Born on March 21, 1917 in Tulsa, OK, Sam Hinton grew up primarily in Texas and balanced his early studies in zoology at Texas A&M with paid singing engagements after completing high school. His 1936 victory on Major Bowes' Amateur Hour prompted him to abandon campus life for a national tour with the Bowes company; three years afterward he established residence in Los Angeles, enrolled at UCLA, and secured a part in the stage musical Meet the People that also featured then-unknown performers Virginia O'Brien and Nanette Fabray. Upon receiving his degree in 1940, he assumed leadership of the Desert Museum in Palm Springs; in 1943 he advanced to curator at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography on the University of California at San Diego campus, yet maintained an active performance schedule that included a 1947 Library of Congress album titled Buffalo Boy and the Barnyard Song.
His debut commercial release, the Columbia single "Old Man Atom," appeared in 1950, followed by numerous children's singles on Decca and his initial long-player, Folk Songs of California, in 1952. Three subsequent Decca albums—Singing Across the Land (1955), A Family Tree of Folk Songs (1956), and The Real McCoy (1957)—preceded two Folkways projects, Whoever Shall Have Some Peanuts (1961) and The Wandering Folksong (1967). Academic responsibilities remained paramount; from 1948 onward he instructed UCSD classes in biology and folklore, hosted a thirteen-episode folk-music series for National Educational Television, and contributed the recurring column The Ocean World to The San Diego Union. He also collaborated on the marine-science volumes Exploring Under the Sea and Common Seashore Animals of Southern California. Hinton passed away in Northern California on September 10, 2009, at age 92.
