Wall adopted bluegrass, a postwar hybrid of Appalachian vocal and instrumental traditional music, as his preferred genre before the term was coined. In 1996, Wall told a reporter from the Charleston Post and Courier, “in those days, there wasn’t bluegrass and there wasn’t country. It was hillbilly music.” A retired dairy industry executive with accounting and economics degrees, Wall pursued his music in his off-hours. He became a vocal and tireless supporter of traditional music in South Carolina, writing about bluegrass and western swing for magazines, and authored two unpublished manuscripts on bluegrass. Bluegrass is as uniquely American as blues and jazz. Wall produced “a laudable celebration of American folk music… I respectfully call my craft ‘America’s blue collar soul music,’ a term which I believe more than adequately describes the assortment of old country sounds, blended into a single identity.”
Wall played with legends like Pappy Sherrill and Chet Atkins and was a member of the Rythym Aristocrats, a pioneering old-time country band headed by Fisher Hendley in the 1930s and 40s. Wall continued to produce western swing, country, bluegrass and gospel offerings at a variety of venues, including the annual “Breath of Spring Music Festival” at Cypress Gardens, South Carolina. Wall received the Jean Laney Harris Folk Heritage Award in 2001.
