Roy Hall was bom on May 7, 1922, in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, a backwoods town about 20 miles from the Tennessee line, near the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. An old colored man taught him to play piano, and to drink. By the time that he turned 21, Roy knew that he was the best drunken piano-player in Big Stone Gap, and, armed with the pride and confidence that this knowledge gave him, he departed the town of his birth to seek fame in those dreamed-of places beyond: Jasper, Slant, Nicklesville, Weber City, and Bristol.

He made it to Bristol and farther, pumping boogie-woogie in every Virginia, Tennessee, or Alabama beer-joint that had a piano. He played those pianos fast and hard and sinful, like that colored man who had taught him back in Big Stone Gap; but he sang like the hillbilly that he was. Wherever he went, the people told him that they had never heard a country singer quite like him, and they bought him drinks and gave him silver coins toward closing-time.