Vince Hill, entertainer — April 16, 1934 to July 22, 2023

VINCE HILL, the much-loved singer and entertainer, has died, aged 89.

He passed away peacefully at his home in Shiplake on Saturday, his family said.

Vince was best-known for his cover of the Rodgers and Hammerstein show tune Edelweiss, a song from The Sound of Music.

His version sold a million copies and reached number 2 in the charts in 1967, being held off the top spot by Engelbert Humperdinck.

Vince worked with the leading lights of showbusiness, including Barbara Windsor, Vera Lynn, Tony Christie and Cilla Black.

He was born in Holbrooks, Coventry, in April 1934 and after leaving school had a number of jobs, including a soft drink salesman, an apprentice baker and working in a coal mine.

It was during his spell in the bakery that his singing prowess was noticed by colleagues who heard him singing non-stop during shifts.

His new career began when as a 15-year-old he won a talent contest while on a family holiday in Margate at the aptly named the Prospect pub.

Four years later, he did his National Service with the Royal Corps of Signals after seeing an advertisement calling for a vocalist in the regiment’s band.

Vince recalled: “When I joined, I didn’t know a piccolo from a carrot but by the end I had learned all the instruments and the way musicians work. It was the best experience ever. It was like going to music college for a couple of years.”

After leaving the army he joined a pop group called The Raindrops and met his future wife Annie, who was then 17.

She was working for agent Tito Burns, who looked after Cliff Richard and the Drifters, as they were then known, and singer Dusty Springfield.

After the couple married in 1959, Annie pushed Vince to go solo, saying: “If you don’t leave them soon, I will leave you” so he handed in his notice.

In 1962 he had his first hit with The Rivers Run Dry, which led to TV and radio appearances and brought him to the attention of bigger record labels.

After switching from Piccadilly Records to EMI’s Columbia label in 1965 he went on to have a string of hits.

Vince had his first Top 20 number a year later with Take Me To Your Heart Again.

However, it was the release of Edelweiss that made him a true household name.

The record stayed at number 2 for 17 weeks and went platinum.

Ironically, he nearly didn’t record the song at all. Vince told his agent that he wanted to cover it but was told it wasn’t commercial enough.

Later, his agent called him to say that a signer Ireland had covered it and the single was selling quite well.

Vince recorded his version in one take at the Abbey Road studios made famous by the Beatles.

After the single’s release he waited by the phone for his agent to call about the sales.

Vince recalled: “I expected him to say that I’d sold a couple of hundred but he said, ‘Are you sitting down?’ I thought he was going to say something ghastly but he said we had sold thousands of copies [26,475]. Then it turned out to be phenomenal.”

The song confounded the critics at a time when the era of “flower power” was in full swing and the top 10 was dominated by the Beatles, Petula Clark and Humperdinck.

“It still baffles people,” Vince said. “Edelweiss came out on a Friday and it was in the charts on the Monday. That’s the way things go sometimes.

“A lot of the disc jockeys didn’t like it and couldn’t believe why it was such a success.

“I believe it was in part down to when it was played in the film, when the characters escaped over the mountains. It also sounds like a national anthem and it sticks in people’s heads.”

Vince also had hits with Roses of Picardy (La Vie En Rose), Look Around, Love Letters in the Sand and Importance of Your Love in the Sixties and Seventies.

He also recorded Love Me True for 1966 action film Cast A Giant Shadow, starring Kirk Douglas, and When The World is Ready for Yul Brynner’s 1967 adventure movie The Long Duel.

Unlike many stars of the era, Vince was not one for partying after shows.

He always said: “I want to get in, get on and get off,” often meaning a long drive home after a performance.

This routine would stay with him for life and he never went to bed before midnight. Lunching with Vince normally started no earlier than 3pm.

In all, he released 25 studio albums, performed at Sydney Opera House, the Royal Albert Hall and the London Palladium.

Vince worked with many stars from the Sixties to the Eighties and many became close friends.

He shared digs with the comedian Ken Dodd during a summer season in the West Country.

