The founding Director of the Western Folklife Center and its famous child, the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, Hal Cannon has published a dozen books and recordings on the folk arts of the West including his best selling anthology, Cowboy Poetry, A Gathering.

Cannon and producer Taki Telonidis produce regularly for National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday with a monthly series, What’s in a Song. He also co-produced a radio series, Voices of the West. Part of that series, A Cowboy Christmas won a bronze medal at the New York International Radio Festival. A recent documentary, Why the Cowboy Sings has been awarded both an Emmy Award and the Golden Special Judges Prize at the Houston International Film Festival and was broadcast nationally on PBS.

Cannon has been awarded three Wrangler Awards from the Cowboy Hall of Fame, Oklahoma City; the 1998 Will Rogers Lifetime Achievement Award in Fort Worth; the distinguished alumni award from the University of Utah Communications Department in 1999, the Utah Governor’s Award in the Arts in 1999, and the Utah Governor's Award in the Humanities in 2002. He serves as a trustee for the Utah Arts Council, the Fund for Folk Culture, and Smithsonian Folkways.

He was the founding Folk Arts Coordinator for the Utah Arts Council from 1976 through 1985 where he was best known for being curator of the Grand Beehive Exhibit and the Utah Folk Art Exhibit. He was Artistic Director for Folklife at the 2002 Olympic Arts Festival.

As a musician, Cannon and his band, the Deseret String Band/Bunkhouse Orchestra, made a specialty of researching and performing nineteenth century music from the West.  Together for 30 years, the band released several recordings. They toured extensively in Europe and the United States as the official band for the America's Cup, winning team, America/3. They also performed at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

Cannon and his wife Teresa Jordan live in an old Craftsman style home in Salt Lake City.  Jordan is a writer and visual artist.