Ron Hall Interviews
Bishop Ron Hall played a significant role in the formative years of several Detroit, Michigan steel guitarists and contributed to establishing the presence of the steel guitar at the House of God, Keith Dominion annual General Assembly in Nashville, Tennessee. His parents migrated from Douglas, Georgia to Detroit in the late 1930s, where his father found employment at Ford Motor Company. They were members of the Church of the Living God, Jewell Dominion, but in 1953, left to join the House of God, Keith Dominion when Ron was ten years old. The Hall family lived four doors down from Felton Williams, who became young Ron’s musical mentor he fondly remembers as “Uncle Felton.” Bishop Lorenzo Harrison impressed teenage Ron with the clear, singing tone his Fender steel guitar. Unable to persuade his father to buy him a Fender, using a few hand tools, Ron fashioned his own eight-string lap-steel that he played in church for almost a decade. In 1995, he lost both his legs in a terrible automobile accident, a life-changing event that ultimately served to strengthen his faith in God. Bishop Hall left the House of God to serve as pastor of an independent Pentecostal church in Ecorse, Michigan, the Mount Carmel Full Gospel Assembly.
– Robert Stone
- RS 126 00:00
- RS 127 00:00
- RS 128 00:00
Interviewee: Ron Hall
Interviewer: Robert Stone
Date: 9/1/2003
Location:
Language: English
For the archive overview:
The Robert Stone Sacred Steel Archive
This is an interview originally recorded for research purposes. It is presented here in its raw state, unedited except to remove some irrelevant sections and blank spaces. All rights to the interview are reserved by the Arhoolie Foundation. Please do not use anything from this website without permission. info@arhoolie.org
Ron Hall Interview Transcripts:
Robert Stone:
Well, first of all, thank you for taking time and I know you’ve been busy. My experience is that ministers are real busy people, so I’m not surprised.
Ronnie Hall:
Sometimes it gets a little bit busy. There’s no doubt about that. But, we’re here. So how do you want to start this?
Robert Stone:
Well, usually what I start with is, first, just some general background, when and where you were born, your date of birth and something about your parents, get an idea of origins of things here.
Ronnie Hall:
Okay.
Robert Stone:
So let’s start with your birth date.
Ronnie Hall:
Well, my birthday is in October, actually the date is 10/9/43, which would make me right at 60. Born in Detroit. My parents come from Georgia.
Robert Stone:
Whereabouts?
Ronnie Hall:
Douglas, Georgia, as a matter of fact. And they migrated north in that migration of most African-Americans at that time and-
Robert Stone:
Right in the ’20s? Or-
Ronnie Hall:
Well, as far as I can tell, let’s see, in 1943, I came here. So, I mean, I came on the scene. I understand that approximately a few years before that my dad came up. First he came to Pittsburgh and then he moved from Pittsburgh to Detroit and then my mother followed him to Detroit after he got started with life. He accidentally got started at the Ford Motor Company back in that day and time, but he did the usual thing. They came up from the south, his family had started down south and then when they got to Detroit, I was the baby of the family and, in fact, I’m the baby of about, well, let’s see, four sisters, one brother, that would make me the sixth one. And I’m thinking in terms of the fact that a few of them have gone home to be with the Lord, but I’m still here.
Robert Stone:
So how many kids were there altogether?
Ronnie Hall:
Six.
Robert Stone:
Six altogether.
Ronnie Hall:
Actually there was seven. One died in childbirth or shortly afterwards.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
Then there’s nine years between myself and the youngest girl. So she’s approaching 70 and that gives you some idea. And-
Robert Stone:
So you were born … You were of the six, or six that-
Ronnie Hall:
Number six, yeah.
Robert Stone:
You were number what?
Ronnie Hall:
Oh, well I am the sixth.
Robert Stone:
You’re the sixth?
Ronnie Hall:
Right. Actually I would have been seven if my-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… brother had lived, but I’m the baby. So-
Robert Stone:
Oh, okay.
Ronnie Hall:
But, how ever I am in family, I’m glad to be here today.
Robert Stone:
I know that.
Ronnie Hall:
I mean, [crosstalk 00:03:04].
Robert Stone:
My dad passed when he was 47. So-
Ronnie Hall:
Oh, I see.
Robert Stone:
Nowadays, of course, we’ve always known about genes. We might not have always called it that.
Ronnie Hall:
No.
Robert Stone:
Might not always call it DNA, but,-
Ronnie Hall:
[crosstalk 00:03:19].
Robert Stone:
… I guess, I’ve passed that test.
Ronnie Hall:
[crosstalk 00:03:21]. By the way, how old are you, Bob?
Robert Stone:
I was born a year later than you in the same month.
Ronnie Hall:
So we’re in the same boat then?
Robert Stone:
Yeah. Exactly. I’ll be 59 in October. You’ll be 60.
Ronnie Hall:
Okay. Oh, in October too? Okay.
Robert Stone:
Yeah. Yeah. In fact, do you know Aubrey Ghent?
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah.
Robert Stone:
He and I have the same birthday, the 17th.
Ronnie Hall:
You’re kidding me.
Robert Stone:
Of course, he’s much younger than I.
Ronnie Hall:
I know of Aubrey Ghent. In fact, I think, if memory serves me, I know he’s Henry Nelson’s son.
Robert Stone:
Right. Right.
Ronnie Hall:
But I think during the time that I’m … There was a time when Nelson came back to the House of God during that time I was in the-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… House of God Church, during the time he … What they call resurgence, or whatever, but I think his son, at that time, was pretty much … He was a very young child, I think, if I remember correctly. But I had not known him as a musician, but he’s turned out to be quite a musician.
Robert Stone:
Yes he is.
Ronnie Hall:
So-
Robert Stone:
He took what Henry did and took it one step further.
Ronnie Hall:
It was the funniest thing because I remember during this time that, for a long time, the style of playing in the House of God was … Well, it’s drastically changed now, of course. But back in that day, they played what I called the old South Florida taste. It had a tuning, the guitar was different. And-
Robert Stone:
Now, what period are you talking about?
Ronnie Hall:
Oh, I would say, let me think back now to the year. Roughly ’50s. In the ’50s-
Robert Stone:
Uh-huh (affirmative), right.
Ronnie Hall:
… around that area, it sort of changed.
Robert Stone:
Oh, yeah.
Ronnie Hall:
And I remember … Because we came to … As I said, my background was in the Church of Living God.
Robert Stone:
Well, let’s … Actually, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Ronnie Hall:
Oh- [crosstalk 00:05:31].
Robert Stone:
No, it’s okay because I very much want to talk about all that.
Ronnie Hall:
Okay.
Robert Stone:
And so your family, what was your family’s involvement in the church, your mother and father?
Ronnie Hall:
Well, my mother was a pastor back in the ’50s.
Robert Stone:
Okay.
Ronnie Hall:
In fact the story should begin there because, really 1953, I remember we were, as I said, as a kid, we were under the Church of The Living God.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And at that time, Bishop Lorenzo Harrison was-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… the musician then. And somehow or another, I can get into the … I don’t know how far you want to go in that direction, but-
Robert Stone:
Oh, as far as you want to go.
Ronnie Hall:
Let me go with the [crosstalk 00:06:23].
Robert Stone:
And if I could ask one thing?
Ronnie Hall:
Sure.
Robert Stone:
My tape recorder is a little bit weak on your end.
Ronnie Hall:
Okay.
Robert Stone:
It records my voice pretty strongly. So if you can just try and be conscious of speaking maybe a little louder than you normally would, it would help.
Ronnie Hall:
Okay.
Robert Stone:
Thanks.
Ronnie Hall:
Well, I don’t know of too many preachers that don’t speak loud, but I can try. I’m still getting the fog out of my head, but [crosstalk 00:06:45].
Robert Stone:
Yeah, still waking up.
Ronnie Hall:
But let me go back to that again. In 1953, there was, what they call a small storefront church mission that was started in Detroit. It used to be on Madison and St. Aubin Street-
Robert Stone:
St. Aubins?
Ronnie Hall:
St. Aubin, yeah.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… during that time. And without getting into a lot of the church history, but I can say it to the point of that, at that time, it was pastored by a female pastor by the name of Sarah Taylor and for whatever reasons she decided to pull out of the organization.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
Back in that time, being a kid, I didn’t really care about all of that,-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… but I remember that that was a controversy. And so when she left, the mission was kind of neglected. And my mother, at that time, had just begun her ministry. And so when she found that the mission of this church was there, she asked to come and speak. And she went over to this church. And the little membership that they had was only about 10 or 12 people that I can remember at the time. As I said, they didn’t have a pastor and, at that time, the House of God Church was led by Bishop M.L. Keith.
