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Christopher Hillman (born December 4, 1944, Los Angeles, California) was one of the original members of The Byrds in 1965 with Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby, and Michael Clarke.
Along with frequent collaborator Gram Parsons, Chris Hillman was a key figure in the development of country rock, virtually defining the genre through his seminal work in The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, and later became the leader of the country act Desert Rose Band.
Chris Hillman, the youngest of four children, spent his early years on his family`s ranch home in rural North San Diego County, approximately 110 miles from Los Angeles. He has credited his older sister with exciting his interest in country and folk music when she returned from college in the late 1950s with folk music records by The New Lost City Ramblers and others. Hillman soon began watching many of the country music shows broadcast on local television in southern California at the time, such as Town Hall Party, Spade Cooley and Cal`s Corral. Hillman`s mother encouraged his musical interests, and bought him his first guitar, but shortly after he developed an interest in bluegrass, and fell in love with the mandolin. When he was barely 15, Hillman went to Los Angeles to see legendary bluegrass band the Kentucky Colonels at the Ash Grove, and later convinced his family to allow him to take the train by himself up to Berkeley, California to take lessons from mandolinist Scott Hambly. It was around this time that Hillman`s father committed suicide.
Hillman became well known in San Diego`s folk music community as a solid player, which garnered him an invitation to join his first band, the Scottsville Squirrel Barkers. The band lasted barely two years and only recorded one album, Bluegrass Favorites, which was distributed in supermarkets, but has earned a legendary, albeit posthumous, reputation as the spawning ground for a number of musicians who went on to play in the Eagles, the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Byrds, Hearts and Flowers, and the Country Gazette. When the band broke up at the end of 1963, Hillman received an invitation to join the Golden State Boys, then regarded as the top bluegrass band in Southern California, featuring future country star Vern Gosdin, his brother Rex, and banjoist Don Parmley (later of the Bluegrass Cardinals). Shortly thereafter the band changed its name to The Hillmen, and soon Chris was appearing regularly on television and using a fictitious ID, "Chris Hardin," to allow the underage musician into the country bars where many of his gigs were held. When the Hillmen folded, he briefly joined a spinoff of Randy Sparks` New Christy Minstrels known as the Green Grass Revival.
At this point a frustrated Hillman considered quitting music and enrolling at UCLA, but he received an offer from The Hillmen`s former manager and producer Jim Dickinson to join Jim (later Roger) McGuinn, David Crosby, Gene Clark and Michael Clarke in a new band the Byrds. Hillman was recruited to play electric bass guitar. Although he had never picked up the instrument before, thanks to his bluegrass background he was able to quickly develop his own unique, melodic performance style. Their first single, a jangly cover of Bob Dylan`s "Mr. Tambourine Man," was a tremendous hit which marked the birth of "folk rock". During the mid-`60s, the Byrds ranked as one of the most successful and influential American pop groups, recording a string of hits like
Biography Credit: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hillman
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Underlying everything is a country-folk foundation. You`re not going to see us do a Metallica or Snoop Dogg song.
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