{"id":23842,"date":"2013-08-15T14:00:59","date_gmt":"2013-08-15T19:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whisnews21.com\/?p=23842"},"modified":"2013-08-15T14:00:59","modified_gmt":"2013-08-15T19:00:59","slug":"thomas-paul-tompall-glaser-singer-songwriter-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/2013\/08\/15\/thomas-paul-tompall-glaser-singer-songwriter-dies\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Paul \u201cTompall\u201d Glaser Singer Songwriter Dies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tompallglaser01\"<\/b>
\nThomas Paul \u201cTompall\u201d Glaser<\/b> \u2014 a staunchly independent singer, songwriter, studio owner, publisher and recording artist and a central figure in country music\u2019s much-vaunted \u201cOutlaw Movement\u201d of the 1970s \u2014 died Tuesday at his Nashville home after a long illness. Mr. Glaser, who was featured on \u201cWanted! The Outlaws,\u201d country music\u2019s first million-selling album, was 79.
\nMr. Glaser was an unabashed rebel in a company town. He and brothers Chuck and Jim owned the 19th Avenue South studio formally known as Glaser Brothers Sound Studios but commonly called \u201cHillbilly Central,\u201d where groundbreaking works including\u00a0John Hartford<\/a>\u2019s \u201cAereo-Plain\u201d and\u00a0Waylon Jennings<\/a>\u2019 \u201cDreaming My Dreams\u201d were recorded. Populated by a gang of misfits including Mr. Glaser, Waylon Jennings, Billy Ray Reynolds, Roger \u201cCaptain Midnight\u201d Schutt and others, Hillbilly Central was a kingdom unto its own.
\n\u201cThat building was a fortress,\u201d said Glaser Sound secretary and publicist Hazel Smith, in Michael Bane\u2019s book \u201cOutlaws: Revolution In Country Music.\u201d \u201cIt was a place where they could go and hide. It was home to them, and there were no Picasso\u2019s on the wall.\u201d
\nThe Hillbilly Central scene reached its pop peak in 1976, when RCA Records released \u201cWanted! The Outlaws,\u201d featuring Mr. Glaser, Jennings, Willie Nelson and Jessi Colter. That album, a cobbled-together work featuring previously released material from each of the four artists, topped country charts and solidified the singers\u2019 reputation as \u201coutlaws,\u201d a term meant to convey idiosyncratic artistry rather than actual lawlessness. But by 1976, Mr. Glaser and the other \u201coutlaws\u201d were well known in Music City for their restless creativity and for their night-owl habits.
\n\u201cI discovered two principles of Glaser nightlife,\u201d wrote journalist Dave Hickey in 1973. \u201cFirst, no pinball machine is passed by unplayed, and, secondly, any establishment which possesses a pinball machine hasn\u2019t much luck in trying to close while Tompall is playing the machine.\u201d
\nMr. Glaser was born in Spalding, Neb., and was raised on a Nebraska farm. He and his brothers sang on local radio and in area venues and, in 1957, on Arthur Godfrey\u2019s network television show.
\nIn 1959, the brothers came to Nashville at the request of singing star Marty Robbins, who hired them to sing harmony vocals at his concert and signed them to his own Robbins Records. The Glasers also toured withJ ohnny Cash<\/a>\u00a0and sang harmonies on recordings such as Cash\u2019s \u201cRing Of Fire,\u201d\u00a0Roy Orbison<\/a>\u2019s \u201cLeah\u201d and Robbins\u2019 \u201cEl Paso.\u201d
\nAs Tompall & The Glaser Brothers, the vocal trio recorded a series of country singles, aided by producer Cowboy Jack Clement<\/a>, and in 1966 Bobby Bare had a major hit with \u201cStreets Of Baltimore,\u201d a song written by Mr. Glaser and Harlan Howard. \u201cStreets Of Baltimore\u201d would later be covered by\u00a0Charley Pride,<\/a>\u00a0The Statler Brothers<\/a>,\u00a0Gram Parsons<\/a>,\u00a0Nanci Griffith<\/a>\u00a0and dozens of others.
\nThe brothers Glaser also established a publishing business beginning in 1962, handling songs including Gary Puckett & the Union Gap\u2019s \u201cWoman, Woman\u201d (co-written by Jim Glaser) and Hartford\u2019s mega-successful \u201cGentle On My Mind.\u201d
\nMoney earned from publishing such hits helped to build Glaser Sound Studios, which opened in 1970, the same year the Glaser Brothers were voted the Country Music Association\u2019s top vocal group. In 1971, the brothers scored a No. 7 country hit with \u201cRings,\u201d but the group disbanded in 1973 and Mr. Glaser embarked on a solo career. By then, Mr. Glaser and Jennings had become close friends and business partners, bound by shared affinities for music and pinball and by a shared disdain for convention.
\n\u201cBefore Waylon and Tompall got together, they didn\u2019t know there was anybody else like them,\u201d Smith told author Michael Streissguth for his book, \u201cOutlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris And The Renegades Of Nashville. \u201cI think both of them secretly thought they might be crazy. They\u2019d both been going their own way alone for so long, it never even entered their minds that somebody else might feel the same way about country music and Nashville.\u201d
\nMr. Glaser and Jennings co-produced Jennings\u2019 landmark \u201cHonky Tonk Heroes\u201d album, released in the summer of 1973 and featuring nine songs penned by Billy Joe Shaver. They shared a vision of musicians operating independently, outside of the traditional Music Row systems. And they starred together on \u201cWanted! The Outlaws.\u201d But the men fell out over a publishing dispute, and Mr. Glaser rejoined his brothers in 1980, signing with Elektra Records and notching a No. 2 hit with\u00a0Kris Kristofferson<\/a>\u2019s \u201cLovin\u2019 Her Was Easier (Than Anything I\u2019ll Ever Do Again).\u201d
\nThe regrouping was brief, and the brothers called it quits in 1982. Mr. Glaser recorded another solo album in 1986, then sold Hillbilly Central and retreated from the public eye.
\nA private family memorial is being planned. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the American Diabetes Association.
\nBy Peter Cooper Sent in by Marty Martel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Paul \u201cTompall\u201d Glaser \u2014 a staunchly independent singer, songwriter, studio owner, publisher and recording artist and a central figure in country music\u2019s much-vaunted \u201cOutlaw Movement\u201d of the 1970s \u2014 died Tuesday at his Nashville home after a long illness. Mr. Glaser, who was featured on \u201cWanted! The Outlaws,\u201d country music\u2019s first million-selling album, was 79. Mr. Glaser was an unabashed rebel in a company town. He and brothers Chuck and Jim owned the 19th Avenue South studio formally known as Glaser Brothers Sound Studios but commonly called \u201cHillbilly Central,\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23842"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}