Robert Stone:
Right. Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And so one of the ladies at the church mission, by the name of Lillian [00:08:30], of course, she’s dead and gone now, but she wrote a letter to Bishop Keith requesting that my mother would be considered a pastor-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… in the church because the pastor that was there had just, basically, drifted off. And, I guess, the associate ministers, they didn’t seem to have any concern about it. You know what I’m saying?
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
So, at any rate, when she did start in 1953 pastoring, we ended up finally meeting up with Bishop Beard, which is Ted Beard’s father.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
We knew them from the other side over at the Jewell side.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
They had also pulled away from the Jewell side-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… and come into the House of God. And my mother … I think that year was about 1954/55 in that area-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… became their pastor.
Robert Stone:
Right. So she went over into the House of God in ’55?
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah.
Robert Stone:
That’s when-
Ronnie Hall:
Well, that was in ’53. In 1953.
Robert Stone:
Actually in ’53?
Ronnie Hall:
Right.
Robert Stone:
Okay.
Ronnie Hall:
And then the Beards, between 1953 and 1955, when they pulled out of the-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
…. Jewell Dominion, they, at first, had their own mission and then for whatever reason … That was somewhere between 1953 and 1955, and I’ll tell you why it sticks out significantly in a minute … When they came in at that time, as I said, they had their own mission church and Ted Beard’s father, of course, was the pastor. And he had been a pastor out in Mount Clemens in Michigan.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
So when he came over … When they came over, rather, somehow or another, they put their mission down and came in with us and my mother pastored them. I remember because Beard… Ted went into the army about that time, about 1955, I think it was. And he stayed gone for two years. And while he was in the service, his brother Douglas-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… was killed in an auto accident.
Robert Stone:
Oh, okay.
Ronnie Hall:
And I remember Ted coming home. And at that time I had begun to tinker with the … Well, at that time it was the lap steels. Everybody could play-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… a lap steel guitar. But my mother, as I said, we somehow, between the years of 1955 to 1959, that’s what my mother became their pastor in a formal sort of way for a longer period. And then again there was another separation and they went off into another church, they set up another [00:11:26], which was called the Roosevelt Street Church, I think it was. The Beards were. My mother, at that time, in 1959 had to … Actually the first heart attack she had was in 1957.
Robert Stone:
Wow.
Ronnie Hall:
And there was some thoughts about, well, she might not be able to pastor anymore. And then between ’57 and ’59, as I’m talking it’s getting to really come back into the focus, she slowed down pastoring, but in 1959 she had the major heart attack, which didn’t kill her, but it was the deciding factor as to whether she would continue to pastor or not. And I remember that well. And there’s a lot of connection there between the Beard family and my-
Robert Stone:
Okay. Well, that’s real interesting. Thanks for-
Ronnie Hall:
But-
Robert Stone:
So you came from the Jewell Dominion Church?
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah.
Robert Stone:
And what was your mother’s name again, her first name?
Ronnie Hall:
Ruby Hall.
Robert Stone:
Ruby?
Ronnie Hall:
Ruby. Yeah.
Robert Stone:
Ruby Hall.
Ronnie Hall:
Ruby Hall.
Robert Stone:
And your father?
Ronnie Hall:
Philip Hall. Deacon Philip Hall.
Robert Stone:
Okay. And was your father active in the church as well?
Ronnie Hall:
Oh, yeah.
Robert Stone:
Oh.
Ronnie Hall:
As a matter of fact, because when the Beards came into the family, my dad was interested in beginning … That’s a whole another story too, but it’s a strange story. During the time that we were on Madison and St. Aubin, between the time that my mother began pastoring to 1955, I guess, when the Beards became part of our church too, my father had got interested in playing the lap steel. And he wasn’t the world’s greatest lap steel guitar player, but it was an odd way that he got interested in it. And I’ll tell you how I got connected in it a minute.
Ronnie Hall:
During the time, that time, from ’53 to ’55, that period, another lady minister in the church, her husband, belonged to another church, his name was elder … At that time it was minister or Reverend George White. George White wanted to learn how to play a lap steel guitar because he had heard another guitar player. It wasn’t Beard, but he and Beard used to belong to the same church.
Robert Stone:
It wasn’t Fred Neal by any chance, was it?
Ronnie Hall:
Who was it?
Robert Stone:
Was it Fred Neal by any chance?
Ronnie Hall:
No, no, no. Fred Neal was, basically, I think more or less in the … From what I could hear, Fred Neal, he was in Kansas City or somewhere around there.
Robert Stone:
Right. Right.
Ronnie Hall:
But this guitar player’s name was Felton Williams.
Robert Stone:
Okay. I just talked to Felton.
Ronnie Hall:
Oh, good. I call him Uncle Felton.
Robert Stone:
Oh, we’re going to talk about him some more too. Right.
Ronnie Hall:
Well, anyway, Felton inspired … because he used to live four doors from me on 18th Street in Ecorse, Michigan. But, anyway, my father got inspired, and the lead minister … We went to church on Sunday and she borrowed her husband’s guitar, the elder, George White, without his knowing. Now, he had been practicing what they call a little stroke of a 1, 2, 3 chord pattern.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And, well, she said, “He’s going to learn, but he’s working this Sunday so he won’t know.” So she took the amplifier and guitar, small unit she had and brought it to church. And she sat there and I never will forget that day because she set it up and we were sitting there looking at it and I’m saying to myself, “What is that?” And then she sat down and she was playing this 1, 2, 3, just a rap thing across the strings-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… and the church went crazy. So dad was there and he looked and he said, “If this woman could do this, I can do this.”
Robert Stone:
Now, who was it that was playing?
Ronnie Hall:
Her name was … Well, she’s still alive, bless her heart. Name is elder Odessa White, that is, be reminded, this was a local church scene thing.
Robert Stone:
Right. No, I understand. Totally.
Ronnie Hall:
So she brought it in and-
Robert Stone:
And when would this have been about roughly?
Ronnie Hall:
It would have been around, I would say, somewhere between ’53 and ’55.
Robert Stone:
Okay. That’s fine.
Ronnie Hall:
Okay. But this particular Sunday, as I said, she brought this lap steel guitar, it was a Gibson lap steel, I remember. And a little, small amplifier, and I can’t remember the name of it, but she had that and she started rapping on this thing and, like I said, the church just went crazy. Went up in smoke, as you’d say, it caught fire. And my dad, at that point got inspired, and he said, “Well, bless God. If she can do this, I can certainly do it”. So he rushes out.
Ronnie Hall:
Now, just about every home had one of two instruments.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
We all either had a piano, or we had an old beat up guitar somewhere around the house.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
At the Hall house, we had a beat up guitar because it didn’t even have the strings on it. And he bought, first of all, some strings, for this old, he described, was a Gibson or something, looks similar to an L-5 but it wasn’t amplified, it just-
Robert Stone:
Right. An old arch top.
Ronnie Hall:
An old arch top. That’s right. And dad, first of all, tried to turn that into a lap steel, you know-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
…type of situation and it didn’t work. So he finally scraped up enough money to go get an electrified guitar from Montgomery Ward. Never will forget that. And-
Robert Stone:
Was it a lap steel or just electric guitar?
Ronnie Hall:
It was a lap steel. And I remember because it was a beautiful gold color, a gold pink color, flashy gold. And it was a cheap one, but it was big time for him, you know?
Robert Stone:
Sure.
Ronnie Hall:
So he brought it home and he started the process of trying to learn. Let me put that in a more clearer way. The excruciating process.
Robert Stone:
Dying cats.
Ronnie Hall:
Oh, yeah. I mean, I would come home from school and hide because I couldn’t stand the noise, but he was trying to learn. And dad never really, out of all his lifetime of trying to play, never really seemed to get the idea or have the gift. And so he thought he was pretty hot stuff there for a while. I mean, it went to his head, so to speak. And I remember at one time during the time that, as I said, Ted Beard and his brothers and his family came into the church, he invited Ted to come to the house, to our home. And because his mother, Ted Beard’s mother and father and my mother and father were friends, as I said, in the Jewell Dominion. But at any rate, he came out to try to give dad some lessons.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And I think Ted left in, “Dang. What’s the use? He’ll never get onto the thing.” But I really think he came out there because I had my sisters out there and he thought they were … I had one there who was a pretty sharp girl and I think he wanted to see what she was like.
Robert Stone:
Sure, sure.
