From: "Doug Bright" <75366.2463@compuserve.com> To: Subject: Article: September, 2005 Date: Tuesday, September 13, 2005 11:36 AM PART TWO: NEW CD BOX HONORS HONKY-TONK HERO FLOYD TILLMAN By Doug Bright Tillman's next session took place in Nashville on December 29, 1947 as Columbia country music producer Art Satherley, like other executives from the big labels, frantically stockpiled material in preparation for a threatened January strike by the American Federation of Musicians. "I was in the studio and I'd cut seven songs for him," Tillman recalled in a 1979 interview, "and needed one more to fill things out. Finally I said, "Well, how about that pop song?" He thought for a minute and said, in that British accent of his, "All right, my lad, we'll do it," and we did it ." The "pop song" was "I Love You So Much It Hurts", which Tillman had been trying to shop to Satherley ever since he joined Columbia. "It's a pretty song, Floyd," the producer had originally told him, "but everybody's writing too many pop songs. They want country, so let's keep it country, m'lad." Listening today to the heartfelt rendition that Tillman was finally allowed to record, one can scarcely imagine how Satherley could ever have considered the song unsuitable for the country-music market, and the market, for its part, welcomed the song with an open wallet. Tillman's record, released in May 1948, had climbed to Number 5 on Billboard magazine's country charts by July, and it stayed there for months, generating a cover version by Jimmy Wakely that went all the way to the top. It even spawned a hit version by pop crooner Vic Damone. Tillman's original record is now considered a double-sided classic, contrasting the slow waltztime of "I Love You So Much It Hurts" with the bouncy tempo of "(if I can't have the girl I want) I'll Take What I Can Get". In Floyd Tillman's capable hands and voice, even broken-hearted resignation could be made to swing. Tillman's next recording session took place in the spring of 1949 at Audio Company of America, a state-of-the-art studio built by Houston entrepreneur Bill Holford. The most important result was "Slipping Around", one of the first hit songs to deal frankly and sympathetically with the subject of adultery. Its inspiration came one night when Tillman and his band stopped at a caf`e on the way home from a gig in San Antonio. While there, he observed a woman involved in an intense phone conversation. "I know how we'll do this, honey," he heard her say. "You call me tomorrow and if a man answers, just hang up." "That poor woman, she's slippin' around," Tillman concluded. He wrote the song the following day. The record, released by Columbia in May, was an immediate hit, rising to Number 5 on the Billboard charts just as its most successful predecessor had done. It also inspired a Jimmy Wakely-Margaret Whiting duet that not only topped the country charts but crossed over to score a hit in the pop sector as well. Both Tillman and the Wakely-Whiting duo got still more mileage from it when he wrote a hit-making sequel called "I'll Never Slip Around Again". "I know just how it feels to live in lonely misery," his protagonist confessed, "'cause the gal I slipped around with then is slippin' round on me." The August 1949 session that yielded "I'll Never Slip Around Again" also produced one of the greatest of Tillman's country classics, "This Cold War With You". "I'd heard that "cold war" expression in the news all the time," he later recalled, "and I thought about it in a love affair type of way, too. And I was driving against the sun one time, and I saw the sun going down and I got the idea. I wrote it in the car." The brilliantly evocative result was, "The sun goes down and leaves me sad and blue. The iron curtain falls on this cold war with you." Tillman's next session, held in October 1949 at the same Houston studio where "Slipping Around" had been cut, gave him his last national hit for some time to come. Entitled "I Gotta Have My Baby Back", it was a smoky, pop-flavored ballad that probably inspired Willie Nelson to follow with songs like "Nightlife" and the Patsy Cline super-hit "Crazy". Tillman's rendition of the song, replete with vocal swoops and a dramatic, half-talking delivery, brought to full fruition a style that had been gradually taking shape for several years. It was so uniquely quirky that it inspired good-natured parodies by other artists. It also divided his audience and may have had something to do with his decline as a hit-making artist. "They either loved Floyd's voice or they hated it," his wife Marge summarized. In July 1950 the ever-creative Tillman, fascinated as he had always been with electronics, tried his hand at the vocal overdubbing technique that had established the team of Les Paul and Mary Ford and also scored a huge Patti Page hit with "Tennessee Waltz". Its most memorable result was another smoky torch ballad, "I've Got The Craziest Feeling". Apparently deciding that two scoop-and-swoop voices on the same song constituted too much of a good thing, Columbia asked him to record an additional solo version. The solo treatment was the one that got released, but it scored only a regional hit. Concluding later that the overdubbed take was the most artistically valid one after all, Columbia released it