***This Week in Texas Music History is brought to you by Brane Audio***
By Jason Mellard from the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University.
On September 30, 1935, blues singer Arzell “Z. Z.” Hill was born in Naples in northeast Texas. Like many artists who made their names combining the best of soul and blues, Hill’s start came in gospel, performing in Naples’ Gethsemane Baptist Church and creating his first group The Spiritual Five. After graduating high school, Hill moved to Dallas and began gigging in secular settings. In 1963, Hill headed west, recording his first single, “You Were Wrong,” for his brother’s San Diego-based label M. H. It popped up on the Billboard charts for just one week, but there was much more success to come. In the 1970s, Hill recorded for United Artists and Columbia, forging a smooth soul-blues hybrid over disco-friendly rhythms in a manner that blues historian Alan Govenar compares to fellow Texan (by way of Arkansas) Johnnie Taylor.
Like Taylor, too, Hill’s career owed much to the influence of Soul Stirrer Sam Cooke. And like Cooke, Hill rooted himself in Southern tradition while adapting to shifting styles in popular music. By the early 1980s, when Hill signed with Malaco Records, that shifting style happened to be back to traditional Texas roots, and Hill answered the call with the 1982 album Down Home Blues. It was the pinnacle of his commercial success and an often-overlooked artifact in the cresting Texas blues revival of the decade. The album’s title track would be on the Billboard charts for ninety-two weeks, a long way from the flash in the pan success of Hill’s debut single. Hill produced a second album for Malaco, Bluesmaster, in 1984. He toured to collect his laurels, especially in his home territory of Texas. On April 23, 1984, Z. Z. Hill had a celebrated homecoming concert at Dallas’s historic Longhorn Ballroom, and it’s a lucky thing he did. He passed unexpectedly just days later due to complications from a car accident earlier in the year.
Sources:
Alan Govenar, Texas Blues: The Rise of a Contemporary Sound. College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2008.
Juan Carlos Rodriguez in Laurie E. Jasinski, Gary Hartman, Casey Monahan, and Ann T. Smith, eds. The Handbook of Texas Music. Second Edition. Denton, TX: Texas State Historical Association, 2012.
Media:
Z. Z. Hill, “Down Home Blues” in New Orleans, 1983