Ronnie Hall:
But, at any rate, I remember him coming out and he and his brother, Billy, and they didn’t stay long. Stayed for a couple of hours, they left and went back. But dad never really caught on.
Ronnie Hall:
Now, how I got started at that point in time, as I said, I was a kid around these people playing: my father, Ted, Felton Williams. And Felton Williams used to have church in the basement and I would slip off sometimes on a Sunday evening when he would have young people’s service, so to speak-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… and we would go down there and he would be playing his guitar to help the services in a home, in the basement,-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… the church set up there. And I wasn’t really interested in it until my dad, as I said, bought the instrument. Well, but to get to a point about the part about how I got started after my father got started. When you have a kid in a home and you’ve got guitars laying around, sooner or later the kid is going to pick it up. And that’s what happened. One day during the time when dad was gone and he had, at that time, two lap steel guitars. The first one that he had bought, the gold one. And then he really moved up. He bought what they call a National,-
Robert Stone:
For sure.
Ronnie Hall:
… the brand guitar, lap steel.
Robert Stone:
All right.
Ronnie Hall:
And I remember to this day it was black and white.
Robert Stone:
Oh, was that one of those that look like the Empire State Building?
Ronnie Hall:
Exactly. A New York model.
Robert Stone:
A New Yorker, right.
Ronnie Hall:
Oh, yeah. And, oh, you could-
Robert Stone:
I used to have one of them.
Ronnie Hall:
Really?
Robert Stone:
Yeah.
Ronnie Hall:
Boy, [crosstalk 00:20:46].
Robert Stone:
A ’47.
Ronnie Hall:
He was happy about it and he used to practice. We had an upstairs situation, a bedroom, and we lived in a bungalow, but the upstairs was his hobby room, I guess, you would call it.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
That’s where he stored the instruments and things.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
So this particular day when he was gone to work and my mother used to be a … She had become very proficient in … She was a seamstress and she would be sewing. So I eased up there one day and I watched the setup and so I picked up the thing and I started … The older one, the first one he got, I had an ear for it and I messed around and tuned it in what they call the E9 tuning, I guess it was, where the first string is the open note string.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And I tuned the rest of them accordingly to get the six string set up on this.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
Didn’t know anything about tuning. I just stumbled into it.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
I kept messing around until it sounded right to me, let’s put it that way.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And I began to learn to play. And unbeknownst to me, my mother never said anything, but she was listening, and I would start to play. And so one day when my father came in from work, she consequently told him and said, “You know, Philip …” that was his name. She says, “Philip, …” she says, “do you know Ronnie’s got a talent for that thing.” She says, “I was listening to him.” And the first thing out of his mouth is, “What do you mean you were listening to him?” He says, “Well, what’s he doing up there anyway? Why didn’t you stop it?” I was told to not touch it.
Robert Stone:
Right. Right. Typical story.
Ronnie Hall:
I was playing the old man’s, his instruments up there, when suppose, I was forbidden to touch it anyway-
Robert Stone:
Right. Right.
Ronnie Hall:
But you know, I stuck my neck out. So I started playing the thing and it started to come together. And so, as I said, my mother told him that, and from that day forward I was banned. We were banned from going up the steps again to play his guitar.
Ronnie Hall:
But that’s when, during that time, that he had said, “Well, if you want to play something, why don’t you try the Spanish guitar?” Is what everybody else calls the lead guitar.
Robert Stone:
Right. Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And he bought, again, an old Montgomery Ward, catalog model, a Spanish guitar, which had a fat neck that you couldn’t even press the strings down-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… hardly to the deck- to the fret board. But what I did was … The blessing I got from it was my fingers developed the pressure-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… that it took to make chords on the Spanish guitar.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And so I became the backup man for my dad, which was a nightmare, believe me. If you could have what I’m talking about. My dad was an embarrassment. And he had such a nerve that he didn’t care whose church it was. He didn’t even care he knew the people. He would drag that thing and drag me along with it into these various churches and play just … As we use the term Bogart, his way into the church service, set this thing up and play for the church services, which sounded like somebody choking a cat. That’s how bad it was. And I had to back him up on the Spanish guitar. I for some reason, as I said, had developed a talent for picking-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… on the Spanish and I learned the chord patterns to the Hawaiian or the lap steel.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
So as time progressed somewhere between 1955 and I was beginning to grow, that’s how I got started. In 1957, I met another couple of young guys at one of the Jewell churches in Detroit-
Robert Stone:
Who were they?
Ronnie Hall:
… by the name of Sonny Treadway and Wayne White. Bishop Wayne White and I … He’s a bishop now, we are still very close friends and he still plays guitar just like I still play. In 1957, we visited their church on Joy Road. It was a converted bar that they had purchased and turned it into a church. It was a storefront [crosstalk 00:25:17].
Robert Stone:
This is a church on what road?
Ronnie Hall:
That was on Joy Road in Detroit.
Robert Stone:
J-O-Y?
Ronnie Hall:
J-O-Y. Right. On Joy Road in Detroit in 1957. And we visited that Sunday night and I was just astonished that somebody else could play besides Ted Beard and Felton Williams. Well, let me put it another way. Treadway was learning just like I was learning-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… and Wayne was also learning, Bishop Wayne White, but Treadway had a little … I guess it was … I forgot the name of this thing, but it began with a letter B. A little, very small lap steel Brogan or Bro something.
Robert Stone:
Bronson?
Ronnie Hall:
What is it?
Robert Stone:
Bronson?
Ronnie Hall:
That’s the one.
Robert Stone:
Yeah, they were small. They were small.
Ronnie Hall:
He had a little brown one that his dad had purchased in a pawn shop and given it to him and he was learning to play on that. And Bishop White was playing an old … I told you just about every home had one, an arch top. At that time they used to call them Japanese junk. I don’t know what it was. He had one. And then he had another young fellow who was playing the drums, of course, to back him up, by the name of Charles Rue.
Robert Stone:
What was his last name?
Ronnie Hall:
Charles Rue. R-U-E. And he was playing the drums. And I was inspired. I loved it. I used to beg my mom and dad … We’d get out of church on Sunday night and our church wasn’t far from theirs, and I used to say, “Can’t we go by there? I’d like to get to know these guys.” So-
Robert Stone:
Sure. You were 13 years old.
Ronnie Hall:
Sure. Back at that age and that group. And so Treadway had begun and so I could play and he could play, and so we started, we struck up a little group together. Well, they used to come out to our house in Ecorse, Treadway and Wayne, and they would come out to our house and we would all go upstairs to where the music room was and we’d stay up there most of the day playing guitar, way up in to the night and then my father would have to take them back home. As a matter of fact, my father, I found out later, used to try to … Because Treadway was gifted.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And my dad wanted to pick up some of the, what we call licks, on the guitar first.
Robert Stone:
Sure.
Ronnie Hall:
But for a while there, we used to travel together. You know what I mean? Go to different states, go to Cleveland and-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… we even had an invitation to go over to Canada and play on a radio station over there for a church that was the Church of God in Christ.
Robert Stone:
Really?
Ronnie Hall:
I can’t even think of this guy’s name, but he’s the father of … Oh, I know it. His name was Morton, the elder Bishop Morton-
Robert Stone:
Morton?
Ronnie Hall:
[crosstalk 00:28:23] jurisdiction.
Robert Stone:
Now, at that time Treadway and Wayne White were in the Jewell Dominion?
Ronnie Hall:
They was still in the Jewell Dominion.
Robert Stone:
And you were in the Keith?
Ronnie Hall:
I was in the Keith.
Robert Stone:
Okay.
Ronnie Hall:
But we struck up this kid friendship,-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
… which, to us, there wasn’t such a thing as a Keith Dominion-
Robert Stone:
Right. You weren’t worried about that.
Ronnie Hall:
No. We were thinking about guitar playing.
Robert Stone:
Right. Sure.
Ronnie Hall:
And, of course, our idols at that time were the three: it was Bishop Harrison, it was Felton Williams and Ted Beard. That was the three distinctive styles that-
Robert Stone:
Now,-
Ronnie Hall:
I can remember [crosstalk 00:28:57].
Robert Stone:
… you said Bishop Harrison. You mean Lorenzo Harrison?
Ronnie Hall:
Lorenzo. Right.
Robert Stone:
So the bigger guns that you knew, the accomplished steel players, were- Lorenzo Harrison, Felton Williams and Ted Beard?
