Floyd Tillman
Induction Year: 1970
Birth Name: Floyd Tillman
Birth Date: December 08, 1914
Place of Birth: Ryan, OK
Deceased: August 22, 2003
Biography
Former Occupations:
Messenger boy
Education:
Grade School--Post, TX (from 1923-1929)
Discography / Career Highlights
Career Milestones:
1931--learned to play guitar so he could join his brothers in a string band
1933--started writing songs
1935--performed on KABC in San Antonio
mid 1930s--joined Leon Selph's Blue Ridge Playboys; first recorded with the band on Vocalion Records
1930s--played in Houston with Ted Daffan and Moon Mullican
1938--first hit "It Makes No Difference Now" (first recorded by Cliff Bruner and his band)
1944--first hit as an artist "They Took the Stars Out Of Heaven" (on Decca Records)
1945-50--performed with his band Floyd Tillman and All the Gang on KTRH
1945--signed with Columbia Records
1949--recorded "Slippin' Around" (credited with being one of the first hit "cheating songs"; song chosen by the Smithsonian Institution as part of an 8 record collection called "The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Country Music"
Awards:
1984--Country Music Hall of Fame induction
Catalog Highlights:
"I Love You So Much It Hurts" - Artists: Vic Damone, Red Foley, Ernest Tubb, Ray Charles, Ray Price, Mickey Gilley, Andy Williams, Marie Osmond, Eddy Arnold, Floyd Tillman, Jimmy Wakely
"I Gotta Have My Baby Back" - Artists: Floyd Tillman, Justin Tubb, Ray Price, Red Foley, Glen Campbell
"I Am Music" (Song of Music) - Artists: Skeets McDonald
"Slipping Around" - Artists: Margaret Whiting and Jimmy Wakely, Ernest Tubb, Floyd Tillman, Texas Jim Robertson, Marion Worth & George Morgan, Roy Drusky & Priscilla Mitchell, Mack Abernathy, Ray Anthony
"It Makes No Difference Now" - Co-writer: Jimmie Davis - Artists: Eddy Arnold, Bing Crosby, The Supremes, Gene Autry, Ray Charles, Jimmie Davis, Willie Nelson & Hank Snow, Ray Pennington & Buddy Emmons, Hank Thompson, Burl Ives
"They Took the Stars Out Of Heaven" - Artists: Floyd Tillman
"This Cold War With You"
"Each Night At Nine" - Artists: Floyd Tillman
"G.I. Blues" - Artists: Floyd Tillman
"I Gotta Have My Baby Back" - Artists: Floyd Tillman, Red Foley, Glen Campbell, Floyd Tillman, Justin Tubb, Ray Price
"Some Other World"
"Daisy Mae" - Artists: Ernest Tubb, Floyd Tillman
"Please Don't Pass Me By" - Artists: Floyd Tillman
"I'll Never Slip Around Again" - Artists: Floyd Tillman, Margaret Whiting & Jimmy Wakely
Comments:
Song "I Love You So Much It Hurts" earned Tillman a BMI 1 Million Performance award
"It Makes No Difference Now" tied with "San Antonio Rose" as the first country-pop crossover hit (Bing Crosby put both songs on the same record)
Tillman sold the song "It Makes No Difference Now" to Jimmie Davis for $300, and got the song back 28 years later
Floyd Tillman: "You don't know (when it's time to write a song). You just feel the song. It comes through you. The good songs do 'cause you can write a commercial song where you have to squeeze it out, but the idea songs just happen. They're just...you're riding along sometime and you get something in your mind, and you write it down and that's an idea.
Sometimes you get an idea from what somebody said...But you don't write it unless you feel like it...They're personal (songs), but they weren't written during the time they were personal. In other words when you have these problems you don't...the last thing you think of is writing a song about a problem. But later on you laugh at it, and then you write a song about it."