by War;Bluegrass If Trouble Don't Kill Me: A Family's Story of Brotherhood
When mother prayed for me
Down on her bended knee
A blinding tear rolled down her cheek
When mother prayed for me
She held me in her arms
Her eyes lifted heavenly
When she asked God above to shine down his love
When mother prayed for me
She had good reason to pray. Saford hadn’t taken long to fall in with the rough types, just like he had in Mount Airy. He knew more than a few bootleggers and might have owed some of them money. Tough characters always came up to Clayton and asked, “Are you Saford Hall or the other one?” That worried him. One time as he walked into a diner, Clayton was sucker-punched by some dude who hollered something about staying away from his woman, or he’d kill him. Clayton was just about tired of these mistaken-identity ambushes.
Trouble finally broke loose one night at a downtown café. Clayton walked in and saw Saford in a loud argument with three big dudes around a table topped with several empty beer bottles. The men grabbed Saford by the arms and were about to hoist him outside when Clayton intervened and asked what the devil was going on.
“You’re coming with us,” one of the big dudes said to Clayton, as he escorted the twins to the backseat of a new Ford sedan with the engine running.
The car rumbled into the countryside, as Clayton wondered what Saford had gotten them into. The car stopped two miles north of town on a dirt road that ran along the top of a steep bank. The night was black as a barrel of stain. One of the thugs got out and ordered the twins to follow. The guy buried his hand in a coat pocket. Clayton didn’t want to know what he might be hiding.
Clayton slid out quickly and in less than a heartbeat he grabbed the thug’s right arm and slammed the door on it, hard. The guy hollered and Clayton slugged him in the cheek and knocked him down the steep bank. The other two dudes moved fast to get out of the front seats, but they were too slow. Clayton grabbed the guy in the passenger seat and tossed him down the bank. By now, Saford had climbed out of the car and had waylaid the driver. Before the thugs could recover, the twins hotfooted it down the road.
The old instigator had struck again.
“Saford, what did you do?” Clayton asked.
“I didn’t do nothing!” Saford exclaimed.
They ran, huffing, puffing, and, finally, laughing. They didn’t stop until they got back to town and home to Hell’s Holler. The funny thing was that Clayton had kind of enjoyed himself. He liked finishing the fights Saford started.
• • •
The twins’ workday routine never varied. The only difference day-to-day was Roy Hall’s song list—would they play “Cotton-Eyed Joe” today or “Katy Hill”? One day while they ate their sandwiches and listened to the radio, Roy Hall interrupted his own program with terrible news. Tommy Magness was leaving the band. Tommy Magness! Leaving the Blue Ridge Entertainers! Saford was crushed. Roy blathered on about how Tommy had a wonderful opportunity and the rest of the boys would sure miss him but would somehow find a way to manage. Tommy would stick around for a few more show dates before heading off to Nashville. Clato Buchanan was moving on, too, though not to Nashville, which meant that the Blue Ridge Entertainers were about to lose their fiddle and banjo players. Roy promised the listeners that he would find replacements who would make fine additions to the band and pick up right where Tommy and Clato left off.
“I sure wouldn’t want to be those guys,” Clayton thought. Replace Tommy Magness and Clato Buchanan? Impossible.
• • •
Mamo always dreaded seeing a lawman. Deputies had hounded Mack and some of her other boys for years over the production and distribution of liquor. Every time Mack had a run-in with the law, Mamo had to bail him out of jail. She had no cash, so she was forced to sell off some land Granny Hall’s family—the Montgomerys—had left her. Mack’s three stints in jail had devoured all the real estate she owned, save for Granny Hall’s cabin and the surrounding fields and woods. Lawmen cost her a ton of money, Mamo thought.
So, the day two large men in wide-brimmed hats and white shirts pulled up outside the house in Hell’s Holler in a big black car, Mamo became a tad unnerved. Oh Lord, what have these babies done now?