Ronnie Hall:
And Ted Beard. Right. Now, we heard about Fred Neal from Felton because he did a little traveling himself. He and his cousin, I think, from Mount Clemens, Mack Mayes, went out to Kansas City to build a church out there for his grandfather or granduncle or something like that.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And he stayed out there for quite a while and he got to meet some of the people that … These names like Fred Neal, and there was another, Harvey Jones. I met Bishop Harvey Jones not long ago.
Robert Stone:
Oh, really?
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah. He’s still alive, bless his heart. He was here to a retirement dinner for another church official, independent, who used to be in the Jewell Dominion, by the name of Kirkwood, and he had attended. Now, he’s up in years now but, bless his heart, he’s still around. Harvey Jones.
Robert Stone:
In fact, Felton was a great interview and he gave me lots of phone numbers.
Ronnie Hall:
Oh, yeah. Felton would. He would know.
Robert Stone:
And I got Harvey Jones’ phone number. I’m going to be calling him.
Ronnie Hall:
Well, that’ll be beautiful. But I got to confess he’s starting to fade now.
Robert Stone:
Well, that’s good to know because it makes it all the more urgent that I call him.
Ronnie Hall:
That’s true.
Robert Stone:
If you could hold just a second I’m going to change tapes, okay?
Ronnie Hall:
Surely.
Robert Stone:
Thank you.
Ronnie Hall:
He enlisted my service to help him build his garage in the backyard. We put up a cinder block garage, he and I. Because I had just kind of hang around with it.
Robert Stone:
Yeah. Well I think it was Felton that told me he went down to help Fred Neal build the church in Kansas City. And he actually, as part of his helping, besides working on a church, he played music on the street to raise some money.
Ronnie Hall:
Yes, he did. You talked to Felton, all right.
Robert Stone:
Yeah, no, we had a real good time.
Ronnie Hall:
Historically he’s astute on that. He’s very sharp.
Robert Stone:
Matter of fact, he said he had most of the Sacred Steel CDs, but he hadn’t seen the video, so I sent him a video right away, so he should enjoy that.
Ronnie Hall:
He’s like I am. Felton is very low key. He’s not interested in the spotlight, and neither am I, the thing of it is, is that there’s so much cross, I guess you say breeding of knowledge that all of these guys have. Because we were like kids growing up.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And Felton, as I said is what I’d call, I still to this day call him Uncle Felton. He’s not related to me as blood, but he’s been like an uncle to me ever since I can remember. I just admired him greatly, and he’s a very highly intelligent individual.
Robert Stone:
Yeah. He seems like a real sharp guy.
Ronnie Hall:
We were in the record business together for a while, too. In fact that it was my idea to get it started, and we went all together for it for a while and he finally went on, we established a couple of record labels together. He did a lot of things.
Robert Stone:
Really?
Ronnie Hall:
Oh yeah.
Robert Stone:
What were you doing with the record labels?
Ronnie Hall:
It was back during the time we were all inspired by the Motown thing. And we said, I came to him one day and I said, “Felton, we’ve got a lot of talent in the church. Why don’t we get together and see if there’s some people that would like to, if we had our own studio. And there’s a lot of guys, I know a group right now out of Cleveland that I think they have the quality that could make it.” He said, “You do?” And I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Well let’s get up a group of people together and see if we can come up with some stockholders and raise some money.”
Robert Stone:
This is in what era?
Ronnie Hall:
That was in-
Robert Stone:
’70s?
Ronnie Hall:
I can’t remember that, that’s in the ’60s.
Robert Stone:
’60s?
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah, in the ’60s. That was during the time that he actually started preparing his home. We took a part of his basement in his home, and he built a small studio.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And for a while there, we had a record label that called Revival Records. And I can’t think of the other one that was more of the secular side, but it never really did anything. But I did manage it with the group I had was called the Gospel Supremes.
Robert Stone:
Gospel Supremes.
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah, out of Cleveland. Calvin Cooke’s sisters and a cousin were with the group. So this was long after Calvin and I became friends, Calvin’s family was just beautiful, wonderfully talented. All of them could sing or play or do something, but Calvin was destined to be become one of the most talented guitar players I’ve ever heard. We traveled together and played. I used to back him up, in fact it was I that’d got him started.
Robert Stone:
Right. Right.
Ronnie Hall:
But going back to the ’50s with Felton when I got started. With Wayne and Treadway, was like- well, that wasn’t that big a deal. We did stay together for a while. And then we went to Toledo to what they call their assembly church, there in Toledo, and they used to have a regional assembly every Christmas. And he used to love to go to Toledo, because Bishop Harrison would be there, and Bishop Harrison would play, and I’m telling you the notes would hang in the air. You would hear it in your head all the way back home, the stuff that he would play. And it was indescribably beautiful. This was a truly a God given talent, and most people don’t realize it but Bishop Harrison was left-handed.
Robert Stone:
No, I didn’t know that.
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah. He was left-handed and played the thing in reverse.
Robert Stone:
No, I didn’t know that.
Ronnie Hall:
Shocked the socks off of me when I found that out. But not only he, but another young man who was the Warren family, who Felton married into, Ronnie Warren was also left-handed. Like I said, it was so many of them played, it was unbelievable. But Ronnie Warren, who passed on, he was a Bishop in the later organizational church, and he came up in Bishop Manning’s control. He played. He was left-handed, played right-handed, but Bishop Harrison, for a man who was absolutely a southpaw, played some of the most beautiful things we’ve ever heard. Call him the new tune. Anytime we’d go to assembly, we’d always come back talking about anybody got any new tunes, you know when we get together. And whatever the going thing was, whatever the mood in the midst of God’s church services, that was the thing that every guitar player tried to emulate. That’s how Bishop Harrison’s reputation spread throughout, because he was constantly traveling.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
In the various churches that they had in the Jewell Dominion. And I mean he really impacted. That’s the reason why most of these guys that are playing today. It’s born out of that time that I speak of by Bishop Harrison, and Felton Williams, and Ted Beard. Beard has been around a long time.
Robert Stone:
Yeah.
Ronnie Hall:
A long time. But as I said, as I learned and began to grow I went to Toledo, rather. I heard Bishop Harrison play on a Fender. Eight string guitar with three legs.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And this guitar changed my entire life, because it had a clarity about it. Bell-like tones would come out from it, and one of the times that we would go to Toledo they used to sometimes with doing the time in-between services, the kids that stay the whole day on a Sunday, we’d kind of sneak back to the church, and you know how kids would do, we’d go in and investigate the music.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And he left to set up one day, and I went there and kind of hooked up and played a little bit before we got ran out. But I said, “Man, this thing is beautiful.” Just played so beautifully. But he had it covered, custom covered with some kind leather thing with his name engraved on it that Bishop Lorenzo Harrison, it was just covered. It wasn’t custom made but covered in a certain way. It was beautiful. And in fact, Calvin Cooke one time try to do that. I think he messed his guitar up. But, at any rate-
Robert Stone:
Yeah, with deer skin.
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah.
Robert Stone:
He told me.
Ronnie Hall:
That was a mess, you should have seen that thing.
Robert Stone:
Is that right?
Ronnie Hall:
It was something that we all admire Harrison, you know what I’m saying?
Robert Stone:
Sure.
Ronnie Hall:
But at that time I wanted that type of guitar.
Robert Stone:
Right. Fender Eight.
Ronnie Hall:
This is right around ’59 to ’62. And so in 1962, being that I was still in school, wasn’t working, my family decided to take a trip to California on vacation. Went out to California, still with this thing in my mind that one of these days, I’m going to either buy one of these guitars, and the Fender corporation is in California.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
Fullerton as a matter of fact.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And I had thought that maybe while we were out there with dad and mom, kind of talked dad maybe we run up, because we went to LA, why don’t we run up to Fullerton to see what we could find out about getting one. That was my dream, but we never did. But what I did do was I went to a local lumberyard in the LA area and bought a 2×12 three foot long, California redwood board. Can you imagine that?
Robert Stone:
Yeah.
Ronnie Hall:
And I came back home with this thing, to where we were staying with my sister’s. My dad said, “What are you doing with this?” I said, “I’m taking it home.” He said, “Why?” I said, “Because I’m going to make a guitar out of it.” And he said, “You kidding me.” “No, I’m going to make it.” He started laughing. Yeah, right. So I brought the board back from California, and when we got back home I went downstairs with some hand tools, basically a screwdriver, flat blade screwdriver, a chisel, and a hammer, and fashioned, and of course of a saw, my own steel guitar that had eight strings.
Robert Stone:
So this is 1962?
