by War;Bluegrass If Trouble Don't Kill Me: A Family's Story of Brotherhood
And they were off. They drove swiftly through a set, following the same pattern each day—fiddle tune, Roy’s featured solo, a duet by Clayton and Saford, a spiritual number, Irving’s spotlight, a recitation of upcoming show dates—pausing long enough here and there to sling Dr Pepper like it was snake oil.
“Uncle Roy, tell the good folks how Dr Pepper is the perfect weekend drink,” Irving would say.
“Well, Cousin, they can pick up a handy carton today, then one tomorrow, and it’ll only set ’em back four bits,” Roy would summarize.
They never had a problem filling airtime. If a set list came up a little short, the engineer would give the signal to “stretch” the program by moving his hands apart as if he was stretching a piece of taffy.
“What are you doing, Robert?” Irving would say to the engineer, on air. “You look like you’re pulling molasses.”
Irving, knowing his cue, would then pick up a sheet of Dr Pepper “facts” and read them with Roy like they were reciting a call-and-response church liturgy.
IRVING: “We’d like to say to our little buddies that it’ll be Dr Pepper Time again tomorrow, same time.”
ROY: “It sure will, and I’d like to say to those little buddies that Dr Pepper is good for life.”
IRVING: “And I’d like to say to those little buddies’ mothers and fathers that they never have to worry about giving Dr Pepper to their children because they’ll enjoy it, and, besides that, it’s good for ’em.”
ROY: “The equivalent of Dr Pepper is equal to three and one-quarter ounces of pure orange juice.”
IRVING: “Dr Pepper is a blend of pure fruit juices, and you know how good pure fruit juices are for you.”
ROY: “It has a lemon base!”
They wrapped up every broadcast with a fast-break chorus of “Take Me Back to the Blue Ridge Mountains”:
Take me back to the Blue Ridge Mountains
Where I long to live and die
Take me back to the Blue Ridge Mountains
To that wonderful home in the sky
The Blue Ridge Entertainers’ radio shows made Roy Hall enormously popular over a wide area of Virginia, and they sold Dr Pepper by the truckload. Listeners drank Dr Pepper at ten, two, and four and any other time Cousin Irving told them to. Within months, Roanokers were drinking more Dr Pepper per capita than anywhere else in the world. (The funny thing was that Cousin Irving never really developed a taste for the blend of sweet fruit flavors. He plugged Dr Pepper because it was his job. He did haul a cooler in the back floorboard of his car—but he kept it filled with beer.)
The radio broadcasts did more than just sell soda pop, though. They sold Roy Hall and His Blue Ridge Entertainers to a public that craved his kind of music. The band’s sound was distinct: a sweet mix of blues-laced mountain music and country swing.
Clayton and Saford were stars, and their identical good looks made them a novelty among Roanoke bands. More important, their musical talents were astounding. They could play any instrument with strings and their harmonies went together like mashed potatoes and chicken gravy. Clayton stuck with the banjo, but was soon mastering the fiddle and the bass. The twins were the biggest difference in the sound of Roy Hall’s band compared with his earlier North Carolina lineups, and they were as responsible as anybody for the Blue Ridge Entertainers’ newfound glory in Roanoke.
So were Monk and Gibb.
Monk and Gibb were comic characters invented by and played by Clayton and Saford. Every Blue Ridge Entertainers’ show featured comedy segments from those wild and wacky Hall twins. Clayton and Saford played stereotypical hillbilly characters in stereotypical ways, with blacked-out front teeth and faces dotted with freckles. Saford, in the timeless role of Gibb, wore a ratty derby hat and a ridiculous pair of oversized britches hitched up with stretchy suspenders. He carried a couple of weights in his pockets, so that when he pulled on his suspenders, his britches dropped to his knees, revealing polka-dotted boxer shorts, then popped back up. When the skit called for Gibb to play guitar, he put it on with a strap that had the words “Huba Huba” (instead of “Hubba Hubba”) on it. As Monk, Clayton dressed like a Wild West outlaw and hammed it up on stage. Saford had always been the primary showman of the two, but when it came to comedy, he was the straight man to Clayton’s natural-born cornpone silliness.
