KYLE GREEN The Roanoke Times

Ralph Berrier Jr. inherited some of his family's musical abilities. He plays guitar and fiddle, and has written extensively about Virginia's mountain musical history.

Photo courtesy of Ralph Berrier Jr.

Ralph Berrier Jr.'s memoir is about his great-uncle Saford Hall (left) and grandfather Clayton Hall, both bluegrass musicians.

KYLE GREEN The Roanoke Times

In the process of researching for his book, Ralph Berrier Jr. learned much about history, his family and himself.

Long before the term "bluegrass" was even a word, bands were playing "hillbilly music" or "old familiar tunes."

The music took Roanoke (and then much of Southwest Virginia) by storm when the Blue Ridge Entertainers -- with Saford Hall on the fiddle and his twin brother, Clayton, on the guitar -- came to town and started playing over the WDBJ radio (yes, it was originally a radio station) airwaves in the late 1930s and early '40s.

The handsome Hall twins, popular for their talents and charm, were on the brink of making it big with their bandleader, Roy Hall (of no relation), when World War II changed everyone's lives.

The story of how the Hall brothers -- born to a family of strong women in a remote area in the mountains of Patrick County simply known as "The Hollow" -- rose from poverty to play the Grand Ole Opry and then survive as World War II veterans, is told in a new memoir written by Clayton's grandson, Ralph Berrier Jr.

Berrier, 44, was born in Mount Airy, N.C., and grew up in Carroll County in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He now lives in Roanoke with his wife and daughter.

He attended Radford University and has been a reporter for The Roanoke Times since 1993. Berrier, who started in the sports department and is now a features reporter at the Times, has written extensively about Virginia's mountain musical history and won numerous journalism awards for his work.

He inherited some of his family's musical abilities and plays guitar and fiddle -- and had the chance to play with his grandfather and great-uncle at family functions. Here, Berrier talks about his book, which is being published by Crown and will be released Tuesday.

Q: Why write the book and why write it now?

Because it just took me this long to do it. It's a book I wish I had written years ago, especially when my grandfather and great-uncle were still alive. [I would have] loved for them to have been able to see it.

But I've known for many years that they had a great story; that, because it was sort of an unknown story and because they were in a band that almost made it but not quite, that almost made it a better story to me.

I have a notebook from college that has written in the margins ... the outline of this book. And the date on the notes is 1988, and so back then, I realized that my grandfather had a great story. And I realized it then because they were starting to play more.

That's when they were having their "rebirth" and had formed a band as old men, [at] nearly 70 years old. I thought, "Oh, that's cool, that everything they've been through, they can still find some sort of redemption and fun in life by playing this music."

Q: Why did you write it as a series of stories about events that happened in the twins' lives?

The key thing that happened with this book that allowed it to be picked up by a publisher was ... I had to be in it. It's sort of a writer's cliche, "Put more you in it" and I resisted that for a long time.

I said, "No, this is not about me. This is about my grandfather and my great-uncle and their story and I'm out of it." And I wrote a draft of the book or at least 60 pages of it from sort of a third person kind of, trying to write like almost it was a novel and it just didn't work.

And when I came to the realization that I write for whatever reason I do, I have a style that's developed and a voice over the years from just writing a lot that, for better or worse, that's how I write and, why try to do it any other way?

And so, when I finally decided to write it the way I would tell it to people and sort of put myself in it, that's when the story seemed to take off.

Q: How did you decide on the title, "If Trouble Don't Kill Me"?

I searched high and low for the right song or lyric that would really kind of sum up what the story was about. I looked through verses of the Bible because my grandfather was a minister, and I had a hard time with the title.

But when I came across an old songbook from their band, the Blue Ridge Entertainers, and this song was in it, "If Trouble Don't Kill Me I'll Live a Long Time" ... that just seemed to fit.

It was musical, it was a song. It sort of sounded like something you would hear somebody in the mountains say. And it was sort of grammatically incorrect, which maybe fits the kind of book that I would write.

Q: Clayton and Saford and the Blue Ridge Entertainers had their groupies.

They had lots of groupies. Maybe there wasn't a lot going on in Roanoke back in the '30s and '40s. You have to look at it in the context of the times.

I'm serious when a morning radio program (WDBJ Radio) was the equivalent of "American Idol" today or being able to find a viral video on YouTube that gets sent around. I mean, it was pretty "uptown" to be on the radio. And they made film trailers, too, that would play before movies of the band playing.

It seems kind of quaint to look back and think of these guys wearing their Dr Pepper shirts and cowboy hats and playing country music as being sort of sophisticated, but they were.

This was the sort of sophisticated music. And guys and gals would get all "duded up" and hop on the street cars and ride down to the radio station to see these guys in the mornings. And they would pack the joint.

There are a lot of pictures in my grandmother's photo albums of my grandfather and his twin brother arm in arm with ladies with lots of lipstick on and their hair done up right. I think they had no shortage of girlfriends back in the day.

