Alex Hill was born near Little Rock, Arkansas, not far from the cradle of classic ragtime and St. Louis, Missouri. He was born to Andrew Henry Hill and his wife Hannah Augusta Dickson, and was the oldest of three brothers, including Andrew Dixon (11/1908) and Henry Solomon (12/1909). It was Andrew's second marriage and Augusta's first. Andrew (he later used Henry) was a pianist and music teacher with a degree from Wilberforce University in Ohio. In the 1910 census he was listed as the president of a college that may have been a seminary. The family was living in Pulaski, Arkansas at that time, a suburb of Little Rock. At some point in the 1910s Andrew became a Methodist-Episcopalian minister. As of the 1920 census the family was residing in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, around 25 miles southeast of Little Rock, with Henry listed as a minister, and Augusta as a school teacher. There is little doubt that Alex and his brothers grew up in a fairly well-regimented and spiritual environment both socially and musically.

In his youth Alex was instructed in piano by his parents and probably another local teacher, reportedly mostly in classical and liturgical styles. However, he had trouble resisting the lure of syncopation as the jazz age approached, and took a different musical direction than his parents had hoped for. Before he was even sixteen, Alex knew much of the popular music of the time and had played wherever he could find in the area for dances or other events. At sixteen he decided to make a career of it and sought a professional band with which he could work. He ended up with several "territory bands," groups that traveled on a circuit within a specified region of the United States playing at small to medium sized dance venues. Among those were the groups of trumpeter Terrence Holder from Kansas City and saxophonist Alvin Waller (possibly Walker) for which virtually no information has been located.

Alex's best early experience was likely with another pianist and band leader, Alphonso Trent, only a few months older and also from Little Rock. His leadership and arranging skills with the Trent Orchestra made him a substantially influential figure for other Negro musicians. With Trent's help, Alex was leading his own band by the time he was 18 in 1924, and may have traveled briefly with Trent to Texas in 1925. Hill soon became the musical director of a traveling revue and worked with them for two seasons, left behind in Los Angeles in 1927 when the troupe disbanded.

This was actually a good place for the young pianist as it helped him get a better foothold in the music business through recording. He worked live and in the studio with Louisiana trumpeter Mutt Carey's and his Jeffersonians, and wrote and arranged for other bands on the West Coast. This encouraged him to relocate to the center of the hot jazz universe at that time, Chicago, Illinois. Relocating there in 1928, Hill went to work right away with artists such as trumpeter Jimmy Wade and his Dixielanders, violinist and bandleader Carroll Dickerson, clarinetist Jerome Pasquall and top notch clarinetist Jimmy Noone and his Apex Club Orchestra.

Alex put his musical training to good use, and secured a job with Walter Melrose's publishing house, where Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton had done some work. He ended up writing arrangements for groups, and even some original compositions. One of those was heard by trumpeter Louis Armstrong who was in New York City by that time, and he ended co-writing and recording Beau-Koo Jack with his Savoy Ballroom Five in 1928. While Melrose got composer credit, it was likely a courtesy to get Hill started, a common practice in the business.

Having already played for a few sessions in 1928 and 1929, Hill got the chance to front his own group for a couple of sessions for the Vocalion label, the "race" branch of Brunswick Records, on March 30, 1929 in Chicago. Of the two tunes recorded that day, the most notable is Stompin' 'em Down, which is evocative of the style of James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. Coincidentally, Waller had just completed his first piano solos for Victor Records around that same time. His Handful of Keys has the same momentum and energy as Stompin' 'em Down, and both can be considered to be late piano rags. Hill's piece actually starts with a minor blues riff before morphing into the 16-bar B section and 32-bar trio. At the end of the year he was offered another session with Vocalion with his orchestra, and they followed up with another set of sides in February, 1930.

It is unclear exactly when Hill moved to New York, given that the last set of recordings was completed in Chicago. Some sources have him there in 1929, and he may have commuted between the two cities for a while. He and his group were also was booked into the top jazz venue at that time, the Savoy Ballroom on Lenox Avenue in Harlem, during the spring. At the end of their engagement some of band returned to Chicago, but Alex and his saxophonist Chu Berry remained in Manhattan. He was fully settled there by mid-1930 and secured a job playing with the band of Sammy Stewart. At the same time, he signed up with publisher Joe Davis in August, 1930, who would exclusively release his compositions until he started writing with Irving Mills.

It was inevitable that Alex would meet up with Waller, and the two teamed up with a forceful duo piano act for the revue Hello 1931 in December 1930 at the Alhambra Theatre. The pair actually wrote some tunes together over the next few years, including the perennially popular I'm Crazy 'Bout My Baby (and My Baby's Crazy 'Bout Me). Alex's skill at crafting lyrics as well as melodies was clearly demonstrated in his songs. It is likely that Waller introduced Hill to lyricist Andy Razaf, and as a team they also turned out a number of fine pieces over the next few years. Hill's talent also got him heard on the radio in New York as a soloist or with his orchestra and rhythm ensemble starting in 1930, with many solo performances on WPCH and WMCA in 1930, plus several evening appearances with his groups on WINS in 1932.

In 1933 Hill participated in a well-documented sessions with guitarist Eddie Condon in which he supported saxophonist Bud Freeman and his legendary track, The Eel. He was also responsible for many of the arrangements recorded, and even some of the compositions. In 1934 Hill was admitted into ASCAP, and found work as a staff arranger with publisher Irving Mills. Working for Mills he provided band charts for most of the big names of that time, ranging from Paul Whiteman and Eddie Condon to Duke Ellington and Benny Carter. His reputation as an arranger, which rivaled that of Fletcher Henderson, who did many of the famous Benny Goodman charts, helped to keep him employed during the Great Depression. The prestige of the Ellington and Whiteman organizations were certainly helpful in maintaining his profile as a first rate instrumental arranger. On at least one occasion in 1935 Alex was asked to step in for Duke to lead the orchestra while Ellington was ill.

The Alex Hill Orchestra eventually grew into a big band as the swing era was underway in 1936, thanks in part to the enormous success of Benny Goodman. He managed to snag a run with his new group at the Savoy, which had long been the domain of diminutive but dynamic drummer Chick Webb. However, within a week Alex found himself unable to stand the rigors of nightly performances and had to disband the group to look after his health. Within a few months, the increasingly infirmed Hill returned home to his family in Arkansas where he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. While an earlier newspaper article from the Baltimore Afro-American of July 21, 1934, noted that Alex was a "perfect figure of physical fitness," and that he believed in "taking full advantage of home comfort by indulging in some of the habits of the Nudist Cult," it also noted that he was smoking "fifty or sixty cigarettes a day." At the time there was little to directly link this habit with lung cancer, but it was evidently a contributing factor to Hill's demise. He also had liver complications from possible excessive drinking during his stay in New York. Alex Hill succumbed to the disease a few weeks before his 31st birthday.

While the legacy he left behind is not enormous, it clearly demonstrates the potential Hill had to become one of the driving forces of the swing era through the mid-1940s. While he may not have possessed the same skill set as the most extraordinary of pianists like Art Tatum, his overall composition and arranging skills made him stand out. That talent was able to break down many barriers, as what we do have of Hill's legacy was fortunately not so severely limited by his race, an issue that so many other promising artists of his time had to endure.