Born on a farm near Coy City, TX, on the eve of the Great Depression,
Hill 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 in San Antonio -- he 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. Sometime in 1949,
Hill was playing in a group called the Texas Hillbillies, and he managed to cross paths during the years that followed with
Hank Williams and
Johnny Horton. 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.
Hill had little success with Decca and was persuaded to join Hickory Records, the recording arm of Acuff-Rose publishers. By that time,
rock & roll was rumbling out of the South and the Midwest, and
Hill ran across a fellow Texan with a yen to record, steering him to Decca in Nashville -- that marked the start of
Buddy Holly's commercial recording career. He also saw
Ronnie Self in concert and took to heart the kind of music that the kids were listening to. He tried his hand at
rockabilly, recording a single session one night that took more than 35 years to see the light of day.
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. Finally, in 1972,
Hill formed Gusto Records, and two years later went into partnership with Moe Lytle; the two eventually bought out the King and Starday labels, and
Hill was the producer of Starday's biggest hit, "Teddy Bear" by
Red Sovine.
Hill hasn't been 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. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
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