Obituary
Floyd Tillman, 1914-2003
With the death of Floyd Tillman at his home near Houston, Texas, last Friday, country music lost one of its greatest pioneers. As a composer of masterpieces like “It Makes No Difference Now,” “Slipping Around,” “This Cold War With You” and “I Love You So Much It Hurts”—and as an influential singer, guitarist and bandleader in the 1930s and ’40s—Tillman played a vital role in bringing country music into its urban era. He was 88 years old.
Born in Oklahoma in 1914, Tillman found a home in the mid-’30s Texas music scene, working first in San Antonio and then Houston as a lead guitarist—he was an early proponent of the electric version of the instrument, citing a variety of influences, including Lightnin’ Hopkins. He soon picked up work as a singer, though his first major success was as a songwriter, when Bing Crosby released his version of “It Makes No Difference Now” in 1940. Backed by a version of Bob Wills’ “San Antonio Rose,” the record became a country-to-pop crossover hit more than a decade before Hank Williams would have his songs covered by pop stars.
Tillman began his own recording career then as well. Though it was slowed by World War II—he served near Houston, where he continued to perform—he emerged as a significant star as the war wore on. When Billboard premiered its “Most Played Juke Box Folk Records” chart in 1944, Tillman was on it; by 1949, he had notched nine major hits, including a jaunty version of Jerry Irby’s early honky-tonk classic “Drivin’ Nails in My Coffin” that outperformed Ernest Tubb’s.
While his easygoing, behind-the-beat vocal style would leave its mark on singers like Willie Nelson, Tillman’s greatest accomplishments were as a songwriter. As a club performer, he was well positioned to see how urban life was transforming the social mores and habits of rural-born working people, and he captured the process in songs like “Slipping Around.” A huge country and pop hit for Jimmy Wakely and Margaret Whiting, it was arguably the first country “cheating song,” frankly depicting the romantic dilemma in the down-to-earth terms of the emerging country genre. In the pop-influenced “I Gotta Have My Baby Back,” Tillman planted heartbreak in a modern honky-tonk with a few simple, yet emotionally devastating lines:
Alone in a tavern, people all around
Laughin’ and dancin’, paintin’ the town
Jukebox is playing songs about you
Songs with memories making me blue
Tillman retired from the full-time musical life in 1950, though he continued to perform at a pace somewhere between occasionally and regularly up until recently. Inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1984, Tillman left behind a soon-to-be-released album, The Influence, with guest appearances by acolytes like Merle Haggard and George Jones, and an enduring legacy as a creator of modern country music.
—Jon Weisberger
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