Q: What would have been the next step for the Blue Ridge Entertainers had World War II not intervened and decimated the band?

There's an almost mythical tale in my family and some others in the band that right about the time the Blue Ridge Entertainers were breaking up because of the war, that [the bandleader] Roy Hall was offered a movie deal.

It was not uncommon for country bands to play in movies; Gene Autry, of course, the Singing Cowboy sort of the prototype for that. But other groups, Roy Acuff, the Sons of the Pioneers, were starting to play in Roy Rogers movies. Roy Rogers had been a member of the Sons of the Pioneers.

So the legend is Roy Hall was offered a contract right about the time he lost his band and he told the studio that, "as soon as my boys are back, we'll talk." And, of course that never happened because Roy Hall never lived to see that happen.

My grandfather and great-uncle always talked about, "Oh, we would have been in the movies," but they never seemed bitter about anything. Maybe it's just because everything they'd been through, they were just happy to have made it to be old men anyway.

Q: Saford fought in North Africa, Sicily, Europe and Germany, while Clayton fought the Japanese in the Pacific. What do the stories they told about what they did during the war say about the people Tom Brokaw calls "the Greatest Generation"?

That we never knew these people. Those of us, especially my generation, who only knew the World War II generation as old-timers, it's hard to imagine even your parents being young and cocky and strapping. And my parents were pretty young when I was born so I got to know them when they were fairly young.

But your parents and your grandparents are always just old to you and it's hard to believe that they could do the things that they did. ... I don't think it's possible to know maybe who anybody is when they're younger.

But it's especially difficult to know people who are thrust into the cauldron of war, what they were like, unless you were there to experience it yourselves.

Q: What have you learned about yourself or your family through the process of writing this book?

I think if you look at it over a 20-year span, I've learned a lot about every aspect that's in the book -- the history of music in this region. I've learned more about World War II. I know more about what my family's life was like back in The Hollow, where they were from.

But in the last few years, I feel like what I've been able to do is sort of hang the flesh and the muscle and the tissue on the bones of what I thought the story was. ... And when I finally decided to write it, from sort of my perspective of telling "here's what I know about my grandfather's story," instead of making it sound like a history, that it kind of opened my eyes to some other truths that I really hadn't thought about and gave me insights into myself, which weren't always very good ones.

Because when you're writing about what your grandfather did with his life and then you look at what you've done with yours, as I've put in one passage of the book, I feel like I really should have made a lot more of myself than I did, based on the sacrifices that these people took on -- not only for themselves but also for their children and grandchildren.

Excerpt from "If Trouble Don't Kill Me"

The day they arrived, the Blue Ridge Entertainers toured WDBJ’s trio of studios and control room. Studio A was the largest of the three, capable of holding a couple dozen spectators who wanted to watch the musicians play on the radio. The only people who ever showed up to sit in the studio were usually either hardcore radio nuts, a few music fans, or curious boys who admired the electrical equipment. Finding a seat was never a problem.

The station provided the band with accommodations in Mrs. Hankins’s boardinghouse across town in Northwest Roanoke. The boys moved into their quarters on Sunday afternoon and planned out the program for Monday’s 6:30 a.m. debut.

On the morning of April 22, 1940, Roy Hall and His Blue Ridge Entertainers played the airwaves of WDBJ for the first time. The five musicians gathered in a circle around a single microphone on a stand. No recording or set list survives from that broadcast, but the format was surely similar to the group’s Winston-Salem programs: Roy strummed a G chord to kick-start the Dr Pepper theme song, “She’ll be drinking Dr Pepper when she comes.” Then Saford tore off on a fiddle tune, like, say, “Under the Double Eagle” or “Down Yonder.” Roy sang a couple of numbers then Saford probably fiddled another hot one, followed by a song by Bill and Wayne or a duet from the twins, such as “In the Pines.” They kept it up, switching between instrumentals and vocals, pushing Dr Pepper between every song like it was some magical elixir. “Drink a bite to eat, neighbors,” Irving Sharp, their announcer, probably said. As the old clock on the wall neared 7 a.m., they wrapped it up with another fiddle tune, as Irving told the audience he’d see ’em again tomorrow for another half hour of your favorite tunes and remember, “Enjoy life more, drink Dr Pepper at ten, two, and four.”

The show went off well, as expected. What shocked everybody was the crowd of people who showed up at the station. Roanokers had heard that this band was red-hot. Studio A was jam-packed for the Blue Ridge Entertainers’ second radio program. The third day, the crowd spilled into the second-floor hallway and into Studio B, where the program was piped in over loudspeakers. The crowd was a mix of old and young: rough-looking men who wanted to hear a few tunes before trudging off to work, teenage boys killing time at the radio station before heading uptown to Jefferson High School, and – best of all – girls in their best dresses who came to see this hot band and who tried to catch the brown eyes of those handsome twins.