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Keith Whitley
Swaye
Moderator, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 41,060
I was going through my Dad's old garage CDs and mixed in with all the Don Williams, Merle Haggard (his favorite) and Willie Nelson, was a Keith Whitley CD. Really made some serious memories come back of the soundtrack of my youth. Trips to the deer lease in our giant GMC Jimmy in the late 80's with this on loop the whole trip. Keith Whitley was fantastic, and so easily forgotten because of how short his career was (84-89). Dead of acute alcohol poisoning at 33 years old. Anyway, really made me think of my Dad.
edit: This is what a country stars voice should sound like. Not 90% of the bullshit that passes for country now. You can actually feel the pain in this voice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rF_jr4RGe0
edit: This is what a country stars voice should sound like. Not 90% of the bullshit that passes for country now. You can actually feel the pain in this voice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rF_jr4RGe0
Comments
@RuffaloSoldier
That's some Injun level firewater poisoning.
Ts and Ps.
@BennyBeaver
People forget Keith Whitley was banging/married to Lorrie Morgan when she was pretty f'ing hot.
She still has a pretty nice rack for an older gal. #gravity
Keith Whitley
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Keith Whitley
Whitley performing in 1988
Whitley performing in 1988
Background information
Birth name Jesse Keith Whitley
Born July 1, 1954
Ashland, Kentucky, U.S.
Origin Sandy Hook, Kentucky, U.S.
Died May 9, 1989 (aged 34)
Goodlettsville, Tennessee, U.S.
Genres Country
Occupation(s) Singer
Instruments Guitar, vocals
Years active 1970–1989
Labels RCA Records
Associated acts Clinch Mountain Boys
Lorrie Morgan
Jesse Keith Whitley[1] (July 1, 1954 – May 9, 1989) was an American country music singer. During his career, Whitley recorded only two albums but charted 12 singles on the Billboard country charts, and 7 more after his death.
Born in Ashland, Kentucky, Whitley grew up in nearby Sandy Hook, Kentucky. Whitley began his career there in 1970, performing in Ralph Stanley's band. Establishing himself as a lead singer in bluegrass music, Whitley moved to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1983 and began his recording career there. His first Top 20 Country Hit single, "Miami, My Amy", was released in 1986. In 1988, his first three singles from his studio album Don't Close Your Eyes, the title song, "When You Say Nothing at All" and "I'm No Stranger to the Rain" were number one hits. Years of alcoholism severely compromised his health and he died of alcohol intoxication in 1989 at his Goodlettsville home at the age of 34. His later singles, "I Wonder Do You Think of Me", "It Ain't Nothin'", and "I'm Over You", were released after his death.
Contents
1 Early life
2 Musical career
3 Death
4 Posthumous releases
5 Discography
6 References
Early life
Whitley was born to Faye Ferguson (editor of The Elliott County News) and Elmer Whitley (an electrician) in Ashland, Kentucky, but was raised 46 miles away in Sandy Hook, and attended Sandy Hook High School.[2][3] He had two brothers, Randy and Dwight, and a sister, Mary.[4][5] The Whitley family is of English and Scots-Irish descent and has lived in the Elliott County area since the 1840s.
While Whitley was a teenager in Sandy Hook, he and his friends would pass the time drinking bootleg bourbon and racing their cars down mountain roads at dangerous speeds. Whitley was once in a car whose driver attempted to round a curve at 120 miles per hour (190 km/h). The car wrecked, killing his friend and almost breaking Whitley's neck. In another incident, he drove his car off a 120-foot (37 m) cliff into a frozen river, escaping with only a broken collar bone.[6]
Whitley lost his brother Randy in an October 1983 motorcycle accident, and his father Elmer.[2][4]
Musical career
Whitley is known for his neotraditional brand of country popularized by hit artists such as George Strait and Randy Travis.
In 1969 he performed in a musical contest in Ezel, Kentucky, with brother Dwight on five-string banjo. Ricky Skaggs was also in the contest. Skaggs and Whitley hit it off right away and quickly befriended each other.[7]
Fifteen-year-old Whitley and 16-year-old Skaggs were discovered in Ft. Gay, West Virginia, by Ralph Stanley who was 45 minutes late for a show due to a flat tire.[citation needed] Stanley opened the door of the club and heard what he thought were the Stanley Brothers playing on a jukebox. However it was Whitley and Skaggs, who "sounded just like me and Carter in the early days".[citation needed] The two soon joined Ralph's band. Whitley became lead singer for Stanley in 1974.[citation needed] Whitley also played with J.D. Crowe & the New South in the mid-1970s.[6] During this period, he established himself as one of the most versatile and talented lead singers in bluegrass. His singing was heavily influenced by Carter Stanley and Lefty Frizzell. He moved to Nashville in 1983 to pursue a country music career and soon signed a record deal with RCA Records.[6]
Whitley's first solo album, A Hard Act to Follow, was released in 1984, and featured a more mainstream country style. While Whitley was working hard to achieve his own style, the songs he produced were inconsistent. Critics regarded the album as too erratic. Whitley honed his sound within the next few years for his next album, L.A. to Miami.
L.A. to Miami, released in 1985, would give him his first Top 20 country hit single, "Miami, My Amy". The song was followed by three more hit songs: "Ten Feet Away", "Homecoming '63", and "Hard Livin'", The album also included "On the Other Hand" and "Nobody in His Right Mind Would've Left Her". "On the Other Hand" was pitched to Whitley before Randy Travis released the song as a single and when Whitley's version wasn't released as a single, Travis released his in 1986, as did George Strait with "Nobody in His Right Mind Would've Left Her".
