There’s no sadder story in the world of country music than the “what could have been” with the late great Keith Whitley.
It was on May 9th in 1989 that we lost Whitley after his battle with alcoholism tragically ended. His country star wife Lorrie Morgan had left Keith at home when she went to do a show in Alaska, and it was while she was gone that he succumbed to his alcohol abuse. The country star with a golden voice (some say he could have been considered the best voice in country music when it was all said and done) passed away at the age of 34.
What made the story that much more tragic was the fact that he was set to be invited to be a member of the Grand Ole Opry three weeks after he passed away – he just hadn’t been informed of that yet. Though he never got to step out in the circle as a member of the Grand Ole Opry, he was posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2022.
It’s truly a sad story, and when the news of Whitley’s death rocked the country music world, the hearts of many broke for Lorrie Morgan. As a country star herself, she was just trying to further her career while being a supportive wife to the troubled Whitley.
She even revealed in her 1997 book Forever Yours, Faithfully that she would tie her leg to Keith’s legs when they slept so he wouldn’t get up in the middle of the night to drink alcohol (Whitley’s addiction was so bad that he would sometimes even drink cleaning supplies that contained any amount alcohol).
Only a couple of months before he passed away, Whitley sat down for an interview, in which he explained his complicated relationship with alcohol:
“I learned to do things the way the old-timers did it. I thought everybody had to drink to be in this business. Lefty drank, Hank drank, George Jones was still drinking, and I had to. That’s just the way it was. You couldn’t put that soul in your singing if you weren’t about three sheets in the wind.
That was just the way we did it in Sandy Hook. And it was a lot of fun. For me, the past isn’t deep and dark; I had a lot of fun I couldn’t have had any other way. But somewhere along the way it turned on me. Where it used to be a friend, it became an enemy.”
An enemy that ultimately took a man who personified country music.
The only real silver lining to the story is that he left behind enough music to carry on his legacy, like the unrivaled hit “When You Say Nothing At All.”
