Happy birthday to the late great country star Ottis Dewey Whitman, Jr. (January 20, 1923 – June 19, 2013), known professionally as Slim Whitman, an American country music and western music singer, songwriter and instrumentalist known for his yodeling abilities and his smooth high three octave range falsetto. He stated that he had sold in excess of 120 million records. In the 1950s Whitman toured with Elvis Presley. Although once known as Americas Favorite Folk Singer, he was consistently more popular throughout Europe, and in particular the United Kingdom, than in his native America, especially with his covers of pop standards, film songs, love songs, folk tunes and melodic gospel hymns. His 1955 hit single Rose Marie held the Guinness World Record for the longest time at number one on the UK Singles Chart for 36 years until Bryan Adams broke the record in 1991 and was listed in British Hit Singles & Albums. In the US his Indian Love Call (1952) and Secret Love (1953) both reached No. 2 on the Billboard country chart. Whitman had a string of hits from the mid-1960s and into the 1970s and became known to a new generation of fans through television direct marketing in the 1980s. Throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century, he continued to tour extensively around the world and release new material. His last album, Twilight on the Trail, produced by his son Byron Whitman was a cover of western standards including the Gene Autry single Back in the Saddle Again and was released in 2010, when Whitman was 87 years old. Whitman was born Ottis Dewey Whitman Jr, in Tampa, Florida, on January 20, 1923. Growing up, he liked the country music of Jimmie Rodgers and the songs of Gene Autry, but he did not embark on a musical career of his own until the end of World War II, after he had served in the South Pacific with the United States Navy. Whitman, a self-taught left-handed guitarist was right-handed, but he had lost almost all of the second finger on his left hand in an accident. He worked at a Tampa shipyard while developing a musical career, eventually performing with a band known as the Variety Rhythm Boys. Whitmans first big break came when talent manager Colonel Thomas Parker heard him singing on the radio and offered to represent him. After signing with RCA Records, he was billed as the cowboy singer Slim Whitman and released his first single in 1948. He toured and sang at a variety of venues, including on the radio show Louisiana Hayride. A yodeller, Whitman avoided the down on yer luck buried in booze songs, preferring instead to sing laid-back romantic melodies about simple life and love. Critics dubbed his style countrypolitan, owing to its fusion of country music and a more sophisticated crooning vocal style. Although he recorded many western tunes, love and romance songs figured prominently in his repertoire. Beatle George Harrison cited Whitman as an early influence: The first person I ever saw playing a guitar was Slim Whitman, either a photo of him in a magazine or live on television. Guitars were definitely coming in. When a young Paul McCartney purchased his first guitar, the left-handed musician was unsure how to play an instrument that was manufactured and strung for a right-handed player. It was not until McCartney saw a picture of Whitman playing left-handed that he re-strung his guitar so that he too could play left-handed. American pop singer Michael Jackson cited Whitman as one of his ten favorite vocalists. Slim Whitman died of heart failure on June 19, 2013, at age 90.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 13:38:09 +0000
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