Ronnie Hall:
This was a 1962 to ’63. I actually made a guitar. I couldn’t get chrome legs like that came with the Fender guitar. But I managed to get, they used to have that day in time that you could purchase from the lumberyard, these table legs.
Robert Stone:
Furniture, yeah.
Ronnie Hall:
Furniture, right. And I got four of them, and put the brackets on underneath, the thing had dual pickups, it had-
Robert Stone:
Where’d you get the pickups?
Ronnie Hall:
Pickups I salvaged from old guitars. And actually one of them was, you remember the lady I told you that had the husband that wanted to play?
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
We had her guitar and unbeknown to them I took the pickup out of that one. In a way of speaking I stole it from them, but it was an abandoned guitar anyway.
Robert Stone:
Right, right.
Ronnie Hall:
So I took that pickup, which was only a six string, and it became what I call the bass position pickup, the one that’s furthest away from the back bridge and amplify the first six strings. And I took a second pickup which had the second, or the rest of the strings.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And put it near the bridge right at the back. So the one at the bridge had the first six strings, and the one that had the bass had, you know, up further near the deck by the fret board.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
That I had hand painted. And I have toggle switches on the thing where I could switch back and forth, just like you would-
Robert Stone:
Hand painted fret board, huh?
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah, man! I did it all hand. I made the fret board out of… Felton and I borrowed some- he worked at Ford Motor Company and he brought some scrap aluminum home, and I got enough to get a piece that was about an eighth of an inch thick or less. And I took that and cut it with a pair of tin snips and painted it up and everything. And then I might say that the paint looked good. I played that thing from 1963 or two, to 1973.
Robert Stone:
Wow.
Ronnie Hall:
That’s the truth! I made a handmade case and everything for it. The first time I played it in Nashville.
Robert Stone:
You don’t still have it, do you?
Ronnie Hall:
Unfortunately, no. After 1973, when I got the Fender that went down the tube.
Robert Stone:
Right, yeah.
Ronnie Hall:
But I played that thing for the longest at church, and it had a certain tone that most of the guys in the community that were listening to this kind of thing, Calvin and all of them, that’s when it began to really catch on. But let me also tell you that at the time how I met Calvin Cooke.
Robert Stone:
Yes, please.
Ronnie Hall:
That was an experience. During 1959, we journeyed down to Cleveland, and I didn’t know Calvin then, but in fact, as I said, Ted was just beginning to become known in the Keith Dominion side as being a steel player. And we journeyed down there, my folks, my mother, mom and dad, to their local assembly, and we knew Bishop Lorenzo Harrison’s brother which is Henry Harrison.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And we came down to visit, and Calvin was in the group I’m sure, but I didn’t really pay that much attention to him, I didn’t know him. In fact we didn’t play, we just visited the assembly, but I got to know some of the kids then and I think at that time, I came to know him. At any rate, later on between 1959 and 1962 when I got out of high school and started playing, I had trained a cousin of mine to play the backup Spanish guitar. He couldn’t tune the thing, but I taught him.
Robert Stone:
And who was he?
Ronnie Hall:
That was Elder, well, he was a preacher, too. Elder Lionel Anthony, he used to live next door to me. And what I used to do, Bob, believe this or not, during this time I didn’t have anybody to back me up on the Hawaiian. And what I would do was I’d go down in the basement, which was my hangout, and I would record on the reel-to-reel recorder, the Spanish track, right? For the various tunes that I knew that I liked to hear Lorenzo play. And I played from memory, on the Spanish, all of the tracks, and then play the Spanish back on the recorder, and sit down to the steel-
Robert Stone:
And practice.
Ronnie Hall:
And play. That’s exactly. Well, one day while doing that, I had the thing blasting, man. It was eye-opening. So he was in the neighborhood and he came over, knocked on the door and said, “What in the world are you doing down there?” And this was the Elder Anthony. Lionel, my cousin. And I said, “I’m playing the guitar.” So he used to came down and he started listening, he’d say, “Hey, that’s pretty good.” He said, “I think I could probably learn to do that.” So I said, “Would you?” And to make a long story short I began to train him as my Spanish man. And that’s how we started traveling around together.
Robert Stone:
So it was the two of you.
Ronnie Hall:
… Nashville playing at the general assembly in Nashville.
Robert Stone:
Do you remember the first general assembly you played?
Ronnie Hall:
The first general assembly that we played together in was 1963. I remember that. That wasn’t the first time I’d been to the general assembly.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
But in fact, during the time that I wanted to play in the general assembly was in the ’50s. That they wouldn’t even let me at the pulpit where they had the music at.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
Because these guys that were from Bishop Lockley’s guys, he had it all tied up.
Robert Stone:
Well, tell me about that. So, oh, wait a minute. When was the first time you played?
Ronnie Hall:
The first time I played in Nashville-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
Was in the ’60s.
Robert Stone:
’60.
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah. Right. But I’m talking about the very first time that I was in there and had the instrument there to play.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
I didn’t have the one that I made, but I had the talent to play.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
That was in around ’58 or ’59.
Robert Stone:
Okay.
Ronnie Hall:
But what happened was this Bishop in the House of God at that time, Bishop Lockley who was also-
Robert Stone:
Right. I know about him. Sure.
Ronnie Hall:
They controlled the music. They had a- what’s that thing? A xylophone is the only thing I can think of.
Robert Stone:
Right. Yeah. A vibraharp.
Ronnie Hall:
Vibraharp. Yeah, they had one of those, had a big bass bull fiddle, and they had drums, and they had piano, of course, and an organ. And they had a couple of guys that would play Spanish guitar, but nobody played any lap steel.
Robert Stone:
No steel at that time in, and you’re saying this is in ’58 or ’59?
Ronnie Hall:
Right around in that area. Because-
Robert Stone:
So Henry Nelson was not around.
Ronnie Hall:
Well, he wasn’t around at that time, but he was playing. He was playing.
Robert Stone:
Right, I know, but he wasn’t at the general assembly.
Ronnie Hall:
He was more or less out of the church.
Robert Stone:
Right. That’s another story and I know about that.
Ronnie Hall:
But I mean that’s the connection if that’s what you’re looking for.
Robert Stone:
One of the things I’m trying to do is naturally establish how the steel became the big deal that it is today in the House of God. And how sort of the history of what the music was like at the general assembly, because as I see it, what goes on at the general assembly has an effect on the rest of the country.
Ronnie Hall:
It changed very, very dramatically. Remember that, I got to say this. They used to have, I don’t know if Felton told you this or not, but they used to have the general assembly side-by-side.
Robert Stone:
At the Keith and Jewell. Right.
Ronnie Hall:
Right. And they would be warring, they’d just speak back and forth across the fence. It was wild, man. I’m telling you. Jewell would have a tent set up out on their grounds, and they would naturally let the flaps up on the side, you could hear Lorenzo and that guitar would sing. Well, the people would sneak and go, because the assemblies were going on at exactly the same time because of the division in the church. And the division in the church at that time is that the people that were called the splits, that’s a whole another war story altogether, but at any rate, as a kid we were drawn to the music.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And we used to all sneak over there and listen to-
Robert Stone:
And this was in the ’50s?
Ronnie Hall:
In the ’50s, right. And so they would be very much divided, but at the time in the ’50s that I can remember, you’d never heard, except with exception of a couple of nameless guys, there was a guy out of New York by the name of Jimmy something. And I don’t know his last name, but he moved, he came to general assembly and played once on that guitar. And I do believe maybe once, Henry Nelson may have been there. I say that because it had to be between ’55 and ’59. It wasn’t a steady thing. Because I remember when he distinctly came back, as opposed to, when during that time in the ’50s when it’s kind of failed or kind of fake.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
You know what I mean? And on the Keith Dominion side, the steel guitar was not the prevailing instrument. It wasn’t. It really didn’t evolve until, I would say roughly around, well actually after we started playing.
Robert Stone:
Which was when?
Ronnie Hall:
Right around the last part of ’59 to ’63. Because in ’63 I was the one that came down and played under the tent, and they tried to outlaw me from playing.
Robert Stone:
Oh really?
