Vera Hall

Biography Hall was born at Payneville, Sumter County, Alabama, near Livingston, and sang her entire life. Her mother Agnes Hall, a former slave, and father Efron “Zully” Hall, taught her songs such as "I've Got a Home in the Rock" and "When I'm Standing Wondering, Lord, Show Me the Way".

Hall married Nels Riddle, a coal miner, in 1918 and later gave birth to their daughter Minnie Ada in 1920. Nels Riddle was shot and killed in 1923 or 1924. Minnie Ada died in 1940 of chronic hepatitis, so Hall raised Ada's two sons.

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, later stating "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."

Hall died in January 1964 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Today, her work still garners attention. Prized by scholars and folk song enthusiasts, Hall's recordings include examples of early blues and folk songs that are found nowhere else.

Legacy Lomax's son, Alan, also championed Vera Hall, bringing her to New York for a performance at Columbia University in 1948 and assembling Rainbow Sign, a book based on Hall's life and stories.

Moby's 2000 single "Natural Blues" is essentially an extended remix of the song "Trouble So Hard" recorded by Hall in 1937.

A historical marker in Hall's honor was dedicated on April 21, 2007 in Livingston.