Dan Hill Biography
Daniel Hill Jnr., 3 June 1954, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Hill achieved success when a soft ballad co-written by Hill and Barry Mann, reached number 3 in 1977, and "Can't We Try", a duet with Vonda Shepard, climbed to number 6 in 1987. His parents moved to Canada during the 50s and Hill discovered music in his teens, gravitating toward vocalists such as Frank Sinatra. Hill became a professional musician at the age of 18, playing at clubs and trying to sell his demo tapes to uninterested record labels. He gradually became popular in Canada, and signed to 20th Century Fox Records in the USA. His self-titled debut album just missed the US Top 100 in 1975 and his first chart single in the US was "Growin' Up", in 1976. But the follow-up introduced Hill to a larger audience. It was the president of the publishing company for which he worked who teamed him with Mann, resulting in the success of "Sometimes When We Touch'. Hill's album, Longer Fuse, which included that single, was also his biggest seller, reaching number 21 in 1977. The Hill-Mann collaboration was followed by a few lesser chart singles for Hill and it seemed he had disappeared from the music scene in the early 80s after recording two albums for Epic Records. In 1987, however, he collaborated with singer Vonda Shepard and returned to the Top 10. Hill placed one further single in the chart in early 1988 and had Top 10 hits in Billboard"s "Adult" chart that year with "Carmelia" and in 1990 with "Unborn Heart".
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.
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