If Trouble Don't Kill Me

September 27, 2010
Berrier, an award-winning journalist for the Roanoke Times tells the fascinating story of his grandfather Clayton and great-uncle Saford Hall, two Virginia musicians who were playing bluegrass before the term was even coined. The Halls played together until Saford's death in 1999 (he performed his last gig just months before with the help of oxygen), but it was ultimately the draft that cut their promising career short. Before WWII, the band they were part of had played for thousands, released records, and were heard six days a week on regional radio programs; after the war their careers stalled and the brothers took factory jobs to survive. Berrier writes with an appreciation for Appalachia, a colloquial voice ("There were just too many puissant high school boys catting around"), and nostalgia for how things were in his grandfather's time, "the good old days, which you and I will only know through the stories we inherit." But he's not sentimental, noting the darkness inherent in the stories and music, the "unholy communion of desperation, poverty, hunger and violence" in Depression-era Virginia.