DMR asks “Was Tolkien a Robert E. Howard Fan?” and digs out the slim evidence. It all boils down to what L. Sprague de Camp remembered in 1983 of a snatch of conversation had with Tolkien in a garage in 1967, so it’s pretty slim as evidence goes.

One can also find certain elements that are a good fit. I remember on my complete listen-through of Howard’s Conan in audiobook, a couple of years ago now, that I thought there were about four or five good points of close comparison between one of the really long Conan stories (the novel?) and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s personal reading habits did go in for the more popular easy-to-read end of things, presumably because he spent so much time professionally with more ponderous material. The publication dates / place of publication / date of composition dates all fit together nicely, I seem to remember. The ‘action style’ of writing more or less fits, so there could also have been some stylistic inspiration alongside plot-points.

But we shall never know, now, so it didn’t seem worth writing it up.