Dixie Hall
Dixie Hall, who died in Nashville on Jan. 16 at the age of 80, took a circuitous route on her way to becoming a highly regarded and prolific country and bluegrass songwriter. The wife of celebrated Nashville songwriter Tom T. Hall, Dixie Hall used her perspective as an English-born admirer of American vernacular music in ways that make clear the shared experiences of all people, beyond geographic borders or cultural barriers.
Dixie Hall wrote great songs from a universal viewpoint, and it was her gift to make connections between cultures. Whether she wrote about the trauma of Southern-born war veterans or the joys of being a hard-charging truck driver, Hall drew upon her gift for friendship — and her fierce, joyful work ethic — to create lasting art.
Known to her many friends and admirers as “Miss Dixie,” Hall was born Iris Violet May Lawrence in 1934 in Warwickshire, England. By the time she was 18, Hall had become an accomplished equestrian who performed trick riding stunts in a traveling Wild West show. The future songwriter had already gained a bit of fame for her lyrics. When she was 9 years old, she wrote a poem for a contest, won first prize, and received the honor of reading her work on a London radio show.
Already a fan of American country and bluegrass, Hall met country-and-Western singer Tex Ritter in the 1950s. Ritter was in England performing, and the two shared a London-bound train. Impressed by the young woman’s fancy Stetson hat and her Western garb, Ritter struck up a conversation with her. Ritter needed someone to promote his records in England, and the energetic, personable Hall fit the bill perfectly.
Hall proved a capable promoter. As she told Bluegrass Unlimited writer Nancy Cardwell in 2013, “I took some of [Ritter’s] material over to EMI Records, and they wound up releasing ‘Green Grow the Lilacs’ and some other things. I didn’t know at all what I was doing. I guess I found their address in the phone book, or I just asked until I found out.”
Impressed by her success in promoting Ritter’s recordings, Starday Records owner Don Pierce asked her to promote one of the acts on the Nashville country label. While writing a column for the English magazine Country and Western Express, Hall also worked Starday releases by Bill Clifton and the Dixie Mountain Boys.
Hall came to America in 1961. She met country-music avatars The Carter Family through Clifton, who had been friends with A.P. Carter, and moved in with Mother Maybelle Carter at Maybelle’s house in Madison, Tenn. “We’d write songs together and play canasta,” Hall told writer Skip Matheny in 2009. Johnny Cash cut two of the songs Hall and Carter wrote during this period. Hall also learned autoharp from Mother Maybelle, and in her spare time started a company that published the songs of bluegrass giants Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.
She met Tom T. Hall in 1964 after the two songwriters shared credits on a Mercury Records single by country singer Dave Dudley. Composing under the name of Dixie Deen, Hall co-wrote the A side, “Truck Drivin’ Son-of-a-Gun,” while Tom T. Hall penned the B side, “I Got Lost.” The two married in 1968, but it wasn’t until Tom T. Hall decided to retire from the music business in 1990 that Dixie Hall began collaborating with her husband. Dixie had kept busy raising funds for Nashville animal shelters and showing her prize-winning Basset hounds.
“Miss Dixie was big into the humane society and showing her dogs,” Tom T. Hall told Matheny about the period before the two began writing together. “I write real fast. But she was a newspaper editor, so she’ll take the song and stay up all night and fix it.”
Dixie and Tom T. Hall wrote the sprightly “All That’s Left,” which has been memorably recorded by the Virginia-bred band Big Country Bluegrass and country superstar Miranda Lambert, who cut it with The Time Jumpers on 2014‘s Platinum full-length. The Halls also penned the 2006 track “How’s It Feel,” which bluegrass singer and songwriters Michelle Nixon and Jeanette Williams recorded for the Daughters of Bluegrass — Back to the Well full-length.
Released on the Halls’ Blue Circle Records label, Daughters of Bluegrass gave two superb singers a chance to shine — another example of Dixie Hall’s gift for friendship. From Eden, N.C., Williams met Dixie and Tom T. Hall in 2000, and Williams and her husband, Johnny, got to know the couple well.
“I met her at the International Bluegrass Music Association show in 2000,” says Williams, a highly respected bluegrass artist. “She was just so gracious. She found out we were getting ready to record an album, and she offered to have us come out and listen to some demos of songs she and Tom T. had written, and offered us a place to stay there, fed us a wonderful meal, and brought us in just like we were family.”
Tom T. and Dixie Hall received the IBMA’s 2004 Distinguished Achievement Award for the many songs they added to the bluegrass canon. Health issues slowed down Dixie in recent years, but she continued to be a vital force in advancing the music she loved.
Speaking about bluegrass to Nancy Cardwell, Dixie Hall made a compelling case for the universal appeal of American music. “There’s nothing else like it," she said. "It’s honest, it’s real. I feel like it’s always been a part of me, and I’ve always been a part of it. And I don’t know how or why. It’s a mystery.”
