Thomas Paul "Tompall" Glaser (September 3, 1933 – August 12, 2013) was an American country singer who was a key figure in the 1970s outlaw country movement.[2]
Biography
Glaser was born in Spalding, Nebraska, the son of Alice Harriet Marie (née Davis) and Louis Nicholas Glaser.[3][4] He was raised on a farm along with his brothers Jim and Chuck. Growing up, Glaser and his brothers performed music in local venues and radio stations.[5]
In the 1950s, he recorded as a solo artist. He later formed a trio with brothers Chuck and Jim called Tompall & the Glaser Brothers.[3] In 1957, he and his brothers performed on Arthur Godfrey's television show.[5] They also shared the bill with Patsy Cline at The Mint casino in Las Vegas, from November to December 1962.
Tompall co-produced Waylon Jennings's influential 1973 album Honky Tonk Heroes, considered to be one of the first albums of the outlaw period.[6]Honky Tonk Heroes has been called a "milestone album in the breaking of the Nashville studio/recording system, a true watershed event in the music business."[6]
In the 1970s his Nashville recording studio Glaser Sound Studios, dubbed "Hillbilly Central," was considered the nerve center of the nascent outlaw country movement.[2] Glaser ran the studio with his brothers and gave musicians control over what they recorded instead of their producers, unlike other Nashville studios of the time.[2] Among the groundbreaking albums recorded at his studio were John Hartford's Aereo-Plain and Waylon Jennings' Dreaming My Dreams.[5]
Glaser and his brothers also ran a music publishing company that allowed songwriters to retain ownership and control of their material, which was also unusual for the time period.[2]
Glaser died on August 12, 2013, in Nashville, Tennessee, at the age of 79, after a long illness.[7] He was survived by his wife, June Johnson Glaser. His brother, Jim, died of a heart attack on April 6, 2019, at the age of 81. His brother, Chuck, died two months later on June 10, 2019, at the age of 83.
