Floyd Tillman

Floyd Tillman, singer, songwriter and guitarist: born Ryan, Oklahoma 8 December 1914; married (two sons); died Houston, Texas 22 August 2003.

The country singer Willie Nelson, something of a maverick himself, long ago dubbed the singer-songwriter Floyd Tillman the "Original Outlaw". But although Tillman preferred to work outside the country music mainstream, his impact upon it has been immense.

A pioneer of the sound that has come to be known as honky-tonk, he was one of the first country acts to write crossover hits; his songs having been covered by artists as varied as Ray Charles and the Mills Brothers, Patsy Cline and Ella Fitzgerald. His best-known song, "Slippin' Around", was a major pop hit in 1949 for Jimmy Wakely and Margaret Whiting and, with its theme of adultery, then a taboo, heralded a new frankness in the genre that has since become commonplace.

His somewhat unorthodox approach to his music, with slurred words, bent notes and a tendency to half sing, half speak, either ahead of or behind the beat, has proved highly influential to the generations of country singers who have followed Tillman, notably the Texas school in which Nelson has long been a leading figure.

Floyd Tillman was born, the youngest of 11 children, at Ryan, Oklahoma in 1914. His sharecropper parents moved to Texas whilst he was still a child and it was there that he grew up, eventually becoming a telegraph operator for Western Union. As a teenager he played the mandolin in a weekend band with his brother, eventually adopting the guitar because it was "louder". His musical influences at the time included the pioneering country star Jimmie Rodgers and the Texas bluesman Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins.

After moving to San Antonio, Tillman played the guitar for the bandleader Adolf Hofner before joining Leon Selph's Blue Ridge Playboys in 1936. Tillman's tenure with the Playboys brought him into contact with the group of innovative Houston-based musicians who over the next few years were to lay the foundations for the electric dance-hall music called honky-tonk: Moon Mullican, Cliff Bruner, Ted Daffan and Bob Dunn. The numbers recorded by the Playboys with Tillman as lead vocalist included the now classic "A Precious Memory" (1939) and "Why Do I Love You" (1939).

In 1940 Bing Crosby recorded "It Makes No Difference Now", establishing Tillman as a songwriter of note, but he failed to gain financially from the song's success, having sold the copyright on it to the hillbilly recording star and future Governor of Louisiana, Jimmie Davis, for just $300. (Some 28 years later he bought it back.) A year later, a session for Decca in Dallas produced another classic in "They Took the Stars Out of Heaven".

Following America's entry into the Second World War, Tillman joined the Army Air Corps. Based near Houston, he continued to perform at local clubs and even, when able, made records; his "Each Night at Nine", with its obvious appeal to husbands and wives separated by the conflict, became a sizeable hit in 1944.

At the war's end Tillman signed to Columbia, his first session for his new label producing a fine version of Jerry Irby's "Drivin' Nails in My Coffin" (1946). Commercially, his years with Columbia were his most successful: "I Love You So Much It Hurts" (1947) charted, as did, in 1949, the oft-recorded "This Cold War with You", his own version of "Slippin' Around" and an apologetic response to that hit, "I'll Never Slip Around Again".

He was, however, becoming increasingly disillusioned with performing. In 1954 he left Columbia and gave up touring: "It was a daily rat-race. I was sleeping in my car . . . and making $200 to $500 a night, more money than I could pay taxes on and I got tired of it." Instead, he made only occasional live appearances and concentrated on songwriting, leaving a catalogue of over 1,000 numbers. In his spare time, he fished and read works of philosophy.

All the while, his reputation continued to grow. In 1970 he became a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and in 1982 was the subject of a tribute album, Floyd Tillman and Friends, on Mickey Gilley's eponymous label, the said "friends" including Nelson, Gilley, Merle Haggard and Ernest Tubb. Two years later he received country music's greatest honour and perhaps its full acceptance: induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Earlier this year, Tillman belatedly completed an album of duets with admirers such as Nelson, George Jones and Dolly Parton. Entitled The Influence, it is due for release in November.

Paul Wadey