Vera Hall was an African-American woman born around the turn of the twentieth century in a small house just outside Livingston, Alabama. She grew up with a supportive family and community, but in an extremely poor area around the central Alabama-Mississippi state line. This area, also known as the Black Belt because of its rich, dark soil, was particularly impoverished even for the notably poor South and severely incongruous financial times. Her grandfather was an emancipated slave who had taken up work as a tenant farmer. His son, Hall's father, worked on his father's farm then rented his own plot after the original landowner died. Hall's mother was a stern, practical woman who had a great appreciation of song. Hall and her family took great solace and strength from their community church, Shiloh Baptist Church of Livingston.
At a young age, Vera Hall (sometimes known as Vera Hall Ward, Adel Hall, Vera Ward Hall, Vera Ward, and Adel Ward) became a respected and devout member of the church, and remained so for the rest of her life. But in her late teens, she also fell in with more worldly crowd, for whom blues, craps, and alcohol were the primary entertainment. The dichotomy of these two worlds-- that of spirituals and the church and that of blues and the juke-joint-- was a recurring theme throughout her life (as it has been for many blues singers) and a notable influence in her music. She drew upon both perspectives to cope with and overcome her life's perennial difficulties. She experienced many personal tragedies, including the death of a young brother, both parents, a daughter, a sister, and her husband by 1930. To support herself and her remaining children she was forced to take up cooking and washing for a local household. But she continued to sing.
Ruby Pickens Tartt, a local woman working for the WPA, had taken an interest in local folk music and art. She was particularly passionate about black culture and the storytelling, singing, preaching, and handicrafts that it produced. She was integral in introducing Vera Hall to John and Ruby Lomax. They would conduct extensive interviews and recordings with Hall, among other southern folk artists, throughout the late thirties and forties. There are 29 songs by her in The Library of Congress' American Folklife Center (some of which can be heard here and here).
The only time she left Alabama was in 1948 when she performed in New York in a concert organized by Alan Lomax. She died in Tuscaloosa in 1964, right before the resurgence of folk music appreciation had rediscovered her music.
Vera Hall was known in particular for the passionate moans in her songs. Her rendition of Wild Ox Moan was probably her most well known, which was later recorded by Taj Mahal. More recently her accapella Trouble So Hard was sampled by Moby for his song , Natural Blues, on the album Play. Her songs are still available, usually on Southern folk music compilations.
She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in March 2005 and celebrated by the Alabama Blues Project last October, where they launched a fundraising campaign to buy a marker for the cemetary where she's buried in an unmarked grave. There is an amazing website with a lot more information about her life called The Vera Hall Project.
You can read about more women in history in my archives and at Pesky Apostrophe.
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