Back in June I blogged about L.A. To Miami / St. Louis To Charlotte, a custom Keith Whitley collection I put together using the early Whitley album L.A. To Miami (his second) as a base starting point and adding some miscellaneous early tunes culled from Keith Whitley: A Tribute Album.
Well, saturday I found The Essential Keith Whitley (with excellent liner notes by Edward Morris), a collection of twenty songs, including the six songs which were on his debut mini-album RCA release A Hard Act To Follow. I had that on audio cassette way back when, but never found it on CD. Now I have all the tunes even if I didn't find the actual album.
As a result I've expanded my custom LAtM/SLtC CD to include those six tunes, plus a seventh which the song credits for TEKW say was from the L.A. To Miami album. But that can't be right because as I mentioned I actually have that album and the song is not on there. Nor do I remember it being on the audio cassette either. Since AHAtF was produced by Norro Wilson and LAtM by Blake Mevis and this extra tune was also produced by Mevis, I can only assume that the song was recorded during the LAtM sessions, but never included on the album. As such I've included it as the first song in the LAtM portion of my custom CD.
There are still a couple whitley songs I don't have—the last two tracks on Greatest Hits (which I haven't picked up on CD yet)—but now that I have these "long lost" earliest tunes I'm even more pleased with this project.
(Footnote: I bet there aren't too many people—not to mention Steely Dan fans—on this globe who would go from listening to the Moody Blues to Lyle Lovett and Travis Tritt, move on to Boy George and Culture Club and then to Keith Whitley!)
2 days ago
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Is it possible the song was actually on the original release of From L.A., but taken off of later releases? (I'm thinking of how the song Sister Fatima was removed from Don McLean's American Pie for years.)
Howdy Nat,
Thanks for inquiring as otherwise I probably never would have gone back to find the answer to the song origin question or any of this other interesting (IMO) Whitley stuff...
First of all anything would have been possible, of course, as I don't claim to be a Whitley historian.
Your question, Nat, prompted me this A.M. to take another peek at the track credits on The Essential Keith Whitley and now I notice that the catalog number for L.A. To Miami is listed as CPL1-7043 under "I Wonder Where You Are Tonight" and AEL1-5870 under the other tracks included from LAtM. That made me go Hmmm....
So I Googled the CPL number and found what I should have probably realized from the start, but I guess my mind is just too newfangled to remember such things.... See, before CDs there used to be these things known as "LP records," or just LPs or records. They were bigger than CDs, black (usually), and had spiralling (almost circular) grooves one each side in which a needle device would rest and somehow magically lift the music out of those grooves as the record would spin. [grin]
Anyway, it turns out that the track was on the LP version of the album, hence the different catalog number. Makes sense. I knew the audio cassette version I had must have been from around the time of its original release or within a year or two anyway, so I doubted that the song would have been removed for any particular reason, though again anything would have been possible.
Here's the track list for CPL1-7043. And here's another page with a combined track list (and lyrics) for CPL1-7043 and AEL1-5870.
And before I found "that stuff" (a little pun since one of the songs on LAtM is titled "That Stuff") I Googled on Whitley's full name and the quoted song title "I Wonder Where You Are Tonight" and found this YouTube video (very poor A/V quality) posted by haze61151 with the explanation:
"Keith Whitley Live in my hometown Jackson Co High School. April 15 1987, thats me on the right playing guitar, not so good a quality. My son Shaun was taping with an old VHS recorder."
Putting two and two together (YouTube poster "haze61151" plus the tags "Randy" and "Hayes") easily leads to the conclusion that the guitarist in the vid is Randy Hayes. I'd never heard the name that I could recall, but some more quick Googling revealed—along with his myspace page to which I just linked—that he was a guitarist in Whitley's touring band from 1983-89.
From Hayes' myspace "about me":
I've played everything from bluegrass to heavy metal likeing some of all of it. I was on the road with JD Crowe & the New South for 4 years when I met the late great Keith Whitley whom I formed a great friendship and played in his band for 8 years until his untimely death in 1989, it was a great loss.
As usual with things virtual (google, myspace, youtube) I could keep going and going, finding more trivia and interesting connections ad infinitum, but I'm quitting here. I leave anything further as an exercise for you, my gentle blog readers.
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However, here are a few last bits o' Whitley trivia just outta my own noggin in case anybody is still reading this...
When I first saw the song title "I Wonder Where You Are Tonight" I couldn't help wondering if it was a misprint as Whitley also did songs by the titles of "I Wonder Do You Think Of Me" and "Wherever You Are Tonight" (on one of a couple excellent posthumous releases). I soon realized it couldn't be a typo, though, because "I Wonder Do You Think Of Me" is also on The Essential Keith Whitley.
Whitley's really big hit albums were 1988's Don't Close Your Eyes and 1989's I Wonder Do You Think Of Me which had just been released when he finally succumbed to his alcoholism by drinking himself literally to death. Since then there have been a acouple posthumous albums (actual albums of previously recorded, never released stuff, though perhaps with new music recorded behind the vocals) along with various re-packaged hit collections or re-releases, of course. I actually like one of Whitley's posthumous albums, Kentucky Bluebird, better than his big hits (which is not to say that there's anything wrong with them).
Then there's the excellent Sad Songs & Waltzes which is a re-release (with a couple bonus tracks, including the title song) of the album (originally titled Somewhere Between) that he did with J.D. Crowe and the New South back in 1982.
Whenever I pull out my Whitley CDs it's always bittersweet (especially reading some of the liner notes) as I enjoy his voice and the music so much and yet I can't help but continue to mourn what musically might have been had he not been addicted to booze. He had everything going for him professionally, but personally his inner demons got the better of him.
Artists dying in plane crashes or car crashes are one thing, but it's always extra painful IMO when they die due to drugs and/or alcohol which seem to be choices. And yet at some point their indulgences become uncontrollable to the point where there no longer really is a choice in the matter.
Whitley didn't write much of his own material, but he has said that when he would sing, he'd forget the audience and just get lost emotionally in the song. Perhaps that depth of feeling somewhat contributed to his addictive nature.
He did a few very upbeat, positive songs such as "I'm No Stranger To The Rain", "It Ain't Nothin'", "Lucky Dog", and "Flying Colors", but the bulk of his material tended toward the sadness end of the spectrum, including out-and-out classic tear-jerkers. Again, in retrospect given his performance method of getting lost in the songs while singing, perhaps another sign of the personal demons with which he was struggling. Sigh.
OK, enough. This comment is now far longer than the original post. Sheesh. Shut up already, DimSkip!
the fingal cocoa site? you can find the WB outtakes there. hadn't seen it before, but it's in the comments. he leaves a link in there. each review/cd has a link.
Thanks so much, Gina! I will look into that shortly. I really appreciate the heads up. Catch ya over in Rumpus...
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