on future Tillman anthologies and ignored the other one. True to Bear Family's scholarly reissue strategy, both versions are presented here. By 1951 Tillman was making good money from songwriter royalties and a steady performance schedule, but the day-to-day grind of doing regular radio shows and traveling to far-flung gigs was taking its toll. "I was making more money than I ever made in my life," he later explained, "but I was killing myself. Alcohol was something that kept us going, and I got tired of that. I got interested in philosophy, and I decided that I would just live my philosophy a little bit more." Buying a new home on Houston's Robert Lee Street, he built himself a state-of-the-art recording studio, which was mostly used to generate extra income with pre-recorded radio shows and demos for local bands. He continued to record and to perform locally, with occasional appearances farther afield, but without an active touring schedule to support his records, the hits stopped coming. Nevertheless, some good records were made during this period. An April 1952 session at Tillman's own studio yielded two poignant ballads, "Goodbye Tomorrow" and "Take My Love With You", as well as a peppy gospel number called "I Finally Saw The Light" that made good use of his lower vocal range. His December 1952 session produced a similarly exuberant number on a more secular theme called "The Worm Has Turned". Its flip side, "A Small Little Town", is a gen`erally unacknowledged Floyd Tillman classic in all-out heartbreak mode. "I see that old park bench where we said goodbye," his protagonist moans, "and I'm feelin' so lonely I sit down and cry." He concludes, "With no wine for my heartaches, and my head's hangin' down, It's the loneliest feelin' in a small little town." Tillman's last Columbia single, released at the end of February 1955, was another undeservedly forgotten gem: the achingly sad "Let's Make Memories Tonight". By this time the country music industry was finding itself under a two-pronged attack. While the expansion of television was drying up the dance-hall business, the emergence of rock and roll was altering public taste, and Floyd Tillman, pioneer of the old school, wasn't inclined to adapt. With his Columbia contract now expired, he survived by living frugally, refusing to go back to the daily grind of life on the road. He sold his residence, complete with recording studio, to Ted Daffan and bought a house trailer that served as both home and gig transportation. He made a few good records for small Texas labels during this period, but they had no measurable effect on the marketplace. "It's difficult to give away Floyd Tillman records now, let alone sell them," one of the label operators observed at the time. Nevertheless, Tillman was far from forgotten. In late 1957 RCA Victor engaged him to cut an album of his greatest hits backed by a Nashville studio cast that included Chet Atkins on guitar, Floyd Cramer on piano, and the Anita Kerr Singers providing background vocals that ranged from pleasant country-pop schmalz to contemptible banality. Tillman acquitted himself well even amid the worst arrangements, but the label didn't see fit to follow the album up with any more releases. Three years later, however, a contract with Liberty Records yielded a minor hit on the country charts. A shuffling, pop-flavored ballad called "It Just Tears Me Up", it was Tillman's first hit in over ten years and one of only two that he didn't write. Tillman's next album was cut in 1962 with a band led by steel guitarist Leon McAuliffe, who had made a name for himself twenty years earlier with Bob Wills' Texas Playboys. Issued on McAuliffe's own Cimarron label, it infused soulful renditions of well-crafted songs from other writers into Tillman's usual greatest-hits mix. It was during that same year that Ray Charles included "I Love You So Much It Hurts" and "It Makes No Difference Now" in his groundbreaking and hugely successful album MODERN SOUNDS IN COUNTRY AND WESTERN MUSIC. From that point on, thanks to the songwriter royalties it generated, Tillman's financial worries were over. Nevertheless, he continued to live frugally, gigging only when he wished. By the late 1970's, such Tillman admirers as Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, and Mickey Gilley were bigtime country stars, bringing the great songwriter's name and music to the attention of a new generation. The six-disc Bear Family box ends with a satisfying collaborative album called FLOYD TILLMAN AND FRIENDS issued by Gilley's label in 1981. Featuring Tillman in duets with Nelson, Haggard, Gilley, Johnny Lee, and Ernest Tubb, it was just the kind of loving tribute such a musical pioneer deserved. Inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1984, Floyd Tillman lived to enjoy the fruits of his legendary status for nearly two more decades. He died of leukaemia on August 22, 2003. With a range of music spanning 45 years and an exhaustively researched biography, Bear Family's new Tillman set is a priceless document of a musical life well lived. It's the ultimate memorial to one of country music's most influential artists. (Floyd Tillman. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH IT HURTS. Bear Family BCD-16415.) ----------------------------------------