He moved to Middleburg in 1955, calling his Old Jennings Road home "Woodpecker Paradise." 1 hit in 1954's "Rose Marie" and other chart-toppers like 1954's "Cattle Call" and 1956's "Tumbling Tumbleweeds." He was very popular in Europe and England, with a No. Signed with RCA, his 1952 recording of "Love Song of the Waterfall" became his first Top 10 country single, followed by "Indian Love Call" hitting No. Tom Parker approached him with a contract, joining him to his group of legendary talent that included Hank Snow, Eddy Arnold and one day, Elvis Presley. Returning from World War II, he worked at a Tampa shipyard and joined a band called "The Variety Rhythm Boys." In 1948 legendary music manager Col. He met his bride-to-be when her father became his church's pastor, and they eloped three years later. 20, 1923, in Tampa and worked in a meat-packing plant there at age 13. Ottis Dewey "Slim" Whitman was born on Jan. I don't believe he was ever given the status he should have been given." ![]() Knapp, president of the Slim Whitman Appreciation Society for 26 years, said: "We have just lost one of the classic country music legends of all time, right up there with Hank Williams. I think he is probably in heaven singing to God right now." "They had a great, great marriage and he and Byron used to sing at their church and they were just really wonderful people," Raymer said. He died from heart failure, according to the AP, a bit more than four years after his wife of 67 years, Alma Crist Whitman, died at 84. He was a good man who never sang anything suggestive, said Raymer, who also knew him from the Jacksonville Church of the Brethren they attended. I'd like the people to remember me as having a good voice and a clean suit." "I'd like my son to remember me as a good dad. "I don't think you've ever heard anything bad about me, and I'd like to keep it that way," Mr. Whitman told The Associated Press he wanted to be remembered as "a nice guy." "I'm the one who killed the blasted Martians," he joked in a 2008 Times-Union interview.īut back in 1991, Mr. Whitman's yodelling in his 1952 hit "Indian Love Call" as the weapon that killed invading aliens in the 1996 movie "Mars Attacks." Wednesday at Orange Park Medical Center, family friend Sherry Raymer said. Whitman, who has lived in Middleburg for years, is dead at 90. Known as "America's Favorite Folksinger," Slim Whitman's songs were marked with his soaring yodel.
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