Wendell Woods Hall, radio's first sustaining artist, was born in Kansas in 1896 and raised in Chicago, Illinois. After beginning his career in the entertainment field as a xylophone player, he soon entered orchestra and night club work. Hall moved into the growing radio field as a ukulele player and singer after World War I. In 1924 he participated in two radio “firsts.” Along with Will Rogers and others, he participated in the first commercial radio hookup which broadcast presidential election returns. In the same year his was the first marriage ceremony to be broadcast over the air.
As radio stations spread across the country, Hall went on tour, visiting thirty-five stations. His tour carried him into the South, although he had never visited Alabama when he wrote “Headin' Home Bound for Birmingham” in 1927. This song and Hall's unique ukelele accompaniment were to be famous features of his act for many years. Among Hall's other compositions were “Underneath the Mellow Moon,” “My Carolina Rose,” and “My Dream Sweetheart.” But of the nearly one thousand other songs he wrote his most famous was unquestionably “It Ain't Gonna Rain No Mo.” This song sold more sheet music than any other song published prior to 1923 and over two million records in Hall's own version alone.
Hall retired from radio performing in the late 1940s. Although he tried television in 1951, he found the new medium unsatisfactory. He died in 1969.