Ronnie Hall:
Oh yeah. That was a big controversy about that. During that time, as I said, Ted had come out of the army, and he wasn’t really, he was there with his family, but he wasn’t there to play. He was there to accompany his father who was getting up in years, to establish as a Bishop. Well, in 1962, after I graduated from school, we went to the general assembly, and I carried this monstrosity of a guitar that I made, and we played under the tent. And once we cranked that thing up, man, they used to have what they call committee meetings during the day.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And when that thing would sound off, all of us that the committee meetings would break up. People would find reasons to leave the meetings and come back out to the tent.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
Well, we’d be out there, man, and the dust would be rising. They’d be out there just shouting, and you could hear it for two miles. And so during the day, the heat of the day, they would be out there and we were playing and they were really having a good time. So somebody asked us, “Why don’t you guys come on and play at seven at night? Because it’s kind of boring in there.” And I said, “Okay.” So we hooked it up. And I’ll get back to Calvin Cooke’s story in a moment. We hooked it up to play, and that was my cousin, myself, and Charles Rue. We ran into some of the terrible-est opposition, and he told us, “Oh no, you can’t bring that stuff in here, and we’re not going to have that.” Fortunately for me, I had a friendship with Bishop J.W. Jenkins at that time who was their chief overseer.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
Bishop Jenkins. And he was staying at a dormitory next to the temple, or the assembly hall, and I went over and knocked on the door and poured out the story. I said, “Bishop, this is really crazy. We came down here to be a blessing to the church, and the people seem to enjoy it, and this is the dream of a lifetime to play at the general assembly. What’s the story here? I just don’t think it’s right.” He said, “Well, I’ll tell you what we’ll do.” And he said, “Now you go back and you tell-” and the guy’s name who was related to Henry Nelson, by the way, he was a Bishop.
Robert Stone:
His father. W.L. Nelson.
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah, that’s who it was. And he raised the roof. He didn’t want to sit in the temple with that stuff.
Robert Stone:
Really?
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah! And so Jenkins told him. He said, “No, let the young men play, and if we find that it’s more disruptive than it is an aid to the service, then we will go back to playing, brothers play in the morning, in the morning sessions, and at night we’ll let Lockley and the rest of them have it.” And so that night we went, and we only had one or two that didn’t like the idea of it, but the majority of people, they caught fire.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And I have been playing there ever since.
Robert Stone:
And that was in ’63 or ’62?
Ronnie Hall:
Right around ’63.
Robert Stone:
Because you were already out of high school.
Ronnie Hall:
Just came out of high school.
Robert Stone:
Okay.
Ronnie Hall:
And I remember because the strongest part of the memory of it was I had built my own guitar.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And the young people would gather and say, “What is that? I’ve heard of this, but never seen one like this.” Especially the guys in Florida. [crosstalk 00:23:24].
Robert Stone:
It’s kind of surprising to me that it was Bishop Nelson that objected.
Ronnie Hall:
I think what had happened, and this is purely speculation, I think what had happened, Henry, who’s W.L.’s son-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
Had basically strayed away from the church, or did something that-
Robert Stone:
No, he had.
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah. Yeah. Did something that wasn’t pleasing-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
At all, and you know how some folk are about, I don’t want that disgrace to spill over anywhere near the church. Whatever it was. I’m not saying it’s a disgrace, but I get the feeling that’s what it was.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And he just didn’t want anybody that resembled that kind of music to be in the church.
Robert Stone:
I see.
Ronnie Hall:
I think that’s what happened. And so Henry, I knew of him but did not know him at that time.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
Okay. So as time moved on, being- and I entered the workforce, and started my married life, and all of that kind of thing. I stopped going to the general assemblies except maybe over the weekend. In the meantime, I had already met Calvin Cooke.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And as I started to tell you about that in the period of ’59 to ’62, I had journeyed back to Cleveland, along had taken my cousin with me, and we went down and played, and Calvin had came into one of the services, and he was just a little curly haired boy, and he came in. He came up to me and he said, “I’d like to play bass with you guys. And I said, “Okay.” And he went home and he came back with his big archtop guitar. And he played the one string bass, we called it.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
Behind us. So in between services we would sit down and he said, “Well, what are you doing?” I began to show him the rudiments of it. He and Bishop Henry L. Harrison, it’s not Lorenzo, his son Starlin Harrison.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And a cousin by the name of Maynard.
Robert Stone:
Maynard Sopher.
Ronnie Hall:
Sopher, right. He would sit down and we started him off. When I left Cleveland going back to Detroit on Sunday afternoon, we left there playing and I didn’t see Calvin Cooke any more for about four years. As of that time, they had started traveling with Bishop Henry L. Harrison, and going all over wherever, I guess he was a Bishop.
Robert Stone:
So when was it when you first met Calvin?
Ronnie Hall:
I think it has to be at least ’60. ’59 to ’62. Somewhere around in there. Through my high school years, I remember that. And as I said, we didn’t become fast friends until he moved to Detroit, but at that time he lived in Cleveland and he could only play the one string bass as far as I know. And then, like I said, we taught him how to tune it.
Robert Stone:
Well, he said he was already playing steel with Harrison.
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah. Well he started playing.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
But he played it after we left. I remember that distinctly.
Robert Stone:
Really?
Ronnie Hall:
Oh yeah.
Robert Stone:
Because he told me that he started back in ’58 or something.
Ronnie Hall:
Well, he may have been tinkering with it, but as far as I know he may have been like it was when I ran in to Treadway. He might’ve been tinkering with it, but he wasn’t playing at the assemblies because we were playing. Because his cousin, Charles Flenory.
Robert Stone:
Right. Yeah, I know him.
Ronnie Hall:
You got to remember when we were there playing, and it was a particular tune that I had played, I had picked up off Felton Williams. That he said rang in his brain. And he wasn’t even playing the steel. But we played that, and Calvin, as I said, I remember that. It was down Woodland Avenue I think it was, the church was on. And I met his mother, and his sisters, and all of them, and I was always amazed with how talented they were. But when we left they were just beginning to play, and then they started traveling. And to me, I think that’s when he really started to develop playing on the steel, because when I met him some years later they came to Detroit to Ted Beard’s father’s church. A small church they had on Roosevelt Street.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And Calvin was there, but he wasn’t playing. Starlin was doing the playing then. And Calvin was too busy chasing the girls. I’ll just tell you like it is.
Robert Stone:
No, I understand he really liked the women. He’s told me that himself.
Ronnie Hall:
Oh yeah, he was just women crazy. But anyway, he was always chasing the girls and always doing things to get attention from the girls and whatnot. I said to him, I said, “Don’t you play?” He said, “Yeah.” So anyway, during that time after I re-associated with him, he was still living in Cleveland but traveling with Bishop Harrison. And at that time, he told me about, I don’t know how we got together, but he came to the house where I was or whatever it was, but we set up the guitar and he tuned it differently. And I said, “What is this?” He said, “It’s just a tuning that the Lord gave me.”
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
A tuning. And it was a tuning that he uses today.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
We play cross the strings. Whereas most of us were playing the long way around, we called it.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
Like Aubrey Ghent.
Robert Stone:
Right. Yeah, a lot of movement from one end to the other at the fret board.
Ronnie Hall:
Fast hands, yeah. My hands were very fast, and they still tell me they are today. I don’t know how true that is, but as far as they can remember I’ve always been able to hit the notes perfectly. But I got that from following after Felton Williams. Felton Williams was my mentor and idol. He was the one I patterned after. But as time progressed, my style evolved out of playing for so long you develop your own style.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
So at the time of Calvin Cooke’s involvement, he was playing his own tuning and I was playing my style. Soon after that, I think it was 1965 or six or seven, he moved to Detroit.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
The way it rounded out, I don’t know if your records shows that or not.
Robert Stone:
Yeah, I know that.
Ronnie Hall:
He moved to Detroit, and took up his church residence with the Mount Elliot church.
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And he played for them and I played for Bishop, well he wasn’t the Bishop then, known as George White. Church on Grand River and then we moved that to Avery and Red River with the church. Big building. But Calvin was kind of my competitor but friend, and when we would get together we would play together. Now he wasn’t the best Spanish man in the world, I think that was by design. He could play it, but he didn’t like to play it.
Robert Stone:
And you played both.
Ronnie Hall:
I played all of it.
Robert Stone:
All right. Can you hold on a second? I’m going to change tapes again.
Ronnie Hall:
Oh, okay.
Robert Stone:
Thank you.
Ronnie Hall:
So anyway, as I said, Calvin had moved to Detroit and we became very close friends. And I would be playing in my church and sometimes on Sunday night when they would shut down, he would come over and be with us. In fact, after Calvin moved to Detroit and got entrenched in Detroit, he was responsible for his brother and his cousin, Flenory, and the rest of them wanting to move to Detroit. Detroit seemed to be the hotspot of all the guitar players. And at this time, Beard was still playing. He had activated his position. And by the way, by this time, he had become the head of the National Musicians in Nashville.
