Plant City-born and bred, they just don't make Florida girls like country singer Pam Tillis anymore. Daughter of famed country singer and songwriter, Mel Tillis, Pam rose to musical legend status in her own right.
Raised in Nashville, she first took the stage at the Grand Ole Opry at the age of 8. After a successful jug band career, she dropped out of University of Tennessee and began working at her father’s publishing company writing music. Her songs have been recorded by Gloria Gaynor, Don Ellis, and Chaka Khan to name just a few. Her own musical career took off after signing with Warner Brothers in the early 1980s. After 30 years, several CMA’s and a Grammy, Tillis released Come to Me and Come Lonely featuring Lorrie Morgan last year.
She spoke by phone about finding her Florida roots, how she started writing and what makes a “bitchin’” pair of boots. The Florida-born and Tennessee-made maven takes the stage for Busch Gardens Real Music Series, February 5-10. More information on the shows is available below.
I wanted to ask you some questions about Florida first. Condolences on losing your Dad, he was such a pivotal man in music. He was born in Tampa, and passed away in Ocala. Can you talk about his connection to Florida?
A few years back, I went to my Grandmother’s Duckworth’s funeral in Plant City. Somebody told me for the first time that I was ninth generation Floridian. We moved a lot when I was little and I always felt a little bit rootless from that experience since a young child. But really, I have very deep roots, they’re just not where I grew up. The towns that are just little-bitty rural towns, that’s where we’re from. Daddy was born in Tampa but I was born right there in Plant City. He grew up in Pahokee. Daddy was very much associated with being a son of the South and a Florida boy. When I cross that state line, it’s a feeling that you get. It’s funny, when my husband and I first started dating years ago, he wanted to take me to Florida for my birthday. And he wanted to go to “Panama City,” I said, “uh, I don’t think so.” We ended up going to Apalachicola!
What were your early memories of the Florida you remember as a child?
I was just talking about that to my road manager because he wanted to see an alligator. We used to live in Groveland and there was nothing around. We were 14 miles at the time from the nearest grocery store. We lived in the middle of orange groves. I just remember snapping turtles, alligators, snakes and mosquitoes were our neighbors. I remember fishing in those little lakes with the cane pole, fishing for bluegill. It was just raw, it was a raw land.
You had probably one of the last florida experiences like that.
I know the look in Daddy’s eyes when he was talking about how it used to be. Plant City was Mayberry; the Everglades, he just said it was paradise.
What was the music you were listening to when you were growing up?
Well Daddy, before he made it as an entertainer, he was a staff songwriter. He would bring in the popular music of the day, both country and pop, because they would be writing songs for the big artists. A lot of people that we think of as a country artists were actually crossover artists. So I grew up on our stereo with Patsy Cline, Everly Brothers, and he had songs recorded by both of them. There was Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, the Beatles.
How did you start writing your own music?
Well, because I grew up around songwriters I really thought everybody wrote songs. I really did. I didn’t know people didn’t write songs. So I never was afraid of it, and I just started making up songs as a little girl. Daddy had a different way, his way of writing and there’s probably other people out there like this but not everybody. Daddy would work on something just while he was walking around the house, driving around in the car. He would be singing the song over and over to himself, making it up in his head before he sat down and committed it to paper.
Did your Dad give you advice about how to go about writing songs?
One of the first things I remember him telling me as a singer, was he got a kick out of the fact I could mimic people. But long term he said that was not the way to go. He said, “you gotta sing like you sing, you can’t copy other people.”
Your dad dropped out of UF to pursue music, was he surprised when you did the same in Tennessee?
I don’t think he was surprised. I’ve said it many times, I wish I’d finished school. That’s one of my few bigger regrets, I wish I hadn’t been in that big of a hurry. However, I got a lot of great experience just getting out there and doing it. You really have to do both but it wouldn’t have hurt me to stay in school for three more years.
Put Yourself in My Place was a big break in 1991, I didn’t notice until I listened to it today but a lot of it sounds like old folk music…
Yeah, it’s funny because I’ll tell you what I set out to do. I set out to make a more traditional country record but I can’t do anything just straight. I did have folk and folk country. If you think about early Crystal Gayle or Doc Williams, there’s a lot of folk in that. A lot of late 60s and early 70s country had folk in it. Oh gosh, it’s so fun to talk about the roots.
This is not a music question…I was just curious, how many pairs of cowboy boots do you have? Do you have a favorite pair?
Not as many as you’d think. I’ve always had a rose motif in a lot my albums, on every album there’s a rose song and I don’t know why. I’ve got a black pair with beautiful red roses on it and then I’ve got a black pair with little white hearts that I wore on the cover of my All this Love album. Those are two of my favorites. I used to really stomp around on stage in the boots but I think the older I got and as mature women we fill out a little bit, I started getting into the heels to make me look taller. If somebody would make a pair of really bitchin’ high-heeled cowboy boots, I’d be real happy.
What music have you been listening to of late? What are you looking forward to as an artist?
I’m mentoring a few young acts. I like to go back through the archives of old music and listen all kinds of decades of music and try to help them find material. Please don’t just cover stuff that’s on the radio now. In classical music they’ve gotta go all the way back to Beethoven. In blues music they’re listening to Muddy Waters. In jazz music they’re listening to Miles Davis. Country music is one of the few genres where people just get hung up. I’m flattered that a lot of kids are pulling from my era, the 1990s, but I want people to know about Mel Tillis and I want them to go back to Merle Haggard. Just dig deep.
