NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Two groundbreaking country music stars from the 1960s -- Tom T. Hall and the Statler Brothers -- have been welcomed into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Kyle Young, director of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, explained that Hall and the Statler Brothers join Emmylou Harris and the late Ernest V. “Pop” Stoneman as 2008 inductees.
Harris and Stoneman were welcomed during a ceremony on April 27.
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The inductees share small-town backgrounds and a commitment to songs about everyday American people that shattered country music stereotypes and formulas.
Hall’s literate tales, full of incisive detail and bold narrative gambits, helped change the content and construction of popular country songs. Such #1 hits as “A Week in a Country Jail,” “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died,” and “(Old Dogs, Children and) Watermelon Wine”—as well as hits he wrote for others, including Jeannie C. Riley’s “Harper Valley P.T.A.” and Bobby Bare’s “Margie’s at the Lincoln Park Inn”—prodded Nashville into a new era.
His sophisticated songwriting reflected his time’s changing values and rendered modern life from a fresh perspective.
The Statler Brothers—Harold Reid, Don Reid, Phil Balsley, the late Lew DeWitt, and his replacement, Jimmy Fortune—brought the four-part vocal harmonies of gospel quartets into the country music charts.
Like Hall, their contemporary and Mercury Records labelmate, the Statlers also moved beyond conventional country music topics, as illustrated in the urban imagery of their debut 1965 hit, “Flowers on the Wall,” and in the warm, “Happy Days”-era nostalgia of “Do You Remember These?” and “The Class of ’57.”
The event was taped for future broadcast by the Great American Country cable network and on WSM-AM (650).
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