The twins were in the house with her, listening to Roy Hall’s radio program from Winston-Salem. Tommy Magness was still with the band, but they knew his days were numbered. Outside, the broadest, toughest-looking of the two strangers strode up the porch steps like he owned the place and banged hard and fast on the screen door. Mamo answered, reluctantly, and found herself looking eyeball-to-holster with a .44 strapped to the big man’s hip.
“Hello, ma’am,” he said. “I’m looking for the Hall twins. I’ve been told they live here. Are they home now?”
Mamo hesitated for a second, then looked at the .44. Roy Hall’s radio program could be heard from the kitchen in back of the house.
“Just a second,” she said.
She went to the kitchen and told the boys in a hushed voice that a man was at the door to see them. He wore a big hat and had a gun, she said.
“I think he might be the sheriff.”
Clayton’s head spun reflexively toward Saford.
“What have you done?” he demanded to know. The machinery in Saford’s head fired up.
“Well, I don’t know,” Saford said. “I drank a beer last night at the café.”
Clayton was incredulous.
“They ain’t gonna get after you for that.”
“I ain’t done nothing,” Saford said, his voice frosting with defiance.
Mamo decided she’d better not keep the man waiting, lest he get suspicious. She invited him into the house and told him that her boys were eating their dinner and would have to get back to the factory in a few minutes. The man assured her he wouldn’t keep them long.
The twins stood up when the tall, wide-shouldered man entered the kitchen. They stood there in their filthy blue work shirts, their faces and hands spotted with black stain. His shirt was whiter than any snow that had ever fallen. Over his left breast were stitched the words “Dr Pepper.” Across his right breast was his name.
“Hello, boys,” the man said. “My name is Roy Hall. And I sure have had a time tracking you two down.”
Roy Hall had come to Hell’s Holler and was standing in their house! In their kitchen! But wait. This couldn’t be Roy Hall. Roy Hall’s program was on the radio that very minute. They could hear him singing “Come Back Little Pal” as they all stood there.
Roy explained it all. That was a transcription they heard on the radio, a recorded program that aired on days when the Blue Ridge Entertainers were on the road or taking a day off. Roy had taken this day off to come to Bassett to look for the famous Hall twins. When word started getting around that Tommy Magness and Clato Buchanan were leaving the band, people had told Roy about a brother duo that just happened to specialize in fiddle and banjo. The Hall twins had garnered some positive attention and acclaim from their days playing on WSJS. Trouble was, nobody knew whatever happened to them. Somebody at WSJS had heard they were working in Bassett. Roy drove to Bassett, asked around town about the Hall twins, and now here he was standing in their kitchen while his voice sang from the radio.
He’d heard a lot about them, he said. Now, he wanted to hear them for himself.
“So,” he said, speaking with that same nasal baritone the twins had heard on the radio. “Get out your instruments.”
Finally, it hit them. This was an audition to join the Blue Ridge Entertainers.
Clayton dragged his Kalamazoo banjo and Saford’s fiddle from under the bed. Neither instrument had a case. Roy asked if those were the best instruments they had. They sheepishly nodded.
He told them to wait there while he went to his car.
Roy came back with another tall man he introduced as Wayne Watson. Each of them carried a case. Roy sat his on the floor and popped out a shiny black Gibson guitar. Wayne opened his smaller case and lifted out
a fiddle with a finish so smooth—smoother than any work the boys had ever done in the finishing room—that it shined like gold. Roy checked the tuning pegs, plucked the strings one by one—E, A, D, G—and passed it to Saford.
Great God Almighty, Saford had Tommy Magness’s fiddle. The same one he’d played “Orange Blossom Special” on a thousand times. Saford was afraid he’d start shaking and drop it.
“Play me something,” Roy demanded.
Clayton strummed mighty chords from the black Gibson, Saford sawed on the grandest sounding fiddle he’d ever heard, and they played “Curly Headed Baby,” their old standby.
She’s my curly headed baby
Used to sit on mama’s knee
She’s my curly headed baby
She’s from sunny Tennessee
Saford sang lead on the up-tempo verses, while Clayton provided a high tenor that swept the cobwebs off the ceiling. Then came the best part—a yodel, naturally—only this time, Saford yodeled a harmony, which blew Roy Hall away. He had never heard a brother duo as tight as the Hall twins.
