A country music star has committed suicide, and the world will never quite be the same without this crooner to entertain us.
Tom T. Hall was a legendary singer and songwriter who wrote hits such as “Harper Valley PTA” and “That’s How I Got to Memphis” and the coroners have ruled that he passed away via suicide, according to new reports from Rolling Stone and the Tennesseean.
The Country Music Hall of Famer passed away at the age of 85 at his Franklin, TN home last August. They did not reveal a cause of death at the time. However, on Wednesday, January 5th, there was a blog called “Saving Country Music” that revealed that Hall had sustained an “apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head” based on the medical report from the medical examiner from Williamson County.
Rolling Stone has now confirmed this to be Hall’s cause of death, stating that a spokesperson for the Medical Examiner’s offer stated that the “manner of death was ruled a suicide.”
Hall was originally an Olive Hill, Kentucky native, and he was born on May 25, 1936. He entered the music industry as a deejay on the West Virginia and Kentucky radio stations after his stint in the Army. He would eventually have his big break as a songwriter when country music singer and Grand Ole Opry member Jimmy C. Newman cut his “DJ For a Day” song. He would go on to write songs for plenty of other big names in country music, including Waylon Jennings, Loretta Lynn, and even Johnny Cash.
Arguably one of the best-known of Hall’s lengthy songwriting catalog is Jeannie C. Riley’s “Harper Valley PTA”, which was a chart-topping hit and even a crossover success in 1968. Alan Jackson also had a big hit with one of Tom T. Hall’s songs, “Little Bitty” in 1996, and in 2008 they inducted Hall into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Dean Hall first confirmed his father’s death in August of 2021.
