The Kentucky Bluebird was born in Sandy Hook Kentucky in on April 1, 1955. From the time he was four years old all Jesse Keith Whitley wanted to to was to sing country music. Not just any country music but the kind  he heard from Hank Williams, George Jones and  especially Lefty Frizzell. By the time he was 30 he
was the best country singer since Lefty and by the time he was 33 he was gone, Taken by the same  affliction that took Hank and Lefty along with Carter  Stanley, Ira Louvin, and very nearly George Jones.

While Keith was a country singer and performed country music on local television at age 6, he was born in Sandy Hook, Kentucky and Kentucky means Bluegrass.   Good country musicians were hard to find but excellent  bluegrass musicians were everywhere in Kentucky. So  Keith and his brother Dwight, still barely teenagers,
formed a bluegrass band and began to play on local radio and talent shows. In 1969 Keith met Ricky Skaggs and they developed an intense friendship.

They found that they sang well together and could  mimic almost exactly the unique harmonies of Ralph and  Carter Stanley. Ricky and his father Hobart joined
Keith's bluegrass band and things took off quickly.  Their band, called  The Lonesome Mountain Boys, was  good enough to have a local weekly radio show and they  developed a strong local following.  One day while awaiting an appearance of their hero,
Ralph Stanley, Ricky convinced the club owner to let him and Keith warm up the audience. Ralph heard them and hired the two 15 year olds on the spot.

Ricky and Keith were mostly used as musicians in the  Clinch Mountain Boys but Ralph often let them sing a number or two at their concerts.   They were featured
on Ralph Stanley's classic 1972 Grammy winning album, "Cry From the Cross". Later that  year Keith and Ricky recorded an album of their own backed by Ralph Stanley
and the Clinch Mountain Boys. The album is titled second "Generation Bluegrass".
This album remains in print and is outstanding.

 In  both "Cry From the Cross" and "Second Generation  Bluegrass" we can hear all of the attributes that later made Ricky and Keith such brilliant musicians: expert musicianship, absolute sincerity and seriousness of purpose, a total emotional involvement
in the music and terrific clear singing.
Ricky Skaggs soon grew restless with Ralph Stanley's musical conservatism and joined up with JD Crowe's new band "The New South". This version of "The New South"  included Crowe on banjo, Ricky Skaggs on Mandolin,
Tony Rice on Guitar and Jerry Douglas on Dobro.  Crowe is a fearless musician and is very willing to toss into the bluegrass mix anything that strikes his fancy,
especially elements of pure country music, rockabilly, Chuck Berry rifts, old Jazz piano rolls, just about  anything. It was that progressive musical attitude
that drew Skaggs to "The New South" and made a JD fan  of Keith Whitley.

Keith Whitley stayed on with Ralph Stanley and is featured on a number of Stanley's recordings, especially another classic called "Clinch Mountain Bluegrass". Now with a driver's license Keith was the band driver. Ralph Stanley doesn't like country music
very much and would not allow it in the band car. But while bluegrass came naturally to Keith, it was country music he loved and he would listen to his tapes of Lefty and Hank over and over while driving the sleeping Clinch Mountain Boys on their long tours.

Musicians from all genres are a notoriously
independent lot and by 1978 Skaggs, Rice and Douglas  had left the New South and gone onto other things. JD rebuilt the band and asked Keith to be the lead singer. Keith jumped at the chance and began to tour
and record with "JD Crowe and the New South".  This version of "The New South" had much more of a country sound than the first and was dominated by Keith's rich deep country voice. But the bluegrass background was never lost. They recorded two Bluegrass
albums together: 

"My Home Ain't In the Hall of Fame", 
and a live performance of it in "Live In Japan" which is the only commercially released live performance  from Keith available. These great albums are an eclectic mix of bluegrass, country, rock and roll, and jazz and they confused the very traditionally minded
bluegrass audience. 

When you hear Keith's intense
heartfelt rendition of "Rose Colored Glasses" on "Live  in Japan" you can hear where this band is heading. While the band was performing exactly the music they wanted they fell somewhere between the pigeon holes that the music industry likes to place people and left them almost without an audience.

Their next album would be the breakthrough for Keith. It turned out that JD knew Lefty personally and was a huge fan of his style. He, like Keith, had always  dreamed of recording an album of pure Lefty inspired
country music. The album, entitled "Somewhere Between" from a fine song by Merle Haggard, who had performed
with Lefty exactly describes the bands predicament. They were somewhere between genres. But what an album!

