vera hall - trouble so hard

Vera Hall - Trouble So Hard

Vera Hall (1902-1964)
Born in 1902 in Payneville, Alabama, just outside of Livingston in Sumter County, Vera Hall grew up to establish one of the most stunning bodies of American folk music on record.
Hall married Nash Riddle, a coal miner, in 1917 and gave birth to their daughter, Minnie Ada. Riddle was killed in 1920. Though Hall sang her entire life, learning spirituals such as I Got the Home in the Rock and When Im Standing Wondering, Lord, Show Me the Way from her mother, Agnes, and her father, Efron Zully Hall, it was not until the late 1930s that Halls singing gained national exposure.




John Avery Lomax, ethnomusicologist, met Hall in the 1930s and recorded her for the Library of Congress. Lomax wrote that she had the loveliest voice [he] had ever recorded. The British Broadcasting System played Halls recording of Another Man Done Gone in 1943 as a sampling of American folk music. The Library of Congress played the song the same year in commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1945, Hall recorded with Byron Arnold. In 1984, the recordings were released as a Collection of Folksongs entitled Cornbread Crumbled in Gravy.




In 1948, with the help of Alan Lomax, Hall traveled to New York and performed on May 15 at the American Music Festival at Columbia University. During the course of this trip, Lomax interviewed Hall on several occasions. In 1959, these interviews would be transformed into Rainbow Sign, a thinly- guised biography of Hall. In this book, Lomax stated, her singing is like a deep-voiced shepherds flute, mellow and pure in tone, yet always with hints of the lips and the pleasure-loving flesh... The sound comes from deep within her when she sings, from a source of gold and light, otherwise hidden, and falls directly upon your ear like sunlight. It is a liquid, full contralto, rich in low overtones; but it can leap directly into falsetto and play there as effortlessly as a bird in the wind.

Today, her work still garners attention. In 1999, techno-artist, Moby (Richard Melville Hall), included her voice and song Troubled So Hard in his multi-platinum album Play, thus introducing Halls voice to a whole new generation of listeners. Prized by scholars and folksong enthusiasts, Halls recordings include examples of early blues and folk songs that are found nowhere else. Her masterful renditions of traditional songs and stories are a defining part of Southern Black culture and the Black Belt region.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• vera
• hall
• blues
• trouble
• so
• hard
• moby
• trouble so hard

[DaniVerd]

Hipster: fuck off men, i knew her before moby's "natural blues" ;D

[xXBronzedBalletXx]

A perfect example a beautiful voice that existed before autotune was created.

[UniqueOne36]

So much soul in this song. She sings with real passion. Both qualities that are very rare in today's music. Raw, real, and simply beautiful!

PS. Calling Kanye a real artist or any other of these folks that RUIN great songs for profit, is like saying someone is Vincent van Gogh just because they painted a picture like his. You can put lipstick on a pig, but they will always be a pig.

[luridlorea]

my parents are Lomax enthusiasts so I did hear this before the Moby rendition. And no, that doesn't make me a hipster, that makes me AWESOME

[major356]

Sampling is a beautiful new part of music. And anyone that thinks they're "real" because they oppose to sampling is full of shit. How could you say sharing music and combining music is not an artistic beautiful thing. In this new modern world of music I think it's important that people keep sampling old music to allow it to live on. Stop giving kanye shit for sampling soul songs

[Zhteud]

ВАУ

[SentinelConvergence]

@moonsugar1 What's really amusing is his attempt to pathologize Moby as having a 'slave master' mentality. When someone starts authoritatively declaring what occurs inside other people's minds, I start to wonder about their own mental processes.

[HODAKIRYUCHAIB]

waaaaaw TT___TT 

[TheSaam1]

i love this so much

[moonsugar1]

BlogBitch = Fucktard.

Music and songs always transcend and are passed on, from one generation to the next. Every generation is different, and every generation will pass it on differently. Theres something in alot of early blues that speaks to a very human part of all of us, and it doesnt matter how its passed down, whether through sampling in 90's dance music, word of mouth, or hearing someone sing it in a fucking cotton field. The only person making race an issue is you.

Idiot.

[speakercoilmusic]

@Bogwire Not necessarily true... Though true for most... But I heard it before Moby sampled it. A blues obsessed friend of mine leant me a box set called "Sounds of the South"... Which has some other cool shit on it (some of which Moby also sampled in other songs). It has some cool Chain Gang songs on it too.

[BlogBitch]

@Bogwire Bless to you and all the green thumbs.. you just don't get it.

That it takes some itty bit of white no talent to bring this music to the wider world says everything about racism. Moby is nothing more than a Plantation Musician.