During his tour to promote L.A. to Miami, he met and began a romantic relationship with country singer Lorrie Morgan. The pair were married in November 1986, and they had their only child, a son, Jesse Keith Whitley, in June 1987. Whitley also adopted Lorrie's daughter, Morgan, from her first marriage.
During the new recording sessions in 1987, Whitley started feeling that the songs he was doing were not up to his standards, so he approached RCA and asked if the project of 15 songs could be shelved. He asked if he could assert himself more with the songs and production. The new album, titled Don't Close Your Eyes, was released in 1988, and the album sold extremely well. The album contained one of the many songs that Whitley had a hand in writing in his years at Tree Publishing, "It's All Coming Back to Me Now". Also on the album was a remake of Lefty Frizzell's classic standard "I Never Go Around Mirrors," and the song became a huge hit at Whitley's concerts. The first three singles from the album—"When You Say Nothing at All," "I'm No Stranger to the Rain," and the title cut—all reached number one on Billboard Magazine's country charts during the fall of 1988 and the winter of 1989, with the title track "Don't Close Your Eyes" being ranked as Billboard's No. 1 Country song of 1988. Shortly thereafter, "I'm No Stranger to the Rain" also earned Whitley his first and only Country Music Association award as a solo artist and a Grammy nomination for Best Country Vocal Performance, Male.
In early 1989, Whitley approached Sony Music Nashville chairman Joe Galante with the intention of releasing "I Never Go Around Mirrors" as a single. Galante approved of the musical flexibility that Whitley achieved with the song; however, he suggested that Whitley record something new and more upbeat. The result was a song Whitley had optioned for his previous album called I Wonder Do You Think of Me, and was to result in his next album release.
Death
On the morning of Tuesday, May 9, 1989, Whitley awoke, had a brief phone call with his mother and was later visited by his brother-in-law, Lane Palmer. The two had coffee and were planning a day of golf and lunch, after which Whitley planned to start writing songs for Lorrie Morgan and him to record when she returned from her concert tour. Palmer left at approximately 8:30 a.m.,[8] asking Whitley to be ready to leave within an hour. Upon returning, Palmer found Whitley unconscious on his bed and called an ambulance. Whitley was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.
The official cause of death was acute ethanolism (alcohol poisoning).[3] Davidson County Medical Examiner Charles Harlan stated that Whitley's blood alcohol level was 0.47 (the equivalent of 20 one-ounce shots of 100-proof whiskey).[9][10][11][12][13] Whitley was 34 years of age. He was born in 1954 per his birth certificate and passport, but RCA and his tombstone erroneously recorded his birth year as 1955.[1][14]
The day after his death, Music Row was lined with black ribbons in memory of Whitley. He is buried in the Spring Hill Cemetery outside Nashville, Tennessee. His gravestone reads, "Forever yours faithfully" (part one) and "His being was my reason" (part two). The "yours" in part one refers to Whitley, and the "my" in part two refers to Morgan, who has a future burial spot next to him.
Posthumous releases
At the time of his death, Whitley had just finished work on his third and final studio album, I Wonder Do You Think of Me. The album was released three months after his death, on August 1, 1989. The album produced two more No. 1 hits, with the title track and "It Ain't Nothin'." "I'm Over You" also saw the Top 5 in early 1990, reaching No. 3.
Two new songs were added to "Greatest Hits": The first, "Tell Lorrie I Love Her" was written and recorded at home by Whitley for Morgan, originally intended as a work tape for Whitley's friend Curtis 'Mr. Harmony' Young to sing at Whitley's wedding. The second was "'Til a Tear Becomes a Rose", a 1987 demo taken from Tree that originally featured harmony vocals by childhood friend Ricky Skaggs. Lorrie Morgan, with creative control and license to Whitley's namesake, recorded her voice alongside Whitley's, and released it as a single, which rose to No. 13 and won them 1990's CMA award for Best Vocal Collaboration as well as a Grammy nomination for Best Country Vocal Collaboration.
RCA also released a compilation of performance clips (from his days in the Ralph Stanley-Fronted Clinch Mountain Boys), interviews, and some previously unreleased material under the title "Kentucky Bluebird". The album produced hits for Whitley as well, including a duet with Earl Thomas Conley, named "Brotherly Love," which peaked at No. 2 in late 1991 and gave Whitley his second consecutive posthumous Grammy nomination for Best Country Vocal Collaboration.
I wanna smoke that cigarette
I wanna smell that sweet addiction on my breath
I wanna ride across West Virginia in the backseat of a Cadillac
You know some cowboys like me go out like that
So I need you
You may think that I'm talkin' foolish, you've heard that I'm wild and I'm free...
Randy Travis, bruh. Them's some car singin' tunes.
Except I will run the selection committee and not that Buck Owens hating, Lady A loving sum' bitch @Tequilla
Travesty, man. Total travesty.
Nothing beats good old fashioned country or alt- country if you like, but the newer country is 10 times better than what they (whoever they are) call rock and roll.
Nothing worse than trying to drive the USA listening to crap Sirius XM plays without listening to old and early 2000's country
Sirius XM also only has a list of 300 songs a week so repeat repeat repeat
Edit: I wondered what happened to this guy - he is good, well was