Remembering lost country music star Keith Whitley, new Hall of Fame honoree from Kentucky

The entrance of the champion Kentucky-bred country music duo The Judds into the Country Music Hall of Fame last month was cheered by fans far beyond the confines of the singers’ home state. It was, of course, a celebration offset by the stunning news of Naomi Judd’s death a day before the induction.

But the honor was also a little out-of-step timewise. The Judds were actually part of the Hall’s Class of 2021, but their induction ceremony was moved to this spring due to delays triggered by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The festivities, in fact, were so far off schedule that the Hall announced its Class of 2022 a mere two weeks after the Judds and the rest of the 2021 inductees were officially made members.

Sure enough, another Kentucky favorite will be among the new Hall of Famers. In a sadly ironic turn, he won’t be around to enjoy the honor either.

Among the 2022 inductees is Keith Whitley. In a space of less than five years during the latter half of the 1980s, the Sandy Hook singer became a country music sensation with a voice of conversational appeal and deep, roots-conscious texture. But his fame came with a price. Always a vigorous drinker, he died of acute ethanolism in 1989 at the age of 33.

Whitley’s roots and, to an extent, his legacy, are grounded in bluegrass. He was playing in Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys during the early ’70s while still in his teens before teaming with fellow Kentuckian J.D. Crowe as the latter’s New South band made a turn into what was then viewed as progressive-minded country music.

A solo career and a move to Nashville followed with his first album surfacing in 1983. The hits began a year later. He scored six Top 10 country singles during the next six years and another four posthumously.

One of Whitley’s final and most enduring hits was the Paul Overstreet/Don Schlitz penned “When You Say Nothing At All.” A subtle work in both pace and performance, the recording stands as perhaps the finest example of Whitley’s smoky vocal charm. Fans and fellow artists took notice. In early 1995, Alison Krauss released a version of the song that became a Top 5 hit, breaking the then-23-year-old bluegrass celebrity through to a wider, country-based audience. Her mainstream appeal is widely considered to have started with “When You Say Nothing At All.”

A few weeks ago, while digging through boxes of old notes for information on another story (one on The Judds, oddly enough), I came across full transcripts of interviews I did with Whitley and Crowe in April 1987. This was when Whitley’s country career was in full bloom and his marriage to fellow country star Lorrie Morgan was less than six months old. The interviews were for use in a preview story on a performance the singer gave at the long-since-demolished Continental Inn.

“This is all exactly what I dreamed it would be like when I was just a little kid,” Whitley said in the interview. “I can remember as a little kid in grade school looking out the window and daydreaming, seeing pictures of big buses with my name on the side. I don’t ever remember wanting to do anything else.”

The first of three albums Whitley cut with Crowe came in 1979. It bore a title that, in light of current happenings, seems especially curious: “My Home Ain’t in the Hall of Fame.”

“I tell you, I’ve had a lot of people work with me and Keith is one of the finest individuals and musicians,” Crowe told me in 1987. “He’s is one of the finest singers I’ve listened to over the years.

“I can still hear the Keith Whitley that I knew when he was with us because we used to sit around and jam a lot. I liked to hear him do a lot of the bluegrass stuff, but he wanted to try the country music. That’s fine. He can sing country as good as anybody else.”

A Lexington resident for roughly a year, Whitley frequently performed in local clubs during his tenure with Crowe. Veteran musician and club owner Doug Breeding — whose namesake New Circle Road venue Breeding’s frequently hosted Crowe and the New South in the early ’80s and Whitley as a solo artist as the decade progressed — quickly saw the star potential in the singer.

“People in Lexington believed in me at times when I began to wonder if I was going to be able to do things exactly the way I wanted to,” Whitley said in the 1987 interview. “Those people really believed in me.

“When I was working Breeding’s with Crowe, Doug told me. ‘Someday, I’m going to have you back here and you’re going to have your own band, your own bus and your own hit records. Sure enough, when I walked into his place a few years later, he said, ‘See? I told you.’”

Whitley will be in sterling company as a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame’s Class of 2022. The two other inductees will be RCA Records executive Joe Galante (who helped pilot the recording careers of numerous country acts, one being The Judds) and rock/country roots forefather Jerry Lee Lewis. They will officially enter the Hall of Fame in October.