For many people, Edelweiss will be for ever associated with Christopher Plummer singing it while playing a guitar in the film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music, but for Vince Hill the song took on a more particular significance. His recording of it became his most successful release and the signature hit of his career, reaching No 2 on the UK singles chart in March 1967. His album of the same title also became a Top 30 hit.
Hill, who has died aged 89, was already becoming a familiar name by the time 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 Heart Again, then had a Top 30 hit with Heartaches and made the Top 40 with Merci Cherie. His successful streak brought him further hits in 1967 with Roses of Picardy (No 13) and Love Letters in the Sand (No 23), and he was back in the Top 40 with The Importance of Your Love (1968).
His last appearance in the singles chart came with Look Around (And You’ll Find Me There), which climbed to No 12 in 1971. He also released 10 studio albums under his EMI Columbia deal (and a further 15 for a variety of labels), making more recordings at EMI’s Abbey Road studios than the Beatles.
But Hill was not just a crooner and had several strings to his bow. He enjoyed considerable success as a songwriter, writing regularly with his musical director Ernie Dunstall.
As well as providing material for his own albums and singles B-sides, the duo wrote Why Or Where Or When, which was taken to the top of the New Zealand charts in 1968 by Mr Lee Grant (real name Bogdan Kominowski). They also wrote the title song of the TV and Broadway star Robert Goulet’s 1971 album I Never Did As I Was Told, which had featured on Hill’s album of the same year The Singer… and the Songs.
Keen to establish himself as an all-round entertainer, in 1973 Hill became the host of the BBC TV show They Sold a Million, which featured singers including Gene Pitney, the Hollies, Sacha Distel and Neil Sedaka. The following year Hill recorded Sing a Song of Sedaka, a selection of Sedaka’s compositions.
From 1975 to 1977, Hill hosted The Musical Time Machine on BBC Two, delving into popular recordings from the past and the stories behind them. The show featured a novelty gizmo called Eric (Electronic Recall Information Collator), a kind of primitive computer that supplied Hill with facts and figures about the featured songs. In 1988 ITV recruited him as the presenter of the daytime entertainment show Gas Street.
Born in Holbrooks, Coventry, the son of a greengrocer, he attended Hen Lane secondary modern school, leaving at 15 to begin his musical career by singing in local pubs. After winning a talent contest while in Margate on holiday, he took singing lessons to make the most of his evident vocal talent – his voice would later be likened to “crushed velvet” – and for a time worked as a coal miner at Coventry Colliery to pay the bills.
Opportunity knocked when he saw an advertisement in Melody Maker, seeking a vocalist for the Band of the Royal Corps of Signals. He auditioned at the band’s base at Catterick in North Yorkshire and was given the job, which enabled him to do his military national service while gaining priceless experience of performing in Europe and the Middle East.
After being discharged, he toured in a production of Leslie Stuart’s Edwardian musical Floradora, before joining Teddy Foster’s big band as singer. He moved into a more pop-orientated direction with the Four Others and then the Raindrops, the latter giving him TV and radio exposure, in particular on BBC radio’s Parade of the Pops.
In 1959 he married Annie Davidson, a secretary to the London booking agent Tito Burns, whose clients included Cliff Richard and the Drifters. It was she who urged Hill to become 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, released on Piccadilly Records and which reached 41 in June 1962.
The following year he became a regular guest on ITV’s Stars and Garters, a variety show set in a fictional pub. Also in 1963 Hill bid to be the UK’s entry for the Eurovision Song Contest with A Day at the Seaside, but was pipped by Ronnie Carroll singing Say Wonderful Things.
Hill was featured on ITV’s This Is Your Life in 1976, though by the 1980s his recording career had dwindled. He concentrated on performing live on cruise ships and at various prestigious venues including the London Palladium, the Royal Albert Hall and Sydney Opera House. In 1982 Hill and Dunstall teamed up with the playwright Alan Plater to write the musical drama Tolpuddle for BBC Radio 4, in which Hill played the leading role of George Loveless. In 1983 he wrote and performed the song It’s Maggie for Me, in support of Margaret Thatcher’s ultimately successful election campaign.
From 1984 to 1993 he hosted Vince Hill’s Solid Gold Music Show on BBC Radio 2, and in 1990 he took to the stage to play Ivor Novello in the musical My Dearest Ivor, prompting the album Vince Hill Sings the Ivor Novello Songbook.
He published his autobiography, Another Hill to Climb, co-written with Nick Charles, in 2010. In 2014, his son (and only child) Athol died from a heroin overdose aged 42. At the time Hill was nursing his wife who had pulmonary fibrosis; she died in 2016.
Hill had previously been successfully treated for prostate cancer and myeloid leukaemia, but from 2011 he suffered from macular degeneration, which caused 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 become patron.
• Vincent Hill, singer, songwriter and broadcaster, born 16 April 1934; died 21 July 2023
