Mel Tillis
Lonnie Melvin Tillis (August 8, 1932[1] – November 19, 2017)[2] was an American country music singer and songwriter. Although he recorded songs since the late 1950s, his biggest success occurred in the 1970s as part of the outlaw country movement, with a long list of Top 10 hits.
Mel Tillis
Lonnie Melvin Tillis
August 8, 1932
Tampa, Florida, U.S.
November 19, 2017 (aged 85)
Ocala, Florida, U.S.
Singer-songwriter
Vocals, guitar
1958–2017
Tillis' biggest hits include "I Ain't Never", "Good Woman Blues", and "Coca-Cola Cowboy". On February 13, 2012, President Barack Obama awarded Tillis the National Medal of Arts for his contributions to country music.[3] He also won the Country Music Association Awards' most coveted award, Entertainer of the Year. Tillis was a member of the Grand Ole Opry, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Country Music Hall of Fame. Additionally, he was known for his stutter, which did not affect his singing voice. His daughter is 1990s country hitmaker Pam Tillis.
Early life[edit]
Mel Tillis was born in Tampa, Florida, US. His parents were Burma (née Rogers; 1907–1990) and Lonnie Lee Tillis (1907–1981).[4] While he was still young, the family moved to Pahokee, Florida (near West Palm Beach). After a bout of malaria during his childhood, he developed a stutter.[5] As a child, Tillis learned the drums as well as guitar. At age 16, he won a local talent show.
He attended the University of Florida, but he dropped out and joined the United States Air Force.[6] While stationed as a baker on Okinawa, he formed a band called The Westerners, which played at local nightclubs.[5]
Early music career[edit]
After leaving the Air Force in 1955,[1] Tillis returned to Florida where he worked a number of odd jobs, eventually finding employment with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad in Tampa. He used his railroad pass to visit Nashville and eventually met and auditioned for Wesley Rose of the publishing house Acuff-Rose Music. Rose encouraged Tillis to return to Florida and continue honing his songwriting skills.[7] Tillis eventually moved to Tennessee, and began writing songs full-time. He wrote "I'm Tired",[1] a No. 3 country hit for Webb Pierce in 1957.[5] Other Tillis hits include "Honky Tong Song" and "Tupelo County Jail".[1] Ray Price, Kitty Wells and Brenda Lee also charted hits with Tillis' material around this time. In the late 1950s, after becoming a hit-making songwriter, he signed his own contract with Columbia Records.[1] In 1958, he had his first Top 40 hit, "The Violet and a Rose",[1] followed by the Top 25 hit "Sawmill".
Rise to fame[edit]
Although Tillis charted his own hits on Billboard's Hot Country Songs list, he had more success as a songwriter, particularly for Webb Pierce. He wrote the hits "I Ain't Never" (Tillis' own future hit) and "Crazy, Wild Desire". Bobby Bare, Tom Jones ("Detroit City"), Wanda Jackson, and Stonewall Jackson also covered his songs. (Some well-known songs from his Columbia years include "The Brooklyn Bridge", "Loco Weed", and "Walk on, Boy".) In 1967 Jack Greene had a No. 1 hit with a song Tillis co-wrote, "All the Time". Tillis continued to record on his own, but did not achieve major success on the country charts at first.
In the mid-1960s, Tillis switched to Kapp Records, and in 1965, he had his first Top 15 hit with "Wine". Other hits continued to follow, such as "Stateside" and "Life Turned Her That Way", which was later covered by Ricky Van Shelton in 1988, going to No. 1.[1] He wrote for Charley Pride ("The Snakes Crawl At Night")[1] and wrote "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town", which was a hit for Kenny Rogers and The First Edition.[1] He also wrote the hit "Mental Revenge" for outlaw country star Waylon Jennings. It has also been covered by the Hacienda Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, Gram Parsons, Barbara Mandrell, and Jamey Johnson. In 1968, Tillis achieved his first Top 10 hit with "Who's Julie". He also was a regular featured singer on The Porter Wagoner Show.
Movie roles[edit]
Tillis appeared in movies, including Cottonpickin' Chickenpickers (1967), W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975), Smokey and the Bandit II (1980), The Cannonball Run (1981), The Cannonball Run II (1984), Beer for My Horses (2008), and comedy westerns The Villain (1979) and Uphill All the Way (1986), in which he starred with fellow country singer Roy Clark.
Radio stations[edit]
In 1979, Tillis acquired radio station KIXZ (AM) in Amarillo, Texas, from Sammons-Ruff Associates, which converted from Top 40 to country music and became a force in the Texas Panhandle region (the station is now known today as a News/Talk radio station). A short time later, Tillis acquired Amarillo, Texas, Rock FM station KYTX, which changed calls to KMML (a play on Tillis' stutter) (that station is now known today as KXSS-FM, a Top 40 radio station and is currently still a sister station to KIXZ). Still later, he operated WMML in Mobile, Alabama. All of his stations were sold after a time for a healthy return.
Later career and projects[edit]
Following his heyday in the 1970s, Tillis remained a songwriter in the 1980s, writing hits for Ricky Skaggs and Randy Travis. He also wrote his autobiography called Stutterin' Boy. Tillis appeared as the television commercial spokesman for the fast-food restaurant chain Whataburger during the 1980s. He briefly signed with RCA Records, as well as Mercury Records, and later Curb Records in 1991. His last top-10 hit was in 1984 and his last top-40 country hit in 1988; like most country artists of the classic era, his recording career was dented by changes in the country music industry in the early 1990s. He also built a theater in Branson, Missouri, where he performed on a regular basis until 2002. In 1998, he teamed with Bobby Bare, Waylon Jennings, and Jerry Reed to form The Old Dogs. The group recorded a double album of songs penned entirely by Shel Silverstein. In July 1998, Old Dogs Volumes 1 and 2 were released on the Atlantic Records label. A companion video, as well as a Greatest Hits album (composed of previously released material by each individual artist), were also available.
The Grand Ole Opry inducted Tillis on June 9, 2007. He was inducted into the Opry by his daughter Pam. (In the 1990s, Pam became a very successful country music singer in her own right,[1] with Top Ten hits like "Maybe It Was Memphis", "Shake the Sugar Tree" and the Number One "Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life)".) Along with being inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, it was announced on August 7 that year that Tillis, along with Ralph Emery and Vince Gill, were to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Personal life and death[edit]
Tillis had six children, including singer-songwriter Pam Tillis.[1] Pam recorded for Arista Nashville in the 1990s where she had multiple country hit singles such as "Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life)" and "Maybe It Was Memphis".[8] His son Mel "Sonny" Tillis Jr. is also a songwriter. Sonny co-wrote Jamie O'Neal's 2001 hit single "When I Think About Angels".[9]
Tillis suffered from several illnesses beginning in January 2016. On November 19, 2017, he died of respiratory failure in Ocala, Florida, at age 85.[10] After this, Sonny Tillis began touring as a tribute act to his father.[11]