For many individuals, Edelweiss shall be for ever related to Christopher Plummer singing it whereas taking part in a guitar within the movie model of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music, however for Vince Hill the track took on a extra explicit significance. His recording of it grew to become his most profitable launch and the signature hit of his profession, reaching No 2 on the UK singles chart in March 1967. His album of the identical title additionally grew to become a High 30 hit.
Hill, who has died aged 89, was already changing into a well-known identify by the point of his success with Edelweiss. Having signed with EMI Columbia in 1965, he had reached No 13 in early 1966 with Take Me to Your Coronary heart Once more, then had a High 30 hit with Heartaches and made the High 40 with Merci Cherie. His profitable streak introduced him additional hits in 1967 with Roses of Picardy (No 13) and Love Letters within the Sand (No 23), and he was again within the High 40 with The Significance of Your Love (1968).
His final look within the singles chart got here with Look Round (And You’ll Discover Me There), which climbed to No 12 in 1971. He additionally launched 10 studio albums beneath his EMI Columbia deal (and an additional 15 for quite a lot of labels), making extra recordings at EMI’s Abbey Street studios than the Beatles.
However Hill was not only a crooner and had a number of strings to his bow. He loved appreciable success as a songwriter, writing usually together with his musical director Ernie Dunstall.
In addition to offering materials for his personal albums and singles B-sides, the duo wrote Why Or The place Or When, which was taken to the highest of the New Zealand charts in 1968 by Mr Lee Grant (actual identify Bogdan Kominowski). Additionally they wrote the title track of the TV and Broadway star Robert Goulet’s 1971 album I By no means Did As I Was Informed, which had featured on Hill’s album of the identical 12 months The Singer… and the Songs.
Eager to ascertain himself as an all-round entertainer, in 1973 Hill grew to become the host of the BBC TV present They Offered a Million, which featured singers together with Gene Pitney, the Hollies, Sacha Distel and Neil Sedaka. The next 12 months Hill recorded Sing a Music of Sedaka, a number of Sedaka’s compositions.
From 1975 to 1977, Hill hosted The Musical Time Machine on BBC Two, delving into well-liked recordings from the previous and the tales behind them. The present featured a novelty gizmo known as Eric (Digital Recall Info Collator), a type of primitive pc that equipped Hill with details and figures concerning the featured songs. In 1988 ITV recruited him because the presenter of the daytime leisure present Fuel Road.
Born in Holbrooks, Coventry, the son of a greengrocer, he attended Hen Lane secondary trendy faculty, leaving at 15 to start his musical profession by singing in native pubs. After successful a expertise contest whereas in Margate on vacation, he took singing classes to profit from his evident vocal expertise – his voice would later be likened to “crushed velvet” – and for a time labored as a coal miner at Coventry Colliery to pay the payments.
Alternative knocked when he noticed an commercial in Melody Maker, searching for a vocalist for the Band of the Royal Corps of Indicators. He auditioned on the band’s base at Catterick in North Yorkshire and was given the job, which enabled him to do his navy nationwide service whereas gaining priceless expertise of performing in Europe and the Center East.
After being discharged, he toured in a manufacturing of Leslie Stuart’s Edwardian musical Floradora, earlier than becoming a member of Teddy Foster’s massive band as singer. He moved right into a extra pop-orientated course with the 4 Others after which the Raindrops, the latter giving him TV and radio publicity, specifically on BBC radio’s Parade of the Pops.
In 1959 he married Annie Davidson, a secretary to the London reserving agent Tito Burns, whose purchasers included Cliff Richard and the Drifters. It was she who urged Hill to turn out to be a solo artist – “if it hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t have left the Raindrops,” he confessed – and he notched up his first chart entry with The River’s Run Dry, launched on Piccadilly Data and which reached 41 in June 1962.
The next 12 months he grew to become a daily visitor on ITV’s Stars and Garters, a spread present set in a fictional pub. Additionally in 1963 Hill bid to be the UK’s entry for the Eurovision Music Contest with A Day on the Seaside, however was pipped by Ronnie Carroll singing Say Fantastic Issues.
Hill was featured on ITV’s This Is Your Life in 1976, although by the Eighties his recording profession had dwindled. He focused on performing dwell on cruise ships and at numerous prestigious venues together with the London Palladium, the Royal Albert Corridor and Sydney Opera Home. In 1982 Hill and Dunstall teamed up with the playwright Alan Plater to put in writing the musical drama Tolpuddle for BBC Radio 4, through which Hill performed the main position of George Loveless. In 1983 he wrote and carried out the track It’s Maggie for Me, in help of Margaret Thatcher’s in the end profitable election marketing campaign.
From 1984 to 1993 he hosted Vince Hill’s Stable Gold Music Present on BBC Radio 2, and in 1990 he took to the stage to play Ivor Novello within the musical My Dearest Ivor, prompting the album Vince Hill Sings the Ivor Novello Songbook.
He printed his autobiography, One other Hill to Climb, co-written with Nick Charles, in 2010. In 2014, his son (and solely little one) Athol died from a heroin overdose aged 42. On the time Hill was nursing his spouse who had pulmonary fibrosis; she died in 2016.
Hill had beforehand been efficiently handled for prostate most cancers and myeloid leukaemia, however from 2011 he suffered from macular degeneration, which brought on the progressive deterioration of his eyesight. He donated the royalties from his 2017 compilation album Legacy: My Hits & Rarities (1965-1974) to the Macular Society, of which he had turn out to be patron.
