New York, NY (Top40 Charts) The daughter of country legend Mel Tillis, Pam Tillis made her own way in the music business, eventually becoming a contemporary country star in the '90s. Tillis was born on July 24, 1957, in Plant City, Florida, but raised mostly in Nashville, and started taking piano lessons at age eight. She switched to guitar at 12 and played in talent contests during her teenage years. Somewhat wild and rebellious, she survived a near-fatal car crash at age 16 that required extensive facial reconstruction. Fortunately, she fully recovered and pursued music aggressively at the University of Tennessee, singing with the High Country Swing Band (which played country-rock and jug band music) and in a folk duo with Ashley Cleveland.
She quit school in 1976 and worked at her father's publishing company, placing her composition "I'll Meet You on the Other Side of the Morning" with
Barbara Fairchild. She also formed her own backing band, which soon relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area and renamed themselves Freelight; they developed an adventurous style based on jazz and rock, not country. Tillis returned to Nashville in 1979, though, and sang backup for her father while raising her first child as a single parent, fronting an R&B band and continuing to write songs, a couple of which were recorded by
Gloria Gaynor and Chaka Khan.
Tillis performed regularly at Nashville's Bluebird Cafe with several other female singer/songwriters and landed a deal with Warner Bros in the early '80s. She released one album, the pop-oriented Above and Beyond the Doll of Cutey, in 1983 and had her first chart single the following year with "Goodbye Highway." Several more singles were released through 1987, but none managed to make the Top 50; even so, Tillis was making her name as a songwriter for Tree Publishing, with compositions recorded by Highway 101 and Conway Twitty, among others. In 1989, the same year she acted in a Tennessee production of Jesus Christ Superstar, she landed a new deal with Arista. Tillis released her label debut, Put Yourself in My Place, in 1991, and the lead single, "Don't Tell Me What to Do," raced into the Top Five, giving Tillis her long-awaited breakthrough. Of the album's five total singles, "One of Those Things" and "Maybe It Was Memphis" made the Top Ten (as did the album). 1992's Homeward Looking
Angel was an equally successful follow-up, with "Shake the Sugar Tree" and "Let That Pony Run" both making the Top Five.
