Pam Tillis
Pamela Yvonne Tillis (born July 24, 1957)[1][2] is an American country music singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. She is a daughter of country music singer and songwriter Mel Tillis and ex-wife of songwriter Bob DiPiero. Tillis recorded unsuccessful pop material for Elektra and Warner Records in the 1980s before shifting to country music. In 1989, she signed with Arista Nashville, entering top-40 on Hot Country Songs for the first time with "Don't Tell Me What to Do" in 1990. This was the first of five singles from her breakthrough album Put Yourself in My Place.
Pam Tillis
- Singer
- songwriter
- record producer
- actress
1978–present
- Mel Tillis (father)
Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
- Vocals
- acoustic guitar
- Elektra
- Warner
- Arista Nashville
- Lucky Dog
- Stellar Cat
- Red River Entertainment
Tillis recorded five more albums for Arista Nashville between then and 2001, plus a greatest hits album. She charted 12 top-10 hits on the Billboard country music charts while on Arista, including the number-one "Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life)" in 1995. Her other top-10 hits include her signature song "Maybe It Was Memphis", and "Shake the Sugar Tree", "Spilled Perfume", a cover of Jackie DeShannon's "When You Walk in the Room", and "All the Good Ones Are Gone". After exiting Arista, Tillis released It's All Relative: Tillis Sings Tillis for Lucky Dog Records in 2002, and RhineStoned and the Christmas album Just in Time for Christmas on her own Stellar Cat label in 2007. Her albums Homeward Looking Angel (1992), Sweetheart's Dance (1994), and Greatest Hits (1997) are all certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, while Put Yourself in My Place and 1995's All of This Love are certified gold.
She has won two major awards: a Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals in 1999 for the multiple-artist collaboration "Same Old Train", and the 1994 Country Music Association award for Female Vocalist of the Year. In 2000, she was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry. In addition to her own work, Tillis has written songs for Barbara Fairchild, Juice Newton, and Highway 101, among others. Tillis's music style is defined by her singing voice, along with her influences of country, pop, and jazz.
Music career[edit]
1983–1990: Above and Beyond the Doll of Cutey and other early work[edit]
In 1981, Tillis signed her first recording contract with Elektra Records.[8] The label released her debut single "Every Home Should Have One" that same year.[9] Unlike her later music, "Every Home Should Have One" was a disco song.[6] While this was her only release for Elektra, she remained with its parent company, Warner Records. The latter label released her debut album in 1983 called Above and Beyond the Doll of Cutey.[1] The album was co-produced by Dixie Gamble, then-wife of record producer Jimmy Bowen. Assisting her was the production team Jolly Hills Productions, which included session musicians Josh Leo and Craig Krampf.[10] Above and Beyond the Doll of Cutey featured the singles "Killer Comfort" and "Love Is Sneakin' Up on You". While neither single charted, the former received a music video that aired on MTV.[6] Kevin John Coyne of Country Universe rated the album two stars out of five, stating that "Pam Tillis, even in her early days, is a smart songwriter with cutting insights on the human experience. To try and make her a carefree New Wave pop star is to undermine what makes her special in the first place."[11]
Citing dissatisfaction with the pop music she was recording, Tillis returned to Nashville, while retaining her contract with Warner.[6] She made her first entry on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts in 1984 with "Goodbye Highway", a song she co-wrote with Mary Ann Kennedy and Pam Rose.[2] Her follow-up "One of Those Things" did not chart.[12][6] Janie Fricke later recorded a version of the song, as well.[13] After this came four other singles that made the lower regions of the charts between 1986 and 1987.[2] One of these, "Those Memories of You", was later a top-five hit for Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt.[14][6] Due to the poor performance of her singles, Tillis was dropped from Warner in 1987.[6] Despite her lack of commercial success, the Academy of Country Music nominated her in 1986 for Top New Female Vocalist.[15] She supported herself in this timespan by performing at various nightclubs and in her own local revues. These included Twang Night (where she sang covers of 1960s country standards) and Women in the Round (where she sang with other female songwriters).[6][8] The latter featured writers such as Ashley Cleveland, Tricia Walker, and Karen Staley.[16] According to Tillis herself, these revues led to her gaining increased exposure throughout the city. She also supplemented her career by singing advertising jingles for Country Time powdered drink mix, Coca-Cola, and Coors beer.[6][17]
