Mel Tillis, Country Hall of Fame star, dies
Hall-of-Fame singer, songwriter dies Sunday at age of 85.
The singer-songwriter turned a chronic stutter to his advantage, winning a following as a genial folksy performer.
Mel Tillis, a chart-topping Country Music Hall of Fame songwriter and singer who turned a chronic stutter to his advantage, winning a following as a genial folksy performer onstage and in a side career in movies and on TV, died Sunday at a hospital in Ocala, Florida. He was 85.
His death was announced by publicist Don Murry Grubbs, who wrote in a statement that the cause was likely respiratory failure. Tillis had undergone colon cancer surgery in January 2016.
Tillis, who became one of country music’s most durable and versatile talents, once described himself as “the most unlikely to ever make it” in show business, mostly because of his speech impediment. He joked that his CB handle would be “Old F-F-Flutterlips.”
It was precisely that self-deprecating humor that would eventually endear him to fans. But, scarred by the teasing he took in childhood for his stammer, he spent years trying to overcome his fears of being out front, introducing his songs or thanking crowds. As he was trying to break into the business in the mid-1950s, a record company executive suggested he might be better off pursuing songwriting instead of performing.
He flourished as a writer, with his compositions recorded by performers such as Webb Pierce, Ray Price, Wanda Jackson, Tom Jones and Brenda Lee.
One of his most enduring pieces, “Detroit City,” co-written with Danny Dill, earned a Grammy Award for country singer Bobby Bare in 1963 and captured the alienation of rural Southerners in the big city:
“Home folks think I’m big in Detroit City
“From the letters that I write they think I’m fine
“But by day I make the cars “By night I make the bars “If only they could read between the lines.”
Tillis’ song “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town” gained its greatest renown in 1969 when it was recorded by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition.
By commercial standards, “Ruby” was risky material, recounting the bleak story of a paralyzed veteran from “that old crazy Asian war.” The soldier begs his wife not to leave him and even dreams of killing her: “And if I could move, I’d get my gun and put her in the ground.”
Tillis later said the song was inspired by a World War II veteran involved in a murder-suicide, but the piece resonated with American listeners during the Vietnam War. In 1969, the NBC News program “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” played the song to close a segment about the sacrifices of U.S. servicemen in Vietnam.
By that time, Tillis had slowly eased into singing his own songs. He credited comedian Minnie Pearl with helping build his confidence. She had hired him as a rhythm guitarist for her revue in the late 1950s and allowed him to try out some of his compositions.
He would walk to center stage, perform and then slide into the background, clearly ill at ease with stage banter.
“Minnie called me over one day, she said, ‘Melvin, I noticed you have a little speech hang-up,’ “he told the Modesto Bee in 2014. “But she said, ‘Let me tell you this, if you are going to be in this business, you need to introduce your own songs, and when you’re finished, you need to thank them yourself.’ I said, ‘Minnie, they’re laughing at me.’ She said, ‘They’re laughing with you.’ So that’s how I started talking on stage.”
As a recording artist, Tillis did not come into his own until 1966 when he charted with “Stateside,” the lament of a homesick serviceman stationed in Japan. The song became one of his signature pieces and led him to name his band the Statesiders.
Tillis put 34 songs in the Billboard country Top 10 - six in the No. 1 position from 1969 to 1981.
By the late 1970s, Tillis parlayed his country boy charm into a second career as character actor. He appeared in the Clint Eastwood comedy “Every Which Way But Loose” (1978) and in several movies with Burt Reynolds, including “Smokey and the Bandit II” (1980) and “The Cannonball Run” (1981). He co-hosted a TV variety show in 1978 with singer and actress Susan Anton.
Tillis was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1976 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2007. President Barack Obama awarded him the National Medal of the Arts in 2012. He co-wrote a memoir, “Stutterin’ Boy” (1984), and served as a longtime spokesman for the Stuttering Foundation of America.