to say: “Tom T. would have made a great writer for movies, because he knows how to put words in people’s mouths that you believe. Sometimes that can get you in trouble, though. When I recorded ‘(Margie’s at) The Lincoln Park Inn,’ my wife said, ‘You’re awfully believable on that song.’ I said: ‘I had nothing to do with it. Tom T. wrote it.’ Miss Dixie (Hall’s wife) told Tom T., ‘That song is awfully believable.’ He said: ‘It has nothing to do with me. I wrote it for Bare.’ We blamed it on each other.”
The bike is all fixed and my little boy is in bed asleep.
His little ol’ puppy is curled in a ball at my feet.
My wife’s baking cookies to feed to the bridge club again.
I’m almost out of cigarettes and Margie’s at the Lincoln Park Inn.
The other hit was ‘George (And the Northwoods)’, a lyrically ambiguous song about a blind man who is either speaking to his dog or to his best friend. It’s up to interpretation in Hall’s version, but Dave Dudley’s cover, which was performed in a more popular style and makes it clear it’s a dog, was the hit.
Most of the rest of the album consists of very solid, but largely unremarkable blues songs. There are a number of fun guitar lines, some nice fingerpicking and bluegrass stylings, and a hearty helping of lighthearted lyrics to counter some of the more emotionally heavy moments on the tracks already discussed. Considering the album as a whole, the various styles, tempos, themes, etc. really mix well into a cohesive whole, though I feel like ‘Strawberry Farms’ doesn’t really fit (even though I like it as a standalone track) and I can’t fathom why it was released as the first single.
Homecoming is a great follow-up to Ballad of Forty Dollars and improves upon it in almost every regard.
Favorite Tracks: A Week in a Country Jail; Margie’s at the Lincoln Park Inn; Homecoming; I Miss a Lot of Trains.
Sources:
Batey, Angus. “Cult heroes: Tom T Hall, the singer who wrote of real lives and changing times”. The Guardian. 31 March 2015.
Himes, Geoffrey. “Who Needs Country Radio? Not Tom T. Hall”. The New York Times. 13 January 2008.