GIBB: “Hey Monk, where was you a goin’ so fast when you run past my house the other day? You was mortally a-flyin’.”
MONK: “Man, I was headed to the doctor.”
GIBB: “The doctor!”
MONK: “Yeah. See, I laid on my little downy bed on the back of my flat …”
GIBB: “You mean you laid down on the flat of your back?”
MONK: “That’s what I said. I was on my little downy bed on the back of my flat and I musta fell asleep with my mouth wide open ’cause I’ll be dogged if a rat didn’t mistake my mouth for a rat hole, and I want you to know that I swallered that rat!”
GIBB [head bobbing around, eyes bulging]: “You swallered a rat!”
MONK: “I did, and that’s when I come a-flyin’ by your house a-headed for the doctor.… I mean to tell you, I was pickin’ ’em up and settin’ ’em down. I cut the corner goin’ so fast I scooped up sand in my hip pocket.”
GIBB: “Well, what’d the doctor say?”
MONK: “That doctor looked down in my mouth and he said maybe I could swaller some rat poison, and I said, ‘No thank you! Ain’t you got no other way?’ And he thought a minute and said, ‘Have you got an old Tom cat?’ And I told him I did. And he told me to get me some cheese and set it on my chin and set old Tom on my chest and when that rat smelled them cheese he’d come after it and old Tom would get that rat!”
GIBB: “Oh boy! Did it work?”
MONK: “Well, I done like he said and got me some cheese. I laid on my old downy bed on the back of my flat. I set them cheese on my chin and set old Tom on my chest. Well, directly that rat got to smelling them cheese and I could feel him coming up. He was using my ribs as a stepladder. Ol’ Tom could smell that rat and he started swishing his tail side to side.”
GIBB: “Oh Lord! What happened then?”
MONK: “That rat went after the cheese. And the cat went after the rat!”
GIBB: “And did he catch that rat?”
MONK: “Naw, man! I swallered rat, cat, cheese, and all!”
And to think they wrote this stuff themselves. The crowd lapped it up like it was free Dr Pepper.
• • •
On Sunday afternoons—the band’s only day off from radio programs—the Blue Ridge Entertainers played on top of Mill Mountain, a 1,200-foot summit crowned with a green park that provided dazzling views of the plucky city and the blue mountains that ringed Roanoke like a fortress. Automobiles traveled bumper to bumper up the twisty mountain road that doubled back on and over the top of itself, forming a figure-eight loop by which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people made it to the top for the Sunday hoedowns. Dot and Reba were always there to cheer their boys on.
The Blue Ridge Entertainers took the stage wearing dark jackets, white shirts, and wide colorful ties. Roy set up his public-address system and for the next three hours the band cut loose with what music lovers of 1940 considered modern country music.
Clayton and Saford sang several duets, including a couple that they came up with on their own. Their song “Little Sweetheart, Come and Kiss Me” was a big hit with the crowd. The up-tempo ditty might not have been all that original—it was even set to the melody of another song, “East Virginia Blues”—but the tune swung like a hammer and sounded like gold.
Little sweetheart, come and kiss me
Just once more before I go
Tell me truly you will miss me
As I wander to and fro
Let me feel the tender pressings
Of your ruby lips to mine
With your dimpled hands caressing
And your snowy arms entwined
The lyrics were p
oetic and sweet—and possibly written by someone else, even though Roy Hall’s songbooks clearly stated “Words and Music by Hall Twins.” Long after their careers were over, Clayton and Saford fessed up that the words to some of those songs might have been “inspired” by other sources. Roy Hall had taught them how to copyright material that existed in the public domain. Roy, like A. P. Carter before him and Roy Acuff later, had learned that real money in the music business wasn’t made by risking your neck on country back roads trying to get to every schoolhouse with a stage and a woodstove, or even by making records. Publishing rights were where the real money was. The “Orange Blossom Special” debacle had taught him that. Roy could have sold thousands of copies of that record, but he would not have gotten rich because he didn’t own the song’s publishing rights. Starting then, he began copyrighting songs, even those sent to him by other writers.