1989–1992: Put Yourself in My Place[edit]
In mid-1989, Arista Records' then-president Clive Davis announced the creation of the label's country music division titled Arista Nashville. Tillis was one of the first five acts signed to the label, alongside Alan Jackson, Lee Roy Parnell, Michelle Wright, and Asleep at the Wheel.[18] Prior to releasing any material of her own, Tillis and Kix Brooks (who later signed to Arista Nashville himself as one-half of Brooks & Dunn) co-wrote the promotional single "Tomorrow's World", released on Warner to honor the 20th anniversary of Earth Day.[19] Twenty different country music acts contributed vocals to the project, including Highway 101, Lynn Anderson, Vince Gill, Dan Seals, and Brooks and Tillis. The song entered the Hot Country Songs charts in May 1990, peaking at 74.[20] Tillis also co-wrote Juice Newton's 1989 single "When Love Comes Around the Bend" (later covered by Dan Seals in 1992) and Highway 101's 1990 single "Someone Else's Trouble Now".[21]
Tillis made her debut on Arista Nashville in late 1990 with "Don't Tell Me What to Do". It peaked at number five on the Billboard country charts in early 1991, thus becoming her first successful single release.[2] The song also went to number one on the country music charts of the former Radio & Records.[22] Marty Stuart also recorded the song for Columbia Records in 1988, although his rendition was not released until 1992.[13][23] The song served as the lead single to her breakthrough album Put Yourself in My Place,[1] which was issued in January 1991. Paul Worley (a producer and guitarist known at the time for his work with Eddy Raven and Highway 101) co-produced the project with Ed Seay.[13] A re-recording of "One of Those Things" was the album's next single, also reaching top 10 on the country charts. After it came the album's title track, which Tillis co-wrote with Carl Jackson.[2] The album's highest-charting single was "Maybe It Was Memphis", which peaked at number three in early 1992.[2] "Maybe It Was Memphis" has since been described as Tillis's signature song.[24] Tillis had originally recorded the song while on Warner, but did not release this version at the time.[6] According to Billboard, Arista Nashville executives were initially reluctant to release "Maybe It Was Memphis" as a single until Tillis was "firmly established" as an artist, due to the song's more country pop sound.[25] The album's fifth and final single was "Blue Rose Is", another song which Tillis co-wrote. This song was less successful on the charts.[2] All of the singles from Put Yourself in My Place except "Blue Rose Is" also made top 20 on the Canadian country music charts then published by RPM.[26] Another cut from the album, "Ancient History", was later a single for the Canadian band Prairie Oyster in 1996.[27][28]
Alanna Nash of Entertainment Weekly gave Put Yourself in My Place a "B+" rating, saying that it "shows how well she can craft smart and sassy country material...and also sell it with a commanding, big-voiced presence".[29] Kevin John Coyne wrote in a 2007 retrospective of Tillis, "It’s easy to overlook Put Yourself in My Place when discussing Pam’s body of work because of the much stronger albums that would follow...However, that’s more of a tribute to the quality of the music to come than any deficiency of the album itself."[13] Brian Mansfield of AllMusic wrote that "The album that established Pam Tillis as a performer in her own right has a traditional country base cut with bluegrass, folk, and rock."[27] The Country Music Association (CMA) nominated Tillis in both 1991 and 1992 for the Horizon Award (now called the Best New Artist Award). The same association nominated her twice in the category Single of the Year: for "Don't Tell Me What to Do" in 1991 and "Maybe It Was Memphis" one year later.[30] She was also nominated by the Academy of Country Music for Top Female Vocalist five times between 1991 and 1995.[15] "Maybe It Was Memphis" also gave Tillis her first Grammy Award nomination, in the category of Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance, at the 35th Grammy Awards in 1993.[31] Put Yourself in My Place was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in June 1992 for sales of 500,000 copies.[32]
Musical styles[edit]
