Photo courtesy Texas Music Museum (1914----) Birthplace: Ryan, Oklahoma, moved to Post, Texas at age of 3 months Genre: Country Western Influenced: Major contributor to the honky-tonk style, influenced many singers, including Lefty Frizzell and Willie Nelson

The youngest of eleven children born to a sharecrop-farming family, Floyd Tillman can't call himself a native Texan--he arrived in Post, Texas, at the age of three months. But his musical life is Texas through and through. Tillman learned to play the banjo and mandolin growing up in Post, but turned to the guitar in his teens. In 1933, just 18 years old, Tillman joined the San Antonio-based classic German-Czech swing band of Adolf Hofner, one of the most beloved Texas dance bands of the time. The restless teenager soon left for Houston, however, where he found a job with the successful dance band of Mack Clark and tried his hand at songwriting. "It Makes No Difference Now" was deemed "too hillbilly" by the Houston sophisticates (though it was later a major hit for both Gene Autry and Bing Crosby). Tillman's musical inclinations led him to audition as lead singer for the Blue Ridge Playboys, led by fiddler Leon Selph. Pappy Selph's band had among its members some of the originators of the Texas honky-tonk style, including steel guitarist Ted Daffan (whose song credits include "Worried Mind," "I'm a Fool for You," and the perennial classic "Born to Lose"), and pianist Moon Mullican, who was later billed as "the king of the hillbilly piano players."

Tillman served in the Army Air Corps during World War II then returned to front his own band in the Houston area after his discharge. But in 1944 he managed to work in a number 1 hit, "They Took the Stars Out of Heaven." The post-war years proved to be the most successful of Tillman's career as the songs he wrote became hits, not just for himself but for many others. "I Love You So Much It Hurts," with its achingly slow waltz rhythm, is a honky-tonk dancing classic, as is his 1949 shocker "Slippin' Around," said to be the first country song to speak openly of adultery. "Slippin Around" was a million-seller for Tillman, but it was an even bigger hit for pop singers Margaret Whiting and Jimmy Wakely. Over the years other country artists have covered it with great success, starting with Ernest Tubb and Texas Jim Robertson in 1950 to Mack Abernathy in 1988.

Although his last country hit was in 1960 ("It Just Tears Me Up,") Tillman has done much memorable work over the years. His 1982 album Floyd Tilmann and Friends featured appearances by such past collaborators and admirers as Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson, who have been influenced by his style, and as late as 1993 he played for a TNN special on The Texas Connection, which showed his skills to be undiminished by time.