He was not surprised when Dodd was cleared of tax evasion. Vince said the Liverpudlian was so careless about finances that when cheques arrived for him he didn’t even bother to open the envelopes.

Vince met politicians and royalty. He performed a rendition of Jerry Herman’s Hello, Dolly! with Lulu for Margaret Thatcher before she became prime minister.

They sang Hello Maggie at a Conservative Trade Unionists event in Wembley in April 1979 and he would follow that up by making the 1983 general election campaign song It’s Maggie for Me.

He was later invited to Number 10 where he had tea in the Prime Minister’s private rooms.

It was after Vince performed at a club in London where Princess Margaret was a guest that Annie accused her of flirting with her husband.

Vince was also a friend of George Burns. The American comic was staying at the Ritz Hotel while Vince was in a hotel in Park Lane so he invited him for a drink and said he would send a car for him.

At the specified time, Vince turned up outside his hotel to be confronted by a well-known heavy metal band, which was waiting for a cab.

They criticised Vince for his musical style but were left on the kerb when a Rolls Royce, chartered by Burns, turned up with the number plate VH 1 to whisk him to the Ritz. The number plate was a fake but it shut up the envious rockers.

Vince was also a TV and radio presenter and hosted Vince Hill’s Solid Gold Music Show on Radio 2, They Sold A Million and The Musical Time Machine for the BBC and an ITV chat show called Gas Street.

He also appeared on radio’s Desert Island Discs and TV’s This Is Your Life.

Vince performed in theatre. He was the lion in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Wizard of Oz and as the composer Ivor Novello in My Dearest Ivor.

As he got older, he spent more time at smaller venues and entertaining on cruise ships. During one cruise he met the food writer Marguerite Patten and they became friends.

Vince was already an accomplished chef and had a huge collection of cookbooks.

He loved entertaining and his barbecues were legendary. Sitting on the terrace of his riverside house in Bolney Road, he and Annie would regularly see passenger boats pass by and the musicians on board would launch into a rendition of Edelweiss and the Hills would raise their glasses.

The couple moved from there to a more manageable home in Woodlands Road. It was only a couple of years ago that Vince had a birthday celebration in the garden where he performed for his guests and sang with his friend Anita Harris, the singer and actress.

Vince was made an honorary member of the American town of Lauderdale by the Sea in Florida for charity concerts he had given there.

In later years Vince ate lunch in Henley almost every day. There is probably not a restaurant in the area he hadn’t visited.

He was a member of the Henley Friday Club, a select group of locals who enjoyed lunch and each other’s company.

More recently, he was happier performing to smaller audiences and he put on a sell-out show at the Kenton Theatre.

He was always happy to entertain Henley’s pensioners at the Mayor’s Christmas party in the town hall.

Unfortunately, they didn’t ask him to perform any impersonations. He could mimic many famous names but his masterpiece was his take on Ken Dodd.

Vince was a supporter of the theatre, particularly during the original Kenton for Keeps campaign, where the trustees successfully bought the freehold of the building to safeguard its future.

He performed in an “adult” version of Cinderella at the theatre to raise funds for the Chiltern Centre, of which he was a patron.

Vince supported Henley in Bloom and for several years handed out prizes at its annual awards
ceremony.

He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2004 and a year after he was successfully treated he developed acute myeloid leukaemia, although this was kept under control.

It was this that prompted him to write the book Another Hill to Climb.

Vince’s marriage to Annie was a real-life love story. She died in September 2016 of a degenerative lung condition after more than 50 years of marriage. She was 77.

The couple’s son, Athol, had died suddenly in his sleep in 2014, aged 42.

Last year, Vince lost his voice following a stroke. He had been due to come out of retirement in August for a special one-off performance in Coventry as part of its City of Culture celebrations but was taken ill five days beforehand.

He spent 11 weeks in hospital recovering and lost the movement in his right arm and leg and was unable to speak for a short period.

For a number of years, his home and affairs were admirably looked after by his assistant and housekeeper Pauline Buckett. Vince was most grateful.

He was a master of his craft but, more importantly, a man of great manners, dignity, generosity and kindness. He will be sadly missed by so many.

Richard Reed