Tom T. Hall’s “Storyteller, Poet, Philosopher,” Mercury. ***

“It’s a million miles to the city / From the hills and valleys we know,” sings Hall in one of the more than four-dozen songs on this two-disc set, and the line defines, in part, the artistic vision of the writer.

One reason Hall was one of the most engaging country songwriters of his generation was that he always retained some of the innocence and quiet wisdom of the hills and valleys of his Kentucky roots.

After his song “DJ for a Day” became a Top 10 country single for Jimmy C. Newman in 1963, Hall, a former disc jockey himself, moved to Nashville, where he gained increasing attention and respect among his peers.

His big commercial breakthrough was “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” a tale about small-town hypocrisy that became a No. 1 pop and country single in 1968 for Jeannie C. Riley.

By that time Hall had already begun to record his own songs, enjoying his first chart success in 1967 with “I Washed My Face in the Mountain Dew,” another socially conscious tune. But his real strength was in chronicling life’s simple moments with a winning sense of irony, affection and wit--in songs such as “Ballad of Forty Dollars,” “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died” and “Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine.”

“I’m not a judge; I am a witness,” Hall once said in defining his songwriting approach. “That’s what I think my role in life is. I like to watch and see and relate these stories.”

This set fulfills those objectives nicely.

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (e x cellent).