Tommy Hill born 27 April 1929

Tommy Hill (April 27, 1929 - March 21, 2002) was an American country musician, performer, songwriter, and producer.

Tommy Hill never quite made it as a country star, despite a couple of decades of trying and crossing paths with (and even working for) stars and legends like Smiley Burnette, Webb Pierce, Hank Williams, and Johnny Horton. He wrote some very successful songs and produced important hits by others, and also left some hot rockabilly sides behind.

Tommy & Kenny Hill

Born John Thomas Hill Jr., on a farm near Coy City, Texas on the eve of the Great Depression, he was one of four children. He spent a good part of that childhood picking cotton in order to help his family survive. He also listened to the radio and especially enjoyed the music of Jimmie Rodgers, the Delmore Brothers, Cowboy Slim Rinehart, and Wayne Raney. It was while dragging sacks of cotton through the fields that Hill vowed to try for a career as a musician. He learned guitar listening to Ernest Tubb's lead player, Jimmie Short, and was proficient enough as a teenager to get a gig playing on radio with Big Bill Lister during 1945 in San Antonio, and was good enough, in fact, to blow the competition out of the studio.

                                         

With his brother Ken, Hill got gigs working with Red River Dave McEnery, and one day in 1948, musician/actor Smiley Burnette (of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers fame) passed through San Antonio and found himself in need of a guitar player or two. Tommy and Ken were hired for the gig and stayed with Burnette, who brought them to California, which got them into the background scenes in his movies as extras and musicians. The Hollywood work only lasted for 18 months before Hill and his brother returned to Texas to try and really make it in the music business.  Tommy and Ken made their first recordings for San Antonio-based Enterprise Records in 1949 as the Texas "Hill" Billies. Tommy's musician credits include backing Hank Williams on the Louisiana Hayride and on tour in 1952.

Goldie Hill

A couple of years later, Hill got picked up by Webb Pierce as a fiddle player. They only worked together for about four months, during which time Pierce cut one of Hill's original songs, "Slowly," before Hill decided to form a band of his own. Pierce's manager, Tillman Franks (who also later managed Horton), got Hill a contract with Decca Records in 1952. He formed his own band in Shreveport, LA, with his sister Goldie, who had a hit with Hill's "Let the Stars Get in My Eyes" (retitled "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes"), which he had originally written for Kitty Wells. Then, in the mid-'50s, the walls began to shake with the first rumblings of rock 'n' roll. On a tour of west Texas in late 1955, Tommy met Buddy Holly, and, in Tommy's account, he had a bit-part to play in bringing Holly to Nashville by phoning Jack DeWitt to set up an audition for the Crickets at Decca, which marked the start of Buddy Holly's commercial recording career.

In the early part of 1957, Tommy worked on the Philip Morris Caravan with the ever-unpredictable Ronnie Self, and saw for himself what it took to perform rock 'n' roll with conviction. Then, early in 1958, after a spell with Jim Reeves, he realized that the Crickets were actually Buddy Holly, and that he'd done Decca Records a favour which it was time to call in. Technically, of course, Buddy had been canned by Decca's Nashville division, only to end up on a New York subsidiary, but a favour's a favour, but Hill had little success with Decca where he tried his hand at rockabilly.  He took part in RCA's multi-artist 1957 European tour and toured as a solo act on the Phillip Morris Country Music Show. It was there that he met Ronnie Self and in December 1957 he was invited to play lead guitar on "Bop-a Lena" (and on Billy Brown's "Flip It", recorded on the same day). 

The following year he laid down what were to be his final vocal sides when he rounded up a core group of sidemen, including Hank Garland, Floyd Cramer, Ace Cannon and D.J. Fontana, to cut a batch of country rock demos that was supposed to go to Decca, but somehow didn't. Thirty years later, Tommy discovered it, and played it to Bear Family Records who jumped at the chance to issue it. Songs include Life Begins At 4 O' Clock, Get Ready Baby, and Ain't Nothin' Like Lovin' finally saw the light on the CD "Get Ready Baby" in 1993.

Tommy at the Starday Studio

Somehow, however, success eluded Hill. He had no hits during his three years at Hickory Records, and he subsequently hooked up with Starday Records, where he eventually became a producer, handling many of the label's releases until 1968. After a stint with MGM Records, Hill went into partnership with his fellow guitarist, Pete Drake, in the Stop label, which recorded the Jordanaires and Johnny Bush, among others, during its brief existence. Tommy started Gusto Records in 1972. In 1974, he brought in Moe Lytle as a partner, and together they bought out King and Starday Records. Tommy eventually sold out to Lytle in 1979, although he stayed on in one capacity or another until the end of 1982. In between, he wrote and produced the biggest hit that Starday ever saw, Red Sovine's Teddy Bear– the song that had truckers weeping in their semis.

Hill was not heard from since the early '60s as a recording artist, and none of his country sides are currently in print. In 1993, however, Bear Family Records released his long-lost rockabilly session from that June night in 1958. Despite his talent and his years of playing and writing, Hill never scored a hit; however, as he observed in Colin Escott's notes for Get Ready Baby, he had a habit of always giving his best songs away to others.

Tommy Hill died at Nashville's Vanderbilt Medical Center on March 21, 2002 due to heart and liver problems. Shortly before his death, he heard that a tribute to Webb Pierce, 'Caught In The Web,' had just gone to Number One on the country album charts. It featured Mandy Barnett singing Tommy's song, Slowly.

(Edited from Rocky52, This Is My Story & Bear Family liner notes)