In the fifties, Hibbler’s bizarre use of vibrato and dramatic emphasis and his distorted accenting of words (which Duke Ellington described as ‘tonal pantomime’ briefly won him a wide audience. Hibbler rose to fame as a vocalist with the bands of Dub Jenkins, Jay McShann and Ellington with whom he sang for eight years from 1943. While with Ellington he recorded R&B for various labels, including Miracle, Chess, RCA, Columbia and Atlantic (‘Danny Boy’). This last song saw him approaching the elaborate stylings he would employ on his recordings for Decca, the label he joined in 1955.

   He had an immediate million-seller with ‘Unchained Melody’, from the film Unchained (1955), though significantly his mannered rendering was not as popular with the black audience as Roy Hamilton’s version of the song. For two years, Hibbler’s records, all dramatic ballads including ‘He’, ‘11th Hour Melody’, ‘Never Turn Back’ and ‘After the Lights Go Low’ (all 1956), regularly made the Top Forty, before he drifted into obscurity. In the mid-sixties, Hibbler returned briefly to the club circuit in the wake of ‘The Righteous Brothers’ successful blue-eyed soul revivals of ‘Unchained Melody’ and ‘He’.