Roy told the twins that any time anybody sent them a poem or some song lyrics in a letter, they should copyright the verses if the poor sap who wrote them hadn’t done so already. That’s surely how they came to copyright a song whose chorus was actually older than they were. Roy reprinted the song in a songbook, under the title “If Trouble Don’t Kill Me, I’ll Live a Long Time”:
I’m troubled, I’m troubled, I’m troubled in mind
If trouble don’t kill me, I’ll live a long time
A little box of powders, and a little box of paint
Makes all these young girls just think what they ain’t
They’ll hug you, they’ll kiss you, they’ll tell you more lies
Than the crossties on the railroad and the stars in the sky
A little bottle of liquor and a little rusty gun
Makes all of these young boys just think that they’re grown
I’m troubled, I’m troubled, I’m troubled in mind
If trouble don’t kill me, I’ll live a long time
From their onstage perch atop Mill Mountain, Roy Hall and His Blue Ridge Entertainers could look out over a crowd of a thousand people who had come to the mountaintop just to see them. Off in the distance, Roanoke spread out across the valley floor like a blanket of jewels.
“Future years may bring us sorrow,” the twins sang on “Little Sweetheart, Come and Kiss Me.”
That our hearts be little known
Still of care we should not borrow
Come and kiss me or I’ll go.
As popular as these Sunday afternoon mountaintop hootenannies were, the biggest weekly music event was the Saturday night Blue Ridge Jamboree at the Academy of Music.
The Academy was a fabulous concert hall built in the early 1890s when Roanoke was booming and the new arrivals from the north brought their love of fine arts—and money—with them. Prominent businessmen built the Academy for $95,000, complete with marble flooring, electric lights, private boxes, seating for 1,500 (including a section reserved for blacks that afforded no access to the rest of the building), and an opulent interior designed by a Frenchman. The acoustics were said to be perfect for every kind of performance, from a grand orchestra to a small choir. The Academy was a musical palace, a repository of art and culture just a few blocks removed from the bars, brawls, and brothels of the rowdy City Market District.
By 1940, though, the palace was a half-century old and showing its age. The roof was leaky, and many of the seats needed repair or replacement. But the old girl was still a musical showplace. Traveling opera companies and orchestras still came, great orators still orated, and now, best of all, the hillbillies were taking over.
Roy made another shrewd business move by getting WDBJ to sponsor a live radio program originating from the Academy of Music. He used his business and music contacts to book big-name acts each week. Within a year, the Blue Ridge Jamboree and the Academy of Music had played host to the Carter Family, the Blue Sky Boys, the Delmore Brothers, the Sons of the Pioneers, and other high-profile groups. Each week, the Blue Ridge Entertainers opened the show for those performers. Around southwest Virginia, Roy Hall’s band was just as popular as the top billing.
• • •
In the summer of ’40, the twins didn’t know, or care, a lick about the looming war. Sure, they’d seen films of the war in Europe on the newsreels that played before picture shows at the American Theater. Everybody knew Hitler was a bad guy, and the twins felt real bad about those poor Polacks who’d been run over by those nasty Krauts, but, hey, what do you want us to do about it? We sent our boys over there in ’17 and what did we get out of it? Heartaches, that’s what. Those crazy Europeans could fight their own damn wars from now on.
And as for those newsreels showing the fighting between Japan and China, well, who knew what that was all about?
Anyway, the boys in the band were more excited about seeing themselves on the silver screen than watching Japanese planes drop bombs. They’d made their own movie—a clip for National Beer of Baltimore, makers of National Bohemian. The band stood before a whirring film camera in a Roanoke studio, clutching instruments, and sang the National Beer theme song:
National Beer, National Beer
You’ll love the taste of National Beer
And while I’m singing I’m proud to say
It’s brewed on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay
They sat through many boring war newsreels just to see themselves on the screen.
