Keith Whitley
Sad Songs & Waltzes
(Rounder)

Release date: September 12, 2000

So this is politics? Phhhff... Keep 'em then.

If Keith Whitley were still alive I'd write him in on my ballot. Shit, music misses voices like this. And I do mean voice - the pure tenor, the flawless crescendo's, the complete command and control of every vibration in a set of vocal chords that could only have been hewn of gold. A true-to-life honky-tonk angel who fell to earth just long enough to allow an unsuspecting world the chance to capture a sliver of his voice in a bottle, and then lose him somewhere deep within that very same bottle - A tragedy of unspeakable proportions.

Sad Songs & Waltzes is Rounder's reissue of some of Whitley's earliest vocal work. Culled from the 1983 album Somewhere Between (under the band moniker J.D. Crowe and the New South), Sad Songs & Waltzes gives us ten titles from that forgotten record and 5 unreleased variations from the same period. It's a posthumous introduction to one of Country music's...forget that, drop the country shit...one of music's great, great voices. The materials here are covers of wonderful songs written by terrific songwriters, but Whitley's performances here manage to eclipse all other considerations. Willie Nelson's "Sad Songs and Waltzes" becomes Whitley's plaintive reflection. Merle Haggard's "Somewhere Between" is taken away and seemingly locked up as a Whitley standard. And the Stovall/George eulogy "Long Black Limousine" becomes revelatory, sad, and exquisitely painful. The songs on this disc were, however, only a precursor. J.D. Crowe knew he had something above and beyond special with Whitley and his otherworldly voice, and by the time Whitley had recorded his absolutely essential I Wonder Do You Think of Me (1989) the New South disc had been long forgotten as Whitley began to rightly take his place in the upper echelons of modern country music.

Tragically, Whitley's miraculous voice was silenced just as he approached the confident brilliance he was always so capable of (Whitley died of an "alcohol overdose" in 1989). Sad Songs & Waltzes will once again leave listeners astonished - a shiver and a head shake as you wonder what power gave Whitley that power in his voice. This from songs at the beginning of a career that only got better, and only would have -given the chance - become legend. Shit, shit, shit.

______________________________________________