Tom T Hall Little Baby Ducks Year Written

The artist with his wife, Miss Dixie.

This article originally appeared in 2011.

Tom T. Hall spent the '70s writing and recording Country Music Hall of Fame-quality story-songs near beingness thrown in a country jail, working in a graveyard, drinking beer and the similar. And smack-dab in the middle of all his serious success, he did the last thing anybody'd expect from a land hitmaker—he put out an album "for children of all ages". ChosenSongs From Flim-flam Hollow, it was populated by characters from his farm, like Sneaky Snake and the Mysterious Fox. Nashville singing and songwriting duo Eric Brace and Peter Cooper decided it was high time for kids young and erstwhile to become hear those songs again. So they rounded up a crew of first-rate singers and pickers—a few of them bona fide country and stone legends, like Duane Eddy, Bobby Bare and Lloyd Dark-green, and the rest bright or ascent stars of the roots world, similar Buddy Miller, Patty Griffin, Jim Lauderdale, Elizabeth Cook and Jon Byrd—and re-recorded them (the resulting album, I Love: Tom T. Hall's Songs Of Fox Hollow, was released in May to disquisitional acclaim). Nothing could be more than plumbing equipment than sitting down to talk almost the former and new projects with Hall, Cooper and Caryatid out at Pull a fast one on Hollow.

What, to you, is the difference between writing country songs for an adult audience and writing land songs for children? Is in that location a divergence?

Commencement of all, I got to Nashville and I was writing, or trying to write, what I call "little darlin'" songs. Just songs about boys and girls, which is what 98 pct of what music is about. And I couldn't do that. I was not whatever good at it. So I started writing picayune narratives about things I'd done, places I'd been, people I'd met. Doing that I sort of constitute my niche and I got a piffling thing going, just writing biographically…. And so I had two niggling nephews. I call up they were four and five years old. They came here from Monaco in due south of France. …Now, I knew I lived in Pull a fast one on Hollow, but these fiddling kids didn't know. So they wanted to know where the fox was. So I said, "He'due south a very mysterious fox. But y'all don't accept to exist afraid of him, considering he is afraid of our dogs." …And we're looking for the trick and the snake and the one-legged chicken and all those characters. So it was just a groovy summer and I just used the whole matter up and put it into an album.

Then y'all really weren't intending the songs for commercial use at get-go.

Actually, they were finished before I fifty-fifty considered them songs. I don't think I ever sang them for the kids. Because I don't think they would've understood why I was singing them a song. …I was just the guide, you know. So I didn't desire to disappoint them by telling them I was a [land] picker. …The whole project just kind of came along. But it was not a thing that I struggled with. I didn't accept a market for it. In that location was no reason to be writing these songs. I never pitched 'em to anybody. … And I never did any children's shows. … I don't like to talk downwards to children and I don't like to entertain them. Considering children, if you lot exit them alone, could entertain themselves much better than you can. And I don't like information technology when people talk to children in infant talk.

That's what I feel like Songs of Fox Hollow shares with other albums you fabricated—it even so comes down to strong storytelling, not hammering home a lesson.

Well, some people heard allegory in it. Merely information technology was kind of an observed matter. Everything was on the surface. I wasn't trying to lecture these kids in these songs. They were true stories. They were stories about things that we really did that summer, and you tin take the stories and make what you will of them.

Roaming around with your nephews and seeing what interested them doesn't sound all that different from the song hunting trips y'all used to take.

No. I used to go far my car and only accept off and bulldoze the blue highways, they phone call 'em now, and cease off in fiddling towns and write songs, talk to people in the beer joints, puddle rooms, cafes, back porches, leaning on fences. And then this was just some other trip around the farm with these kids, you're correct. …I was just doing the same thing I've ever done. I didn't make upwards songs about Fox Hollow. I was walking around with these kids finding them. They were already at that place. Sneaky Serpent was hither. The Mysterious Fox was here. The One-Legged Chicken was already hither. I only hadn't seen 'em as songs until my footling nephews.

Merely after Songs of Fox Hollow came out was when Bobby Bare did his kids' album Singin' in the Kitchen and Johnny Greenbacks did a kids' anthology too. Were you all enlightened of what each other were doing?

I know that people used to enquire Bobby Bare to sing "Sneaky Snake" and they'd ask me to sing "Daddy What If". …I said, "I'm the other guy."

Due westould you tell me the story behind the song "Former Lonesome George the Basset"? I haven't heard too many stories that involve a song, a dog and Johnny Cash.

Well, Cash was doing a TV show. The director wanted a bloodhound. And Cash said, "Well, I don't call back nosotros've got a bloodhound, just a friend of mine, Miss Dixie Hall [Tom T.'s wife], has got basset hounds. …Now, George was simply a plain old basset hound. He was a pet. …He had these big wide feet and he didn't have a show business attitude. So the story is that they had all these prize-winning evidence dogs walking effectually, but here's old Lonesome George the Basset that winds up on the Johnny Greenbacks show. Then George got to be a evidence dog after all.

The new song on here that you and Miss Dixie wrote—"I Fabricated a Friend of a Bloom Today"—is that one you had laying around or did you write it for the project?

