Those who don't follow bluegrass are likely to be unfamiliar with Hall's second career as a writer (with his late wife, Iris aka "Miss Dixie") who focused his work in that genre, where he had begun his music career and which always held a place in his heart and ear. He wrote numerous bluegrass tunes, so many that at one point listeners couldn't be blamed for thinking it might be illegal to release a BG album without a new Tom T./Miss Dixie tune on it. The quality of composition was as high as, and often more adventurous than, it was at his mainstream-country peak.

On his own recordings Hall rarely covered other people's songs. So it was a huge honor in my life when he cut "Famous in Missouri," which I co-wrote with my longtime friend Robin Williams (the male half of the country-folk duo Robin & Linda Williams, not the late comedian and actor), for one of his Mercury releases.

It bears remarking that Hall's story-telling songs were straight out of the ballad tradition, a point seldom if ever made by his folk-clueless admirers and colleagues in Nashville.