It's a legitimate question: For those of you who don't know, Whitley began his career as a duet partner to Ricky Skaggs while both were still teenagers in Sandy Hook, Kentucky. When Ralph Stanley was late to a gig in a nearby town, they entertained the crowd while they waited for the man with the 100-year-old voice.
When Stanley finally arrived, he heard two young voices that reminded him keenly of the way he had sounded with his late brother, Carter, as one of the pioneering acts of the then-infant genre of bluegrass.
Stanley hired both Skaggs and Whitley to join his band, The Clinch Mountain Boys. The music they made is some of the most legendary in all of bluegrass.
After his time with Stanley, and an equally-legendary stint with J.D. Crowe and The New South, Whitley went country. While he recorded some classics, they lack the depth of his bluegrass work. The lyrics may be emotional, but his delivery is as polished and remote as Music City itself.
Whitley struggled with alcoholism for many years -- most of those as a wildly-successful country singer in Nashville. Maybe it's just me, but I think that's more than mere coincidence.
Alcoholism killed Whitley at the relatively-young age of 34.
This is what we lost: Keith Whitley, singing George Jones, with J. D. Crowe and The New South.
This is "Tennessee Blues".
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