Z.Z Hill

More than any other artist in the 1980s. singer Z.Z. Hill was most responsible for resurrecting interest in the blues with Southern black audiences and record buyers. Remarkably, his album Down Home spent nearly two years on the black charts in the early 1980s. At the time, Hill's popularity was greater than that of even

B.B. King and other veteran bluesmen, though he was little known to white listeners. Tragically, Hill died in 1984, at the peak of his fame, as the result of injuries suffered in an auto accident.

It wasn't that Hill had created a startling new blues sound; nor, with the exception of "Down Home Blues," which had become one of the most familiar blues songs of the 1980s, was much of what he recorded traditional down-home blues. Hill's music was a soul-blues hybrid. with strong links to Bobby "Blue" Bland. Down Home was the right record at the right time, and was as important an album to the 1980s blues revival as Robert Cray's Strong Persuader and Stevie Ray Vaughan's Texas Flood.

Hill' s earliest musical experiences were in gospel; as a youth he sang in church choirs. After moving to Dallas in 1953 he began playing in bands on the local club circuit. With the arrival of soul music in the early '60s, Hill was greatly influenced by Sam Cooke. He fused soul with blues and recorded for a variety of labels, including United Artists and CBS, with only marginal commercial success. In the late '70s Hill even flirted with disco. It wasn't until he signed on with the Malaco label in 1980 that his career took off like a shot.

Hill's first self-titled album was well received by black record buyers who knew Hill from his many one-nighters on the chitlin' circuit. But Down Home, his second Malaco release, made him a star. It also solidified the financial standing of Malaco and helped make Malaco the contemporary blues label for black blues fans, as Alligator was and remains for whites. In all, Hill made five albums for Malaco from 1980 to 1984. He was forty-nine years old when he died.