No, not specifically for the album. We drinkable coffee here in the forenoon. Nosotros tin look out at the bird feeder and we can look over the hill towards the lake. I day Miss Dixie was walking around drinking java. She said, "Come over here." And she pointed out the window and over the hill past the lake. At that place was a little yellowish blossom down there. …And it was very hot and dry, so Miss Dixie said, "I want you to get downwardly there and give that flower a potable of water." I said, "Look, we've got lx acres here. I can't get roaming over this whole property with a cup full of water, watering everything that pops up." …I got a cup and I went downwards to the lake and I dipped up some water, I gave it a couple of cups of water. It straightened up. … I came back and she had a song started called "I Made a Friend of a Flower Today".

Back when Songs of Flim-flam Hollow was released near of your songwriting credits were solo credits. Y'all've done a lot of co-writing with Miss Dixie since. When did that offset?

Oh, that was an arrangement nosotros fabricated. When I came off the road she was president of the Humane Association. We both love bluegrass music. I started off in a bluegrass band. So I wrote her a note one morn. I said, "Expect this is not working out." Because when I retired from the road, I went to work for animal land with the Humane Clan. I'm working day and nighttime, 18 hours a day for her charity. I said, "For this to work out, nosotros're gonna take to both retire. If you'll retire from brute state, we'll write some bluegrass songs and build us a little studio." Because she likes to write songs, and had written songs all her life. And she said, "Okay." So then we started co-writing on bluegrass songs and built a trivial acoustic music studio. Nosotros take these kids come by and record. We were [Order for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America] songwriters of the year ten years in a row. …We've had a lot of fun.

This is a question that I also put to Tom T. What'southward the divergence between country songs written for an adult audience and country songs written for children? Or is there a divergence?

Cooper: He was always virtually telling the story, whatever the story was. And when he decided to tell some stories that would be of involvement to kids, he knew they would be of interest, because of the kids that were on his subcontract and were asking these questions. He didn't patronize to them. In that location was certainly naught elicit in the subject matter and he wasn't writing about graveyards and barrooms for the kids, but they were songs that appealed to adults. He had number ane country hits with these songs. It wasn't similar 'I'm gonna take a complete stride into kiddie land' at all. And this was when he was at the height of his career. …He was coming off of "Onetime Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine" about the wisdom of a guy with probably a foot in the grave. And so he comes forth with "I love petty infant ducks." There are no songs on any of his albums that are tossed off, and that includes his one real adventure to toss some off, which would've been on the kids' album.

Caryatid: There's a certificate here on the wall that I just saw from the truck drivers' association to Tom T. pronouncing him the Truck Drivers' Poet Laureate. I love the fact that back in 1974 there were truck drivers driving around the country singing "I love piffling baby ducks". Somehow he pulls information technology off because he'due south just telling the truth. Tom T. does love lilliputian infant ducks. He wasn't trying to win over a bunch of kids. You just can't imagine a truck driver nowadays going down the road singing Barney the dinosaur songs.

I mentioned to him that simply afterwards he did Songs of Play tricks Hollow Bobby Blank did Singin' in the Kitchen and Johnny Cash did a children's album. It seems similar an interesting moment in the early '70s when that kind of thing could exist a success.

Cooper: Information technology'south as well a time when… how do I put this? Radio had not yet been formatted into accented submission, where they were okay with playing "I Beloved" and "I Intendance" [ii songs from the album that became number ones]. They weren't demanding a certain kind of song or a certain kind of subject thing. It was a more open up time. A lot of the ideas on this album in particular are, gosh, I guess today they'd exist considered light-green, liberal, left-leaning ideas. You know, take intendance of the environmental, because we want to exist able to hear birds sing….

How did you lot choose the performers and divvy up the songs on I Love?

Brace: Considering of the nature of this project…just about any large-time country star would've wanted to be on this record. It would've been easy to pepper this with accented country superstars, just considering Tom T.'s such a beloved figure. Only I retrieve we wanted to make certain everybody who was involved loved this record already, that it was already function of their musical DNA, and that they loved the songs and Tom T. as much as we did. I think that we succeeded in that.

The production decisions were pretty piece of cake. It was just get together these amazing musicians and singers and then turn on the microphones. They're all such sympathetic players and listeners and they all knew the songs. Each of those musicians at one point or some other said how important it was to know the lyrics.

It'south a coming together of worlds and crossing of generations.

Cooper: That was very deliberate.

Brace: We bring a trivial of the East Nashville vibe to it for certain with people similar Marking Horn and Jen Gunderman and Jon Byrd and Elizabeth Melt and Tim Carroll and united states.

Cooper: Well, those are the people that take Tom T.'south lessons to heart.

Brace: When people complain about modern country music, what you could really say is what's wrong with country music is that these days on the radio at that place's not enough Tom T. Hall.

Cooper: Goose egg's incorrect with modern country music if we choose to telephone call what Elizabeth Melt and Tim Carroll are doing country music—which it is. It just gets lumped into some other kind of label because of…the whims of corporate radio. These are people whose music would be dissimilar had Tom T. Hall'south songs not been around to provide lesson and inspiration.

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Source: https://americansongwriter.com/tom-t-hall-is-for-the-children/