Eddie Hill
“Smilin’” Eddie Hill (1921–1994) was a singer, guitarist and bandleader from East Tennessee who became a well-known country disc jockey on WSM in Nashville. Between 1947 and 1959 he recorded for Apollo, Decca, Mercury, RCA Victor, Columbia and smaller labels, with sidemen who included the Louvin Brothers, Johnnie and Jack, Paul Buskirk and Chet Atkins, and he was an early inductee into the Country Music Disc Jockey Hall of Fame.
He was born James Edward Hill on 21 July 1921 in Delano, Tennessee, one of eight children. His father played the fiddle and his grandfather the banjo, and his father and a banjo-playing uncle played for local dances. Eddie took up the guitar, and later the bass as well, and formed a string band in his teens. Late in the 1930s he won a talent contest in Chattanooga; the prize was $15, and the performance brought an offer from the local station WDOD, which he turned down because it did not include his band. He soon found a place at WROL in Knoxville, where his father had moved to work in a cotton mill, and from there he moved up to WNOX and its popular Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round, a show whose house band played jazz and whose cast included many swing-minded string players, Chet Atkins among them.
In September 1941, back from Asheville, North Carolina, he added the singer and fiddler Leon Scott and Claude Boone, both former Decca and Bluebird recording artists, to his group, pairing a Southeastern harmony duo with his more polished string band. That formula carried into his later work with Johnnie and Jack and the Louvin Brothers. In 1943 he teamed up with Johnnie Wright and Kitty Wells, and Eddie Hill and his Mountain Boys became Eddie Hill and the Tennessee Hillbillies; late in 1944 the group was Hill, Wright, Wells, the mandolin player Ernest Ferguson and the fiddler Marion Sumner. In March 1945 Hill left for a screen test in Hollywood and spent more than half a year there, although he made no films at the time.
His recording career began in New York City on 25 March 1947, at an Apollo session by Johnnie and Jack and their Tennessee Mountain Boys, where Hill recited, sang lead and played bass; “Lord, Watch O’er My Daddy” and “There’s No Housing Shortage in Heaven” were credited to Wright, Anglin and Hill. Around June 1947 the same musicians backed him in Atlanta on “I Never See My Baby Alone” and “The Little Shirt My Mommy Made for Me,” and on 18 and 19 December 1947 he recorded at Castle Studio in Nashville’s Tulane Hotel as Smilin’ Eddie Hill and His Boys, with Charlie and Ira Louvin, Paul Buskirk on mandolin, Billy Ross on steel and Tony Cianciola on accordion. Those sessions produced “(Shake That Little Foot) Sally Ann,” the instrumental “Melting Steel,” “A Hard Road to Travel,” “Someday You’ll Call My Name,” which he co-wrote, and “Alabama,” written with the Louvins. Decca recorded him at Castle on 22 August 1949, with Dale Potter on fiddle and Paul Cohen producing, on “Afraid,” “Mind Your Own Business” and “Bless Your Little Thumpin’ Gizzard.”
His records for Mercury began on 2 July 1951 with a session that had Chet Atkins and Hank Garland on guitars and Buskirk on mandolin and produced “Steamboat Stomp,” “Educated Fool” and “The Hot Guitar,” his best-known record, although it did not reach the national charts. That December he cut a sequel, “Cold, Cold Woman (The Hot Guitar),” with “Mountain Jam” and “Fire Ball Eight,” and his later Mercury sides included “Salty Dog Rag” (1952) and “Buckshot” (1953). His music mixed hard-country novelty with country jazz and, later, rhythm and blues and rock and roll, and before he moved to Nashville in 1952 he led two bands in Memphis.
In Nashville he became a disc jockey on WSM, the Grand Ole Opry’s station, and held the job for years. He recorded for RCA Victor in 1954 and 1955: in New York with Steve Sholes producing in January 1954, in Nashville with Atkins on guitar that February and September, and, with Atkins producing, “Smack Dab in the Middle” in April 1955 and “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots,” with the Anita Kerr Singers, that September. For Columbia, under Don Law, he cut “Unredeemed Diamonds” and “I’m Worried” as the Eddie Hill Trio in July 1956 and “Wild Cat” in December 1957. In 1958 he made a U.S. Air Force Country Music Time program of western swing standards such as “San Antonio Rose” and “Milk Cow Blues,” and in 1959 he recorded “Move Over” with Billie Morgan for Starday and a single for University. On television he hosted the early-morning Country Junction on WLAC-TV, taking over from Whitey Ford, the Duke of Paducah, who had begun the show in 1958.
Hill died on 18 January 1994. Bear Family gathered thirty-four of his recordings, among them several that had never been issued, on The Hot Guitar – Gonna Shake This Shack Tonight in 2007.
