Miscellanous:

Someday this page will offer a wealth of insane trivia, but due to a lab accident, the materials are not ready quite yet. In the meantime, please enjoy these audio goods from the dark, disorganized VHF AUDIO LABS VAULT:

Pelt: Sunflower River Blues
Trio arrangement of the Fahey classic, recorded during the sessions for Pearls From The River.

Richard Youngs/Simon Wickham-Smith: Parrots 4
From the unreleased Parrots CD. Recorded 1999.

L: Amazing Grace
From the unfindable 3" CD Toi Kioku No Tsumugareru Tokoro, the only Holy Castle release aside from Holy Letters.

L: K to K
From an unreleased CD that was to have been called Vigil

Black Twig Pickers: Old Plank Road
Recorded at Now, March 7, 2003. A trad number - geography aside, hard to imagine the current appalachian Oxycontin fad inspiring a lyric of a similar quality.

Flying Saucer Attack: In The Light Of Time
From Providence, April 26, 1997. Not included on the PA Blues CDR

Clayton Hall, 1919-2003

Clayton Hall was born in hard luck on May 4, 1919, just 15 minutes after his twin brother, Saford. He died Tuesday, April 22, 2003, just shy of his 84th birthday. In between, all he did was learn to fight, play music, become a Roanoke, Va., radio star, help win a world war, work tirelessly, raise a family, preach the Gospel and become a pillar of integrity, dignity and strength to the family and community that loved him and respected him. He never had it easy from the time he was born the last of Judy Hall's ten children in the hardscrabble rural Patrick Country hamlet called The Hollow. He and Saford were inseparable growing up, although they occasionally enjoyed a good scrap. They showed a keen talent for music and taught themselves the fiddle and guitar, using the porch of the family cabin as a stage. Passersby flung nickels and dimes onto the porch in exchange for a verse or two of "Barbara Allen" or "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad," old mountain songs the boys learned from their mother, a country midwife and single mother who rarely rested.

Times being what they were, the boys quit school in the 10th grade and moved to Bassett to work in the furniture factories and play music on the side. It was there, at age 20, where they were hired by Roy Hall and His Blue Ridge Entertainers, a hillbilly music group that gained enormous popularity in Roanoke from 1939-42. Clayton played banjo, Saford fiddled and both sang during the band's twice-daily shows on WDBJ radio that were sponsored by Dr. Pepper and featured legendary host Irving Sharp. Roy Hall's Saturday Night Jamboree performances at the old Academy of Music entertained big crowds with the likes of Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers and other country stars. A little thing called World War II interrupted the twins' careers, though, when Saford was called to serve in Europe and Clayton drafted to fight in the Pacific. Clayton was a member of the U.S. Army's vaunted 96th Division, the fearless "Deadeyes," which invaded Leyte in the Philippines and Okinawa. His valor and bravery were honored with the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

After the war, the twins resurrected their music career in Roanoke with Tommy Magness and the Orange Blossom Boys, but by 1949 they gave up performing professionally and both moved back home. Clayton worked for nearly 30 years in a furniture factory and served nearly as long as the Acolyte of Crooked Oak Moravian Church in Cana. In the mid-1980s, when they were well into their 60s, they began performing again as the Hall Twins and the Westerners, singing and playing old country and bluegrass songs to folks who remembered the good old days and missed them. Saford died in 1999. Clayton still played out until last year. As best the family can recall, his last stage performance was in fall 2001 when he led the Black Twig Pickers at the Steppin' Out festival in Blacksburg.

Clayton is survived by his wife of 55 years, Elinor Holland Hall; a daughter and son-in-law, Renee and Jason Manning; three grandsons and their wives, Ralph Berrier, Jr. and Ruth Babylon, Richard and Kerry Berrier, William Clayton and Jayme Berrier; four great-granddaughters, Lindsay, Megan, Paxton and Morrison Berrier; a brother and sister-and-law, Silas Asa and Ruby Hall; Ralph Berrier, Sr., and a passel of nieces and nephews. The family will receive friends at Moody Funeral Home in Mount Airy, N.C. on Thursday from 7 to 9 p.m. The funeral is Friday at 11 a.m. in the chapel and burial is at Mountain View Cemetery in Rocky Mount with full military honors conducted by Grover King VFW Post 1115 of Hillsville, Va.