Robert Stone:
Right. Exactly. Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And by that time, I remember that conflict too, which is another story altogether. But at any rate, we had become fast friends and started hanging with each other. And I would, from time to time, back him up. And I used to tell him, I said, “Nobody can really back up a lap steel player like another lap steel player that can play Spanish guitar.” I could anticipate what he would do on a Hawaiian-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
Before he would do it. And so between the two of us, we became quite a team with just playing. But I wasn’t his, what they call a standard backup man. I would play with him because I was better at playing the Spanish than he was.
Robert Stone:
Now, let me ask you this. Did you play with a flat pick or a thumb pick?
Ronnie Hall:
I played with thumb and finger picks. I’ve been a steel player like that for the longest.
Robert Stone:
When you play Spanish?
Ronnie Hall:
When I played Spanish, I played with a finger pick and a thumb pick.
Robert Stone:
Right. Now, where did you get that from?
Ronnie Hall:
Felton Williams.
Robert Stone:
He played Spanish that way too?
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah, he played Spanish with one finger, one thumb pick and one finger pick. And I noticed that. And in fact, some of the wraps or runs on the Spanish guitar, have one in particular that I really loved to play that I picked up from him, sat right there with him as he showed me how, the breaks where to place the fingers and all of that. Because Felton may not ever tell anybody, but he’s a fantastic musician. I mean, tremendous. In fact, the Spanish guitar was his first instrument also. But he was tremendous. He could play either one. His touch on a lap steel is just… He could make that thing cry and bring you to tears. He was just that good. And my mother, bless her heart when she was alive, used to say, “Felton, if you put Lorenzo and Felton in the same room, Felton would play rings around Lorenzo while he was running.” That’s how my mother viewed him. He was that quick.
Robert Stone:
Wow.
Ronnie Hall:
And fantastic. Just a tremendous… But he was very humble, which he used to take us with him and talked to both myself and Wayne Whitehead and Sonny Treadway. He would talk to us like we were his sons.
Robert Stone:
And he never traveled either with his music.
Ronnie Hall:
No. Felton is more of an introverted kind of person. He would go like Mount Clemens, Toledo, Cleveland, but not to play, not to just travel to play. If he happened to be there, he would play. But he never tried to build a reputation like some of the guys are doing these days. And basically, I picked that up from him. I remained humble all of my life. I didn’t care to be anybody. I just did the job going in. I can enjoy it.
Robert Stone:
Now. Felton also told me that he made a sliding nut, served as a capo.
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah to change the tuning.
Robert Stone:
Did he always play out of the open tuning pretty much?
Ronnie Hall:
Felton played the open style, but he also, like you said, the sliding nut thing… I don’t know how he did it, but I do know of another player that did the same thing by putting a Stevens bar underneath the strings to change like you would… I think you used to call them capos. But they used to slide-
Robert Stone:
They make them for Dobros now. You could actually use it on the lap steel, but-
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah. Well, I still play with that. I don’t use the rounded bar.
Robert Stone:
You use the Stevens bar?
Ronnie Hall:
Still use the Stevens. It only reaches six strings. That’s as far as I need to go anyway.
Robert Stone:
Right. Exactly.
Ronnie Hall:
Even if I played the pedal steel, it was to the point I still use the Stevens bar.
Robert Stone:
Oh yeah. A lot of guys. Look at Robert Randolph plays his 13 string neck with a Stevens bar.
Ronnie Hall:
That’s what I hear. I’ve seen him on several occasions. In fact, I just saw him on a video here, just a while back. He’s really crossed the line [crosstalk 00:04:53].
Robert Stone:
Yes, he has.
Ronnie Hall:
In a way it’s helpful, in another way, it’s kind of… I hate to see it, but I’m not down about it. I can understand that somebody should have crossed over a long time ago. But I don’t think that it’s been used really on the thing that-
Robert Stone:
It’s going to be interesting to see how it plays out.
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah. It is. [crosstalk 00:05:10] developing.
Robert Stone:
In the long run. In the long run.
Ronnie Hall:
Yes. But to hear him, I’ve heard him play, and I can see where he is by just listening to him. He’s got a long ways to go as far as the rough edges, if you will.
Robert Stone:
Yes.
Ronnie Hall:
I’m from the old school where, when you play the melody, it hangs in the air. That’s done with a hand. Robert is a cross the strings player. Speed and an overwhelming noise, if you will. I don’t know how else to describe it, but it’s like a wall of noise that’s- [singing].
Robert Stone:
You got it.
Ronnie Hall:
That’s cross the strings. And that has been developed out of Calvin Cooke’s tuning. So they all do that, but this later group that are playing have become very competitive with one another. And, as you have put it, it’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out. Because the church, the music is really how it got started. It was there to aid the service, not to lead it. And it’s become the thing that really pushes, in fact, the House of God, as I remember it and what it is today and the older days, and what it is today, it’s music driven and not spirit driven. And that kind of troubles me. But there’s still a lot of old timers still around. And maybe one of the younger ones will get inspired enough to take the rough edges off of it and get back to letting the Lord drive the service.
Robert Stone:
No. Well, actually that’s something that I’m addressing in my book. You don’t have to go to too many services if you’re a pretty observant guy and you’ll see that there’s this-
Ronnie Hall:
Struggle.
Robert Stone:
Struggle of this sort of power struggle with the steel player and the ministers.
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah.
Robert Stone:
The ministers are constantly having to put them in their place.
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah. It’s sad but that’s a true fact. And I’m not-
Robert Stone:
And with those big powerful amplifiers, the ministers don’t always exactly win.
Ronnie Hall:
No, they don’t. And the problem is, is that there is another element I think also, like the Campbell brothers, I know Bishop Campbell very well. And I knew Chuck. I remember when Chuck used to come to Detroit and hang out at the Flenory’s house because they were buddies. And I didn’t live too far from Flenory at that time. We used to all get together and everybody would do their own thing and play, and the different styles would breed new thoughts. Just a jam session. And Chuck, they called him, had always struck me as a very talented guitar player. But I kind of had the feeling at that time that he was a little too aggressive but he was determined to learn. And I think he feels… I think this element developed. I think he feels that he had an obligation to be the best that he could be for his dad and his brothers. It all seemed to develop out of that and born out of that time, as I said, Beard became the controlling power down in Nashville. A lot of the younger musicians playing at their local home churches wanted to come to the big church and play. And they felt that they had to develop this aggressive, overwhelming guitar playing style that they could prove to somebody that they could play also.
And so Henry Nelson came on the scene and the great Renaissance man came back, if you will. And that was the end of that story. That’s it. And from that point on, because I left… I can’t even think of the year when I pulled out of the organization, but I left and my music went with me. But they still remember. They still remember.
Robert Stone:
Oh yeah. Believe me, everyone’s… Chuck among others and well, Calvin told me, he says, “Ronnie’s better than I ever was.”
Ronnie Hall:
Well, he was the one that, like I told him… I can honestly say this without reservation about Calvin Cooke. I used to tell him this, back when we were very close and we used to hang out together and all of that. Calvin Cooke was in one of the most creative guitar players I’ve ever heard in my life. And I’m not saying that to just pat his back because he passed away. I had more musicality in the sense of sensitivity to playing by the spirit, Calvin played by the spirit and he was also creative. He could do tunes from his style of tuning. With a lap steel, not a pedal steel. The lap steel came on later for him.
Robert Stone:
The pedal play.
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah. I mean the pedal steel. But the lap steel, to take that eight string Fender and come up with as much as he did during the time that we played together, used to amaze me. And I used to tell him, and I would sit down and show him the stuff that I would come up with and it would blend. So I guess in that sense, what he was saying about being more than he ever was, was the fact that I had a sensitivity. I had an ear that could hear things and he couldn’t. And chord patterns and various things, he would rely upon me, really, to set the pace for him on the Spanish before he would really start to cut up on the Hawaiian or the lap steel. Like I said, we had this spiritual connection that I didn’t have to look at it him to know what he was doing or listen to him. I could sense it.
Robert Stone:
You could sense it.
Ronnie Hall:
Put the right chords in the right place at the right time that would actually cause his music, what he was doing, to explode.
Robert Stone:
Oh, yes. Sure. No. I’m a musician myself, so I know exactly what you’re talking about.
Ronnie Hall:
You know what I’m saying. Well, that’s what it would be like.
Robert Stone:
Sure. You get the right two guys and what the chord guy is doing is what makes the lead guy go.