• • •
Today’s platinum-card-carrying crowd might not think of hillbilly music as a particularly glamorous way to make a living, but in Roanoke, Virginia, in 1940, the shows at the Academy of Music were packed each week. Fans crowded the WDBJ studios at ungodly hours to watch the Entertainers put on their program (at one point, they put on two shows, one in the morning and one at midday). Country music allowed the boys to dress well, meet girls, and drive new automobiles.
Pretty soon, the Blue Ridge Entertainers could not accept all the invitations for show dates. Roy called in his brothers Jay Hugh and Rufus and built a second band around them. They were called the Happy-Go-Lucky Boys at first, but after a while people started referring to them simply as the Blue Ridge Entertainers Unit 2. After he and Roy split up in 1938, Jay Hugh had continued playing music with Wade Mainer and his Sons of the Mountaineers. He was the ostensible leader of Unit 2, so he printed up his own songbooks and sold them at shows. The Blue Ridge Entertainers were now more than a musical group, they were Roy Hall’s franchise.
• • •
Clayton and Saford may have been a couple of bumpkins from Patrick County, but each knew his way around a steering wheel. The twins had arrived in Roanoke as passengers, riding shotgun with Roy Hall and his band, but they were determined to take the wheel for themselves. As soon as they had enough dough, they’d buy their own wheels. Roy now kept nearly 70 percent of the door from each show—a higher percentage than most bands received—and he split it evenly with his band, minus a few dollars here and there for gas money and promotional expenses. Roy paid in cash, so Clayton and Saford saved all their bills and coins in cans, sacks, and change purses and hid them at Mrs. Hankins’s boardinghouse. Clayton kept most of his earnings in a burlap sugar sack.
After one particularly lucrative gig at a fairgrounds on the twins’ home turf of Mount Airy, North Carolina—fifty years later, the brothers would recall that they each took $600 back to Roanoke from that jamboree—Clayton’s sugar sack was almost too heavy to tote. Back in Roanoke, he put on his black hat, stuffed his britches legs into his tall black boots, packed up his sugar sack, and strode into Johnson’s Chevrolet on Campbell Avenue.
Johnson’s was one of those old-timey dealerships where all the new cars were parked in a showroom that faced the street. The black sedans and two-door coupes looked like museum exhibits behind the big windows, safe to look at but not to touch. All duded up like a movie cowboy, Clayton raised the suspicion of one of the salesmen.
“What can I do for you?” the salesman asked the young man in the big black hat and shiny cowboy shirt.
“There’s a Chevrolet coupe I like,” Clayton said.
“And how are you gonna pay for this coupe you like?”
“I’m gonna pay cash for it. It’s cheaper that way, ain’t it? No carrying charges or nothing, right?”
The salesman concurred that Clayton was right, but he was still dubious. “And how much cash you got on you, cowboy?”
“This much,” Clayton said as he picked up the heavy sugar sack and dropped it on the salesman’s metal desk. The bag toppled over, and coins spilled out with a crash. Hundreds of quarters and fistfuls of wadded-up dollar bills earned at scores of Blue Ridge Entertainers shows over the past two years rolled and spun as if a dam holding back a lake of coins had burst. The salesman was shook up by the silvery tsunami.
“What bank did you hold up?”
“I didn’t hold up no bank,” Clayton explained. “I play with Roy Hall on the radio.”
That was the first thing that made sense to the salesman. For the next hour, the two men counted bills and stacked quarters like they were poker chips. Each time they passed an interval of five or ten dollars meant an extra strip of chrome or some flashy feature. Clayton stacked his quarters high, as many as ten deep.
“Don’t stack ’em that way,” the man admonished him. “I can’t count ’em. Stack ’em in fours.”
By the time they counted to $500, Clayton had demanded every piece of chrome, mirror, radio, and interior fan be added to his coupe. The salesman told Clayton to come back at two o’clock to pick up his brand-new shiny, black, tricked-out Chevrolet two-door coupe.
“Man, I’ll be a hundred miles away,” Clayton said. The band was always on the road. That’s why Clayton wanted his own car. Roy’s car had no air-conditioning and it swelled with five chain-smoking musicians who slurped cold coffee from metal thermoses and played “cow pool” to pass the time on those long trips up the Lee Highway.