Roy asked for another. They went with another favorite, the Mainers’ “Maple on the Hill,” with Saford singing lead and fiddling breaks after each loping verse.
In a quiet country village stood a maple on the hill
Where I sat with my Geneva long ago
As the stars were shining brightly we could hear the whippoorwill
As we sat beneath the maple on the hill
I will soon be with the angels on that bright and peaceful shore
Even now I hear them coming o’er the hill
So good-bye, my little darling, it is time for us to part
I must leave you ’neath the maple on the hill
Satisfied with their singing, Roy requested a couple of instrumentals. Their picking was fine, but it was their singing and the fact that they were twins that won him over. Roy Hall invited the Hall twins to join His Blue Ridge Entertainers to replace Tommy Magness and Clato Buchanan. The brothers were dumbstruck. Join the Blue Ridge Entertainers? Replace Tommy Magness? Quit their jobs? Mamo didn’t think much of the offer, especially the job-quitting part.
“We have to take care of our mama,” Saford told Roy.
Roy Hall pulled out his wallet and fished out a crisp fifty-dollar bill.
“Reckon that’ll take care of her for a month?” he asked.
“A month,” Clayton said. “That’ll take care of her a whole year!”
Mamo warmed up to the offer at the sight of the fifty. She told the boys not to worry about her. She’d be fine.
Roy Hall had to get back to Winston-Salem for a show date. He instructed the twins to take the train from Bassett and meet him at the WAIR radio station the next day. He would reimburse them for their travel expenses when they arrived. Clayton and Saford promised they’d catch the train as soon as they picked up their last paycheck from Bassett Furniture the next day. With that, Roy Hall said he’d see them in Winston-Salem.
• • •
That’s when the trouble started for the twins. The next day, they went to John Carter, the finishing room foreman who had hired them, and told him they were quitting and moving to Winston-Salem to play music with Roy Hall on the radio. Carter was unimpressed.
“Aw, y’all ain’t gonna play on no radio,” he drawled. He ordered them back to work.
Saford informed Carter that they were done with the furniture business. The twins were quitting and they wanted the money they were owed. Carter wouldn’t budge. He said they couldn’t quit until the end of the week, so they might as well get back to the finishing room and work out the string.
Clayton was horrified. They were supposed to meet Roy Hall in Winston-Salem today, but they wouldn’t have train fare until they cashed their checks. They weren’t about to ask Mamo for that fifty-dollar bill, and she probably wouldn’t have parted with it anyway. If they didn’t make it to Winston-Salem, they’d blow their big chance.
Carter locked up the time clock and the time cards. The boys couldn’t punch out. Certain that they would miss the noon train to Winston-Salem, the twins made tracks for the depot, determined to get on that train. Inside the depot, a middle-aged woman sat behind a desk covered with papers, files, and a telephone.
“Let me do all the talking,” Saford told Clayton.
Saford strode up to the woman’s desk and started with his sob story. He began with the tale of Roy Hall coming to Bassett to offer the twins a job on the radio. His voice rose in pitch and tempo when he got to the part about trying to get his money from the boss man.
Clayton cut in and finished his brother’s sentences.
“We ain’t got the money …,” Saford began.
“To get the train tickets for Winston-Salem,” Clayton finished.
“See, we’re supposed to be on the radio …”
“With Roy Hall and His Blue Ridge Entertainers.”
“If we don’t get the money for a ticket …”
“Then we’ll miss the train …”
“And we won’t make it on the radio …”
“With Roy Hall and His Blue Ridge Entertainers!”
The woman’s head turned from side to side like she was watching a tennis match as one twin started a sentence, then the other chimed in. Finally, she found an opening and interrupted. Who were they supposed to meet in Winston-Salem? Did they know where he could be reached? Perhaps he could send them money for tickets?
Within a few minutes, the lady was on the phone with the management of WAIR radio in Winston-Salem. They got a message to Roy Hall, who sent word that he would wire them the money for tickets. He also told them that as long as they made it there by the end of the week, everything would be OK.