Ronnie Hall:
That’s it. And he relied upon my sense of spirituality because I was closer, I guess, between the two of them, I’m not poking who’s more spiritual with the Lord or not. But he knew that I had a close walk with the Lord. I would pray before I’d play and all kinds of things like that. He would look at you and say, “What are you doing?” I say, “I’m praying.” He’d say, “Okay.” He never made fun of it or anything. And the consequence of that would be a spiritual type of service and not musical.
Robert Stone:
Right. Sure.
Ronnie Hall:
And I might say this, during those years, I think he did some of his best playing.
Robert Stone:
When was that? When he was with you.
Ronnie Hall:
When he was with me. Yeah. After that, he became the man who was trying to maintain his reputation and, against all comers. Because if you notice it, and I know you have, there’s a strong sense of competitiveness-
Robert Stone:
Oh, yeah.
Ronnie Hall:
-if that’s the word, among them. Really, that’s why you have this wall of noise coming through their services now. They’ve gotten away from the real spiritual side of the church. They’re pushing the service instead of letting the Lord lead them through the services. Now, the young people are coming up and they want to play, that’s Calvin’s tune, that’s Beard’s tune, that’s Ghent’s tune. Do you know what I’m saying?
Robert Stone:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Ronnie Hall:
That’s Robert Randolph. I can play that. And they copy from one another. And it’s become very overwhelming.
Robert Stone:
Well, young men, young musicians in general, no matter what the genre of music, typically are interested in playing a lot of hot licks.
Ronnie Hall:
Yes, they are.
Robert Stone:
That’s something, as musicians mature, hopefully, some of them never do. They get over that. And they realize, as the older they get, the fewer notes they play, not because they can’t play them, because they don’t need them.
Ronnie Hall:
That’s it.
Robert Stone:
They don’t want them.
Ronnie Hall:
They don’t want them. Right. But the point is, is that they seem to want to build this reputation. They want to impact the House of God, they want to be known.
Robert Stone:
It’s like a gunslinger kind of mentality.
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah. That’s going to be interesting to see how it plays out too. Because that’s certainly not the Lord’s will. But I’m not in that anymore. I’ve been out of the game, as they say, for some 20 years or better. So I really don’t have anything really to look at. I think I left in ’69 or ’70 I think it was when I left, ’69 or ’70, right in that area. And I haven’t been back other than to visit, and not to play, but just to visit. It’s not that I haven’t been invited. I just don’t care. That’s not my thing. I’m a minister first. I’m a preacher first and a guitar player second. Playing music is only one page of the book.
Robert Stone:
Now, do you play in your church now?
Ronnie Hall:
When I say this, you’re going to laugh, but it’s true. Unfortunately, yes. I tell you why. My son plays.
Robert Stone:
Your son plays?
Ronnie Hall:
Two of my sons play with me in church.
Robert Stone:
And what are their names?
Ronnie Hall:
Marcus Hall, he’s one of two twin boys. He can play, he’s like I am. He’s multi-talented. He can play either the lap steel, Hawaiian, or pedal, whatever and he plays the Spanish behind me. And my son, Michael Sean Hall, who is my drummer. He’s very gifted, but he only wants to play the drums as long as we’re at service. He’s not interested in traveling or anything. They’ve inherited my musical abilities. But my only reason for playing in church is not one of my desire, it’s theirs. I really play because it keeps them in the church.
Robert Stone:
Sure. Sure.
Ronnie Hall:
My Marcus is in his thirties now. And my son Michael is just turning 20 and getting ready to go to college. He’s the baby boy of my family. So really, if Dad doesn’t play, they don’t want to be bothered with it. So Dad has to play.
Robert Stone:
What is the name of your organization?
Ronnie Hall:
The name of my church, because I don’t consider myself an organization. I’m an independent. I kind of did what Ghent did, I pulled out. The church is called Mount Carmel Full Gospel Assembly. And it’s in Ecorse, Michigan, 4000 14th St.
Robert Stone:
4000 14th St.
Ronnie Hall:
Yeah. In Ecorse, Michigan. A small church, holds about 250 people and we have a growing congregation. And I’m the bishop and the pastor.
Robert Stone:
And how long have you had that church?
Ronnie Hall:
Oh, at this particular building, I’ve been here six years. But I’ve been pastoring for, this is my second church, oh, I guess 22 years. Mount Carmel, I’ve pastored for about 21 years.
Robert Stone:
Wow.
Ronnie Hall:
So I’ve been around quite a while. And I’m not far from Felton. When I first moved in to the church that we’re in now, the building, we bought it. It was a former Jehovah’s Witness hall. We purchased it and Christianized it. And when I was sitting there, and I don’t know if you know or if anybody told you, but I was a victim of a terrible accident-
Robert Stone:
Yes.
Ronnie Hall:
In ’95.
Robert Stone:
1995?
Ronnie Hall:
1995, right. July 18th.
Robert Stone:
Gee.
Ronnie Hall:
But I haven’t let that slow me down at all. I got prosthetic legs, and I get up and I go do my thing.
Robert Stone:
Incredible.
Ronnie Hall:
And the Lord has been good to me.
Robert Stone:
I guess so. Yeah.
Ronnie Hall:
We’re moving on and my church is growing. It’s a very happy place. My sense of humor is just what… Well, there’s an old saying, “Like priest, like people.” And I want to show a great deal of love and you certainly are invited. Come by anytime to be with us. Anytime-
Robert Stone:
Oh, actually. I’m starting to think real seriously about coming up to that area to meet some of you guys, meet Felton. I do a lot of photography with my work, I’m sure you’ve seen the liner notes and stuff and to do that sort of documentation. I could make a trip to the Detroit area and see several folks.
Ronnie Hall:
Well, anytime you’re here, certainly, you’re welcome to come to my home and-
Robert Stone:
Thank you.
Ronnie Hall:
I’m sure Felton is the same. Most of the guys are like that.
Robert Stone:
Oh, yeah. I know everybody. I’ve been involved with this now since 1992.
Ronnie Hall:
It’s a fascinating history.
Robert Stone:
Oh, it is. Believe me.
Ronnie Hall:
It is a story. I was hoping that the Lord would do something with it, somebody would take interest in it because, just as of yesterday, let me tell you this, in service yesterday, a young lady came up to me, and a little girl, about 11 years of age. She had visited our church for the first time and they had one of these, what we call the Lord shows up and shows out type services yesterday. It was on fire. And the Lord allowed the old man to still have his touch on the guitar and everything was just together. And so the little girl came up to me and she said, “Pastor.” I said, “Yes.” “What is that?” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “That.” And I’m looking at, oh, I said, “That’s a guitar.” She said, “That’s not a guitar.” “Yes it is.” She said, “Guitars don’t cry like that.” I said, “This one does.” And I said, “It’s called a lap steel.” And she looked at me and she said, “Lap steel?” I said, “Yeah. I know that don’t make sense to you. But it is a steel guitar and the way you do it…” And I took the bar and I did a little… [Singing]. Like we do with the kids-
Robert Stone:
Right.
Ronnie Hall:
And said, this is your name and, whop, whop, whop. Like that. They thought that it was a hoot. And another minister who was visiting for the first time, one of the fathers-in-law of one of my associate ministers was there. But it’s the first time he’s ever heard it and he said, “Bishop, I have never in my life ever heard anything like that.” And he said, “I don’t know. How long have you been?” I went on to tell him. “So how come I never heard of you?” I said, “Doc, I’ll tell you, there are hundreds of guitar players that play this thing. They’re just in a different stream.”
Robert Stone:
Right, Yeah. Parallel universe.
Ronnie Hall:
That’s the way it is. That’s exactly what’s going on. There are women that are playing these things now where it used to be basically an all male society. Young ladies are learning to play, want to play, and God bless them all. I hope they really carry the tradition on. But my one regret, again, is the fact that it has become more competitive musicality and overwhelmingly so. You walk in and this thing is like a tidal wave blasting with these 300 watt amplifiers. The windows are rattling.
Robert Stone:
Yeah, I know. Tell me about it.
Ronnie Hall:
You’ve been there. You know what I’m talking about. But at any rate, I hope that that’s the way it works out. I don’t want to run away from the Calvin story too much without saying again that he still remains a very close, dear friend. They all did. When I got hurt in ’95, I did not realize how many lives I had impacted until you’re in a coma. And I didn’t know anything about it but… Hold on one minute. When I get a signal I’m going to call you. I’ll call you back. I’ll come right back on the line.
Robert Stone:
Okay.
Ronnie Hall:
But one of my ministers wants to talk to me. What I’m going to do is tell him I’ll call him later. Hold on. I’ll be right back.
Robert Stone:
Okay. Sure.