<<<< Back to music menu

The Very Best of Ronnie Hilton

Ronnie Hilton was one of the most successful British ballad singers of the 1950s and, unlike many of his contemporaries, he continued to have hits after the arrival of rock?n?roll.

Ronnie Hilton was an important part of 1950s Britain - as the NME noted at the end of that decade, ?Right from the start, he has given us a string of captivating and easily memorised songs, which have had the entire nation whistling and singing?. A well deserved epitaph for one of the great British balladeers.

Hilton's approach owed much to the "nice 'n'easy" style of  Bing Crosby or Eddie Fisher and Perry Como. Together with Michael Holliday his was the kind of voice and style to which youngsters smooched as they edged across those dance floors.

The British singer had made his stage debut as Ronnie Hilton in July 1954, at one of the principal nurseries for his kind of singing, the Dudley Hippodrome. He was so successful that he almost immediately got his first BBC radio series. Along with it came a series of hits for EMI's HMV label.

Veni Vidi Vici and I Still Believe in December 1954 were followed in April 1955 by a cover of Nat "King" Cole's A Blossom Fell - which was a bigger hit for Valentine, a bigger star - and that September came Stars Shine in Your Eyes. In November, Hilton's cover of Mitch Miller's US hit, the Yellow Rose Of Texas brushed the charts - just as Rock Around The Clock went to number one.

What became Hilton's signature tune, No Other Love, was a May 1956 number one and was followed by two more minor hits in 1956, Who Are We and Two Different Worlds. In summer 1957 Hilton's cover of Around The World was a bigger hit than the Bing Crosby original. A decade later there was A Windmill In Old Amsterdam, which eventually sold a million, and became a fixture during decades of Children's Favourites.

Born Adrian Hill in Hull, Hilton left school at 14 and worked in an aircraft factory in the early days of the second world war before being called up into the Highland Light Infantry. Demobbed in 1947, he became a fitter in a Leeds sewing machine plant.

But Hilton had a passion for singing. In the evenings he performed with the Johnny Addlestone band at the Starlight Roof in Leeds and it was there that he was heard by HMV's Walter Ridley. Ridley recommended that he change his name, have an operation for the reconstruction of a hare lip and take up his offer of a recording contract. Hilton accepted all three suggestions and success followed.

He appeared in three Royal Variety Performances. Long after that most successful period in his life, he continued to appear in summer seasons and Christmas shows.

A stroke in 1976 hindered his activities for a time and he was beset with financial problems. In 1989 the British Academy of Song Composers and Authors awarded him its gold medal for services to popular music.

Ronnie died February 21 2001.  His first wife, Joan, died in 1985. His second wife, Chrissy, whom he married in 1989 survives him, as do four children, three from his first marriage.