“Don’t worry about anything,” said the nameless woman behind the desk who saved Clayton and Saford’s music career. “He’ll wire the money to me and I’ll have your tickets Friday. We’ll get you on the right train to Winston-Salem.”
Overjoyed, Clayton and Saford thanked the woman profusely. As they turned to leave and head to their house in Hell’s Holler, Clayton noticed the web of telephone lines and cables that lined the depot’s walls and ceiling.
“Now, which one of them wires does the money come in on?” he asked.
• • •
Clayton and Saford packed their few belongings in a single duffel bag. They still didn’t have cases for their instruments. They piled their earthly possessions onto a train car and said good-bye to the woman who had taught them those old mountain songs when they were boys, who had first propped the fiddle under Saford’s chin and held his hand as he played his first note, who first tuned a banjo for Clayton. The twins told Mamo they’d send money as soon as they started making a regular wage.
Mamo told them she’d be fine. She’d stretch that fifty-dollar bill until it hollered.
The twins left Bassett on a train that no longer runs, leaving behind jobs in a factory that no longer makes furniture. They hadn’t changed much from the hillbillies they’d been when they arrived. They were still bare wood, as unpolished as any dresser or table that they’d ever worked on in the factory. They were about to receive a coat of polish from a different kind of finishing room all together, one run by a boss man named Roy Hall.
For the next three months, the twins joined the band in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for a daily show on radio station WAIR. The sponsor for the program was Dr Pepper.
—MORE GOLD WRITTEN BY MOM FOR THE CARROLL COUNTY GENEALOGICAL BOOK, 1994
The twins were in a real band. They met the great Tommy Magness. They were bona fide professional musicians.
By the middle 1930s, WAIR had opened its airwaves to local musicians, black and white alike, to perform country and gospel music. Roy Hall landed a gig there in 1938, the same year two bastard twins in Bassett, Virginia, first heard his program. Even then, North Carolina was the media source for rural Virginians just fifty miles north. The Tar Heel state owned the talent, too. The list of bands tra
versing the Piedmont in the ’30s reads like a freewheeling caravan of hillbilly music hall of famers. The Mainers played on Winston-Salem and Greensboro radio stations. The Blue Sky Boys were from nearby Hickory. The Monroe Brothers recorded in Charlotte. North Carolina’s well of musical talent was as deep and rich as a silver mine, but the profit margin was shallow. All these bands played over the top of one another, bumped into one another on the road, and played the same kerosene-heated schoolhouses in the same little towns. The market was saturated.
That’s why Winston-Salem didn’t turn out to be the gold mine the twins had expected when they got on that train in Bassett. Winston was a smoking town, so to speak, home to Camel cigarette manufacturer R. J. Reynolds. The twenty-one-story Reynolds building dominated the skyline and was the tallest building south of Baltimore. But man cannot live by cigarettes and Dr Pepper alone, so the Blue Ridge Entertainers struggled financially, even though Roy’s group played on two radio stations—WAIR and WBIG. In fact, the band was so popular on WBIG, it received more than ten thousand pieces of fan mail during a three-week popularity contest in 1939. WBIG awarded Roy a trophy with his vote total engraved on it. Seventy years later, that very trophy showed up on eBay.
Clayton and Saford’s first taste of the big time was bittersweet. Not long after they arrived in Winston-Salem, they got some sad news. Back home in The Hollow, Granny Hall had died.
She was nearly ninety, having entered the world during the California Gold Rush year of 1849 and leaving it in early 1939, just as Europe disintegrated into war. She had worked as long as she had been able, almost to the last year of her life, delivering a fourth generation of Patrick County babies. Her breathing became increasingly wheezy and difficult, and she took to her bed that winter. Dr. Gates checked on her regularly at the cabin, examining her and keeping her informed of the goings-on around The Hollow. There was nothing he could do for her. She fretted over her children making such a fuss over a dying old woman. She could feel life stealing away, like her body was hollowing out. One morning, she told one of her granddaughters, “I’ve got the death rattle.” That night, she was gone.