1982's "Somewhere Between" is an album of pure Lefty inspired country music and it cut across the soft pop country sound of the time. This music is now called "new traditionalist" but what ever its called its
astonishing country music. This tightly organized concept album is filled with heartbreaking music  straight from Lefty's honkytonk days.  As you listen to "If I'd Known Last Night Was Our Last Night" or
"Where are All The Girls I Used To Cheat With" It  almost seems that Lefty has rejoined us. Keith delves into these songs with unabashed passion and evokes the
deep pathos within them. Keith and JD's bluegrass roots can be heard in the beautiful songs "The Girl From the Canyon" and "Another Town".  

"Somewhere Between" was not a big best seller but it  did catch the ear of Nashville.    Keith, along with  JD recorded a four song demo for RCA. This recording  included the original recordings of "Does Fort Worth
Ever Cross Your Mind" and Honky Tonk Crazy". RCA was mildly impressed but enough to sign Keith up for a  1984 single entitled "Turn Me To Love" with fellow
Kentuckian Patty Loveless doing the harmony vocals.  Keith also released an 8 song lp of George Jones  influenced Honkytonk songs entitled "A Hard Act To  Follow". While "A Hard Act To Follow" verges far more
into pop country than did "Somewhere Between", the star of the album: "Don't Our Love Look Natural" is pure George Jones country.

As Keith Whitley's career was growing his private life   was having its own troubles. His marriage broke up but  his real problem was with alcoholism. Keith was a binge drinker and had been one since he was a   teenager. He could be sober for months and then fall
hard off the wagon. As such few around him actually  knew the full extent of his disease. 

Things picked up  for Keith when he met Lorrie Morgan, the daughter of  the great country music singer George Morgan and an
aspiring country singer herself.  
A "Hard Act To Follow" was a minor success for RCA and  so RCA asked Keith to record a radio friendly pop country album. The result was "LA To Miami" in 1985.

 While Keith is in fine voice throughout, the album suffers from a sameness of texture and tempo. It does contain the original recordings of "On The Other Hand"
and "Nobody In His Right Mind Would Have Left Her" which make those other fellows seem like amateurs, and a country gem: "I Get the Picture" along with a hard
boogie, the prophetic "Hard Livin'".

"LA To Miami" was a hit and RCA and Keith with the same producer recorded another album exactly like it. 15 songs were recorded and carefully mixed when Keith, fed up with musical compromises, asked that the album
be scrapped and that he be assigned a new producer.  Astonishingly RCA agreed and hooked Keith up with a fellow named Garth Fundis, an experienced producer who
has a deep understanding of what real country music is all about.

The album that Keith recorded with Garth Fundis is entitled "Don't Close Your Eyes". It is a tightly organized, unified collection of traditional country songs recorded with a straight up, old fashioned  sound. It features the original recordings of "When  You Say Nothing At All" and the Lefty inspired
"Birmingham Turnaround" and "I'm No Stranger to The  Rain", and some good old honktonkers like "Lucky Dog"   "Honky Tonk Heart". Best of all is a hair raising,
heartbreaking unforgettable rendition of Lefty and Sanger Shafer's classic  "I Never Go Around Mirrors". "Don't Close Your Eyes" is uncompromised and  uncalculated country music. It struck a great chord with people and was a major success for Keith, proving
that good music, done honestly and without calculation can be commercially successful.

Now happily married to Lorrie and with a genuine hit    recording under his belt it looked as if Keith's  career and private life was finally under control. He
was now in great demand as a performer and along with  successful appearances on programs like Austin City  Limits and Ralph Emory's popular country music chat
show,   Keith Whitley was poised to become a star.

Keith's next album was also recorded with Garth  Fundis. It is entitled "Do You Think Of Me" and is  even more focused and soul bearing than "Don't Close  Your Eyes". One thing that makes great country music
great is that its real and "Do You Think Of Me" feels  so real because it is. Song after song deals with  alcoholic and lonely despair. The sadness is relieved  only slightly by a couple of swing tunes, but even
they have that underlying melancholy. 

"Between  and Old Memory and Me", "Brother Jute Box", "Tennessee
Courage", "The Lady's Choice" all display Keith's raw  emotion and his very real problems battling the  bottle. In his liner notes to "Do You Think Of Me"
Keith writes that its amazing how a man can convince himself that he cannot even stand on his own two feet  without help. 

"My help came from a bottle. In fact it
was almost exactly like this." Sadly, horribly, Keith lost his battle with the bottle. Keith finished recording "Do You Think Of Me" at the end of April  1989.  On May 9, 1989 he drank himself to death in yet another uncontrolled binge. The album ends with the  wistful Sanger Shafer song 

"Do You Think of Me?"