FRANKLIN, Tenn. — Dixie Hall wrote more songs for bluegrass than any other woman in the genre’s history.
“She sat right over there, and I sat here,” Tom T. Hall, her husband and Country Music Hall of Fame member, said while sitting in their office at their home in Fox Hollow on Monday.
“She’d hum the melody and I would pick it out for her on guitar,” Hall said. “I would then go play golf or something while she worked for hours on the song.”
Dixie Hall died on January 16, 2015. Long and lovingly known as Miss Dixie, she and her songs will rise to the fore on May 7 during Song of the Mountains’ “Remembering Miss Dixie Concert” at the Lincoln Theatre in Marion.
“I think it’s going to be great,” Hall said. “They’re going to sing Miss Dixie’s songs. Those gals (in the Dixie Trio, who work for the Halls) can sure sing. They all know how this happened.”
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What happened began after Miss Dixie moved to America in 1961 from her native England. Under the name Dixie Deen, she wrote songs. Dave Dudley cut Miss Dixie’s “Truck Drivin’ Son-of-a-Gun” in 1965.
“We met at the BMI dinner,” Hall said. “I wrote a song for Dave Dudley called ‘I Got Lost.’”
Hall’s song was the B side to Miss Dixie’s hit for Dudley. Fate delivered right away as the two sat directly across from each other at the BMI awards show.
“She was sitting with Mother Maybelle Carter,” Hall said. “She sat there in a mink stole. She was covered in diamonds and jewels. I thought, ‘man, here was a real exciting girl.’ Well, come to find out, June Carter let her borrow her mink and diamonds!”
They connected right away.
“We found out that we were both broke. Didn’t matter,” Hall said. “We got to courting and everything and then we got engaged.”
The Halls married in 1968, the same year that Tom T. Hall’s first hit as a singer, “Ballad of Forty Dollars,” struck. He was signed to Mercury Records. His career amounted to coal tossed into a fire. He was getting hot.
“When we married, I thought we both shouldn’t be in show business. That just never works,” Hall said. “She understood. She gave up songwriting and took up humane society work. She raised basset hounds. Well, she never failed at anything she tried.”
Tom T. Hall subsequently built a career that led him to induction as a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
“It’s the ultimate,” Hall said. “It was a spiritual event. There’s nothing beyond the hall of fame.”
His plaque hangs in the hall of fame near the names of Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams. A duplicate hung on a wall just over his shoulder as he spoke on Monday.
Well, he retired about 30 years ago. Only thing, Miss Dixie wasn’t ready to retire. She returned to writing songs, bluegrass songs.
“She became the most recorded bluegrass woman songwriter of all time,” Hall said, beaming like the sun that hid beneath the clouds on this most rainy of days. “I’ve got my name on all of her songs and I feel guilty about it. I would sit here with my guitar a few minutes and she’d say, ‘I got it, it got it.’”
Moments later, Hall pointed to a spot a few feet away.
“That’s where Miss Dixie died,” he said, wistfully. “Her ashes are scattered right out there, around to the side. She never wanted to leave Fox Hollow.”
Topics meandered through the day on Monday. He spoke of Clayton Delaney, his hero, as well as songs that Hall wrote including “Homecoming” and the one he wrote in 1977, “Your Man Loves You Honey,” about the love of his life.
“Your man loves you honey,” Hall sang on the spot, “and I don’t know what else to say.”
He smiled with a glow surely brighter than those of the coals that fueled his career. Love’s like that, the true love kind, anyway. Consequently, Hall won’t be able to attend the show that will honor his late and beloved wife.
“Too soon,” he said.
His legacy will remain for all of time. Tom T. Hall, the writer of classics including “I Love” (and yes, Bob Dylan, a classic), “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died” and so forth, will live on as a country music legend.
Hall will turn 79 later this month. From now on, he said that he will work to elevate and honor the life and work of his love, Miss Dixie.
“We’ve been doing things for these past 14 months, doing nothing but taking care of her legacy,” Hall said. “Her life is my life.”