Z Z HILL

Location:
NEW YORK, UK
Type:
Artist / Band / Musician
Genre:
R&B / Soul / Blues
Label:
MODERN, KENT, ATLANTIC, MALACO, MH, HILL, UA
Type:
Indie
Z Z Hill was born into this world as Arzell Hill on September 30 1935 in Naples Texas USA. In the late fifties he started his professional career singing in the gospel group ‘The Spiritual Five’ who toured around Texas. He soon became highly influenced by the great soul and R+B singers of the day such as BB King, Sam Cooke, Bobby Bland and Freddie King and like many great soul singers he soon dropped the God squad and joined the enemy making and singing the devils music: rythem and blues, which he started to play in local R&B clubs with the bands of Big Bo Thomas and Frank Shelton out around the Texas area. His elder brother Matt Hill a budding record label owner who was working with popular artist of the day Big Daddy Rucker invited his brother to work in Southern California and record on his new MH record Label, the late Otis Redding advised ZZ ‘to give it a shot’ so he packed in his day driving job and headed out. In 1964. Z Z recorded his first record in a LA garage studio, the gritty soul of ‘You were wrong’ flipped with ‘Tomble weed’ released on a 45 became a minor hit, he then recorded another 45 for MH records ‘One way love affair’ flipped with ‘Come on home’ produced by legendary soul producer/ artist, Gene Page, this 45 didn’t sell well and is now a collectable record, getting plays on the UK allnighter scene, infact this 45 may not have even been commercially available and certainly has never turned up in any of ZZs discographys.

Following the success of his first 45 ZZ was soon recording for the Biharis Brothers famed Kent and Modern Labels, but though his output was high releasing many great soul and grit sides commercial success still sadly evaded him. ZZ in an interview about this period stated ‘I would have been hot all over the country if they had been pushing me, because the records were great’ same old story there then.

After Kent he recorded for several labels including Atlantic, Mankind and Hill his brother Matts label, who incidently produced a lot of his work through his long career. In 1972 he was signed to major label United Artists were he cut 3 LPS and had 6 singles all scoring well in the R+B charts. Several fruitful years later and ZZ signed to Columbia records were he scored his biggest hit to date with the 1977 single ‘Love is so good when youre stealing it’. He spent 3 reasonably successful years at this major label, but with the domination of disco music, ZZs soulful, bluesy, down home style must have been really out of vogue and his by now veteran artist status sadly overlooked by over zealous, trendy ass a+r people.

In 1980 a true marriage of brilliance was formed, ZZ signed to Malaco records a independent company who at this time solely concentrated on down home black music and because of this had some great success’s in this field. ZZs second LP ‘Down home blues’ became a monstrous hit selling 500,000 units which was unheard of for a blues LP making it one of the best selling LPs ever in the contempory blues field and it stayed in the LP charts for 2 years. It set the standard for other blues performers and was instrumental in shaping the blues boom /popularity of this music in the 1980s. ZZ was home at last and cut many great sides for this label, winning ‘Blues vocalist of the year award’ in Memphis from The Blues Foundation in 1984.

Sadly his life was tragically cut short by a heart attack on 27 April 1984. We will all miss him and his music, the guy was an inspiration to many.
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