Vera Hall

Vera Ward Hall was an African American folk singer from Livingston, Alabama, whose unaccompanied vocals were recorded by John and Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress beginning in 1937. Her recordings of spirituals, work songs, and blues represented the deep, unadorned Black vocal tradition of the rural South. Her rendition of 'Trouble So Hard' gained worldwide fame decades later when it was sampled by Moby on his 1999 album 'Play,' becoming one of the most commercially successful samples in electronic music history, an ironic fate for a singer who lived and died in rural poverty.