Glaser was born in Spalding, Nebraska, the son of Alice Harriet Marie (née Davis) and Louis Nicholas Glaser. He was raised on a farm. In the 1950s, he recorded as a solo artist. He later formed a trio with brothers Chuck and Jim called Tompall & the Glaser Brothers. Tompall Glaser’s highest-charting solo single was Shel Silverstein’s “Put Another Log on the Fire”, which peaked at No. 21 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles (now Hot Country Songs) charts in 1975. He appeared with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Jessi Colter on the album Wanted! The Outlaws. In the 1970s his Nashville recording studio, dubbed “Hillbilly Central,” was considered the nerve center of the nascent Outlaw country movement. Glaser, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson were central figures in that movement.

Glaser died on August 13, 2013 in Nashville, Tennessee, at the age of 79, after a long illness. He was survived by his wife, June Johnson Glaser. His brother, Jim, died of a heart attack on April 6, 2019, at the age of 81. His brother, Chuck, died two months later on June 10, 2019, at the age of 83. On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Tompall Glaser among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.