Chris Willman Music WriterTom T. Hall, the singer-songwriter who brought new levels of pungent wit and narrative sensitivity to country music as one of the genre’s leading figures in the 1970s, died Friday at age 85.The long-retired Hall died at his home in Franklin, Tenn., his son Dean Hall told the Tennessean.Hall had decades ago been bestowed with the nickname of “The Storyteller” — which, as a singular honorific in a genre as historically rich with story-songs as country, was saying something.As a songwriter, Hall was known for hits for others, like “Harper Valley PTA,” recorded by Jeannie C.
Riley in 1968, as well as his own unusually literary No. 1 country singles of the ’70s like “The Year Clayton Delaney Died” and “(Old Dogs,.
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