”The Year That Clayton Delaney Died”

(written by Tom T. Hall)

Tom T. Hall (#1, 1971)

If country music ever had a Mark Twain, it was probably Tom T. Hall. He is known as “The Storyteller” because his songs stand apart from most in the sense that they speak poetically of normal life and normal people. There is a direct, no-nonsense quality about his tunes, evident in their simplistic story lines. But while Hall’s compositions may appear that way upon first glance, they are actually built in layers, with each piece of fabric slowly revealing Hall’s own life experiences.

Tom’s interest in music began at a very early age and by his teenage years he had already formed a small string band, playing backwoods schoolhouses and small fairs. His band also performed on the local radio station, where Hall also took a job as a disc jockey and his daily show became quite popular in the area. Hall had begun writing songs by that time, but when he turned twenty-one he grew restless (as most young men that age do) and wanted to see the world. About the only way for a poor boy to manage that was to join the Army, which he did in 1957. By the end of his three-year hitch, he had been a lot of places and seen a lot of things, and many of those adventures would later end up in some of his songs.

For a while he went back home to Morehead, Kentucky to his old disc jockey job, then attended college working toward a degree in journalism. Still dabbling in music, Tom sent a few of his compositions to Nashville. That was the beginning of a career that would culminate with his name enshrined in the Country Music Hall Of Fame.

Hall’s songs were becoming noticed, and he obtained a songwriting contract with a Nashville publisher. He seemed on his way to becoming the writer of major country music hits. Then reality set in. The songs which Hall wrote were much different from those the established writers were turning out at the time. Like Roger Miller, Tom’s stuff was considered too off-the-wall for the big artists. A few of his tunes did find homes, such as “D.J. For A Day,” a Top Ten hit for Jimmy Newman in 1964, and “Hello Vietnam,” by Johnny Wright, which spent three weeks at #1 in 1965. However, most of Hall’s material was rejected.

Soon after his arrival in Nashville, Tom had become friends with a session player by the name of Jerry Kennedy. When Kennedy was appointed A & R director for Mercury Records, Jerry approached Tom with an opportunity to sign with the label as a performer. That way, Tom wouldn’t have to shop his songs around to the artists, he could just record them himself. A pretty good plan, except for one thing: Tom didn’t particularly want to be a recording artist. By and large, he considered himself a songwriter and nothing more. That was what he really wanted to do. Touring and working the road just didn’t appeal very much to “The Storyteller.”

Tom did sign though, and started having minor hits right off the bat in 1967, starting with “I Washed My Face In The Morning Dew” (#30). The following year he reached the Top Ten for the first time with “Ballad Of Forty Dollars” and by ’70 he topped the chart for the first time with “A Week In A Country Jail.” A couple of years earlier, in 1968, an unknown Nashville secretary named Jeannie C. Riley had showcased Hall’s songwriting skills in a big way. Recording an ode about a P.T.A. meeting Tom had once attended, Riley came out of nowhere and suddenly took both the country and pop charts by storm with the breakout hit of the year “Harper Valley P.T.A.” which instantly reached #1 on both charts, and generated more airplay and more money that all of Hall’s other songs combined. By 1971, still riding the wake created by “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” Tom pulled out another memory from his past. It was the story of a man whom he had known as a boy.

The man Hall identified as “Clayton Delaney” in “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died” was his neighbor and childhood hero. To stay active in music, Tom’s friend had moved to Ohio and Indiana to work clubs while he was still a teenager. He was doing pretty well but he got sick and was forced to come home. He died when he was about nineteen or twenty (of an undiagnosed lung disease), but a lot of people thought the song was about an old man.

The man who inspired “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died” was not really named Clayton Delaney at all. His real name was Lonnie Easterly. Tom T. Hall had veiled the late guitar picker’s legacy by using two street names in the song. Lonnie (“Clayton Delaney”) had impacted Tom in a very strong way. Hall didn’t just write the line “I remember the year that Clayton Delaney died,” he lived it. Tom was eight or nine and had just been given an old Martin guitar when he first met Easterly, who was already in his teens. Tom was impressed with Lonnie’s guitar picking, but what impressed him most was the older boy’s great independence and style.

Easterly would take the hit records of the day (tunes by Red Foley, Ernest Tubb, Hank Williams, etc.) and sing them in his own style. He didn’t imitate anyone, he just tried to be himself. That was one of the most valuable lessons Hall learned from him. So much so that, after Easterly passed away, Tom vowed to start singing like himself too, and not try to copy anybody. Like “Clayton Delaney,” Hall did everything he could to be true to himself and his own feel for music, not just in his singing but in his songwriting as well. Easterly had played regularly at the Buckeye Gardens in Connersville, Indiana, and when Tom resumed performing after his Army service was over, he started at that same club.

Hall was hardly blessed with exceptional vocal skills, but did well enough to convey his story songs quite effectively, notching twenty-one Top Ten country hits, with seven of those going all the way to #1. His career culminated with his induction into the Country Music Hall Of Fame in 2008. Tom had a creed when it came to his own recordings. His first and foremost rule was that nothing was to get in the way of the lyrics. He didn’t want any fancy guitar riffs, dramatic backup vocals or sophisticated instrumentation. He didn’t even allow his own vocal to stand out. Only the song’s message was important. It was the story he was trying to sell above anything else. Hall’s policy is, of course, completely forgotten today in this new, modern era of “imitation” country music (and that’s putting it nicely), where profound lyrics are a thing of the past, replaced by ridiculous bubblegum fluff, meaningless lyrics about driving pickup trucks down dirt roads, partying all night, guzzling beer and “making out” down by the river, all backed by blaring rock guitars. Total garbage.

Tom T. Hall’s writing of “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died” and all his other great story songs, reflected Tom’s own introspective view of life. He wrote about things he knew and wrote them from a viewpoint that was uniquely his. In his mind, these stories were important slices of his life. He wanted them to be poetic and informative, as well as entertaining. He wanted his words to paint pictures, but being commercial was the last thing on his mind. On September 18, 1971, twenty-three years after Tom’s mentor and idol had passed away, “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died” topped Billboard’s country singles chart for two weeks. It not only gave Hall his biggest hit and his personally highest artistic achievement, but also provided him with some undesired commercial success too, which Tom discovered could be lived with easily.

Lonnie Easterly, the man immortalized as “Clayton Delaney” probably died of tuberculosis, his death slow and painful and he passed away without ever fulfilling his dreams. Yet, his legacy lived on in another young man whom he inspired. Tom T. Hall took the most important lesson Easterly taught him to heart, and became an influential songwriter and performer because he sought his own way of expressing his music. In a sense, both Tom and Lonnie made it to the warm spotlight at the same time. That seems appropriate, because Hall always said that it was “Clayton Delaney” who had bought his ticket for the big show. – JH