Colin Larkin wrote in the Virgin Encyclopedia of Country Music in 1999 that "her powerful vocal styling may not suit everybody".[40] He also wrote at the time that "it still remains to be seen whether she can really establish herself with the hardline country traditionalists."[40] The editors of the Encyclopedia of Country Music described Tillis as a "vocal stylist...pairing contemporary country lyrics with traditional country vocals, paving the way for such singers as Mindy McCready".[4] Tillis described her own vocal style as "not the twangiest country singer out there", as she thought her voice also contained rhythm and blues and rock phrasings.[76] Roch Parisien of AllMusic described her voice as "pure, full-bodied country" and a "genuinely throaty twang", despite considering it "exaggerated to the point of annoyance" on "Do You Know Where Your Man Is".[36] Steven Wine, reviewing Looking for a Feeling for the Associated Press, said that she "has mastered the art of singing without raising her voice. She swoops and slides, yes, but most of all she smolders, an alto with a blue hue."[77] Alanna Nash of Entertainment Weekly wrote of Sweetheart's Dance that "Moving beyond the attention she gained from her Kewpie doll face and piercing soprano, she’s gone the distance to incorporate all of her musical past into the country framework for an updated, '90s feel."[78] Robert K. Oermann, in the book Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain: Tales of Romance and Tragedy, described Tillis as having a "torrid soprano", "vivid songwriting", and "enchanting wit".[6]
Writers have taken notice of Tillis's use of wordplay in her material. Reviewing All of This Love for Country Standard Time, Joel Bernstein noted Tillis's affinity for wordplay in her song titles, such as on that album's "Tequila Mockingbird".[79] Nash criticized the song for similar reasons,[78] and Kevin John Coyne of Country Universe cited "Blue Rose Is" as another example of wordplay.[13] Bernstein also thought of her decision to produce All of This Love by herself that "tastefulness continues to be Tillis' trademark".[79] In an interview with Country Universe in 2020, Tillis stated that her later albums featured fewer songs she wrote than her earlier albums due to her own criticism of her work. She ultimately decided to start co-writing again on Looking for a Feeling because she considered her own writing to be "words out of [her] heart".[80] Nash, reviewing Collection in 1994, thought that because the album contained material recorded earlier in her career, it lacked the "plucky personality and the supercharged vocals that now punch their way out of the radio".[81] Both Nash and Larry Crowley of The Arizona Republic thought that "Spilled Perfume", which is about one woman confronting another over a one-night stand, displayed feminist themes.[78][7] Coyne thought that Put Yourself in My Place showed an unusual amount of artistic freedom for a new country music act in the 1990s. He considered "Maybe It Was Memphis" to be her signature song, stating that its "fiery performance and the aggressive production still sound fresh today".[13]
Being the daughter of a country musician, she was regularly compared to her father. Because of this, she told the Associated Press in 2017 that she felt the best advice to give to an aspiring musician was "be yourself".[17] She also said that her father exposed her to other musical influences besides himself, such as Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn.[17] Despite this, she also noted that her father was very strict about what music she could listen to and what concerts she could attend as a child; specifically, she stated that her listening to The Beatles "alienated" him.[6] In addition, she stated that differences in musical tastes were what ended her role as his backing vocalist.[6] Of her attempts to establish a musical identity separate from her father, Colin Larkin wrote in 1999 that she "has made a promising start".[40]
Acting[edit]
Tillis holds several acting roles in television, film, and theater. One of her first was the 1993 movie The Thing Called Love, in which she and several other country music singers made guest appearances.[6] She also had cameo appearances in the NBC crime show L.A. Law,[82] along with episodes of Diagnosis: Murder and Promised Land on CBS.[6] Of acting, Tillis said that she did not find it considerably different from singing, because both roles require "taking the raw material of emotion and making something out of it."[82] In 1999, she appeared in the Broadway revue Smokey Joe's Cafe, where she and others performed various show tunes by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Of doing so, Tillis stated at the time that she "wanted to branch out", and took a role in the show when her agent found the position was available.[76] She also appeared as herself on the American Broadcasting Company musical drama Nashville. Drag queen RuPaul, a fan of Tillis's, invited her to appear as a guest judge on an episode of RuPaul's Drag Race.[71]
Studio albums