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Slim Whitman (January 20, 1923 – June 19, 2013), born as Ottis Dewey Whitman Jr, was an American country music and western music singer, songwriter and instrumentalist known for his yodeling abilities and his smooth high three octave range falsetto in a style christened as "countrypolitan". He stated that he had sold in excess of 120 million records. In the 1950s Whitman toured with Elvis Presley, as the opening act.. In the 1990s Whitman was exposed to a new generation of audience, through his songs featuring in the film Mars Attacks!, which featured his iconic Indian Love Call, which would kill the invading martians every time the record was played. Although once known as ''America's Favorite Folk Singer'', he was consistently more popular throughout Europe, and in particular the United Kingdom, than in his native America, especially with his covers of pop standards, film songs, love songs, folk tunes and melodic gospel hymns. His 1955 hit single "Rose Marie" spent 11 weeks at #1 on the UK Singles Chart and held the Guinness World Record for the longest time at number one on the UK Singles Chart for 36 years until Bryan Adams broke the record in 1991 and was listed in British Hit Singles & Albums. In the US his Indian Love Call (1952) and a reworking of the Doris Day hit "Secret Love" (1953) both reached No. 2 on the ''Billboard'' country chart. Whitman had a string of top ten hits from the mid-1960s and into the 1970s and became known to a new generation of fans through television direct marketing in the 1980s. Throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century, he continued to tour extensively around the world and release new material. His last album, ''Twilight on the Trail'', produced by his son Byron Whitman and was released in 2010, when Whitman was 87 years old. ==Biography== Whitman was born Ottis Dewey Whitman Jr, in Tampa, Florida, on January 20, 1923.〔〔(Terry Spencer, ''Slim Whitman Dead: Country Singer Dies At Age 90'', Huffington Post, 19 June 2013 )〕〔(First Coast News, ''Slim Whitman: A Living Legend on the First Coast''. May 28, 2008 )〕 Growing up, he liked the country music of Jimmie Rodgers and the songs of Gene Autry, but he did not embark on a musical career of his own until the end of World War II, after he had served in the South Pacific with the United States Navy. Whilst aboard ship he would sing and entertain members aboard, which resulted in the in the captain blocking his transfer to another ship, hence saving his life as the other ship later sunk with no surviving hands. Whitman's early ambitions were to become either a boxer or a professional baseball player. Whitman, a self-taught left-handed guitarist was right-handed, but he had lost almost all of the second finger on his left hand in an accident. at a meat packing plant he worked for. He worked odd jobs at a Tampa shipyard while developing a musical career, eventually performing with a band known as the Variety Rhythm Boys and the light crust doughboys, he was briefly nicknamed The Smiling Starduster, after a stint with a group called The Starduster's. Whitman's first big break came when talent manager "Colonel" Thomas Parker heard him singing on the radio and offered to represent him.〔 After signing with RCA Records,〔 he was billed as "the cowboy singer Slim Whitman" and released his first single in complete with yodel I'm casting my lasso towards the sky in 1948. He toured and sang at a variety of venues, including on the radio show ''Louisiana Hayride''. At first, he was not able to make a living from music and kept a part-time job at a post office. That changed in the early 1950s after he recorded a version of the Bob Nolan hit "Love Song of the Waterfall", which made it into the country music top ten.〔 His next single, "Indian Love Call", taken from the light operetta Rose-Marie was even more successful, reaching number two in the country music charts and appearing in the pop music charts top ten in the US. A yodeller, Whitman avoided the "down on yer luck buried in booze" songs, preferring instead to sing laid-back romantic melodies about simple life and love. Critics dubbed his style "countrypolitan," owing to its fusion of country music and a more sophisticated crooning vocal style. Although he recorded many country and western tunes, including hits Tumbling Tumbleweeds, Singing Hills and The Cattle Call Love and romance songs, like "Serenade", "Something Beautiful (to remember)" and Keep It a Secret figured prominently in his repertoire. In 1955 in the United Kingdom, he would have No.1 hit on the pop music charts with the theme song to the latter operetta "Rose Marie." With nineteen weeks in the charts and eleven weeks at the top of the UK Singles Chart,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title= Slim Whitman )〕 the song set a record that lasted for 36 years. In 1956 he became the first ever country music singer to perform at the London Palladium.〔 Soon after, Whitman was invited to join the Grand Ole Opry, and in 1957, along with other musical stars, he appeared in the film musical ''Jamboree''. Despite this exposure, he never achieved the level of stardom in the United States that he did in Britain, where he had a number of other hits during the 1950s.〔 Throughout the early 1970s, he continued to record and was a guest on Wolfman Jack's television show ''The Midnight Special''.〔 At the time, Whitman's recording efforts were yielding only minor hits in the US. The mid 1970s were a successful time for Whitman in the UK Albums Chart. In 1976 a compilation album, ''The Very Best of Slim Whitman'' was number one for six weeks staying seventeen weeks on the chart. Another number one album followed in 1977 with ''Red River Valley;'' four weeks at number one and fourteen weeks on the chart. Later the same year his album ''Home on the Range'' made number 2 on the chart amassing a chart stay of thirteen weeks only to be kept from the top place by 20 Golden Greats by the Supremes.〔 The TV albums briefly made Whitman a household name in America for the first time in his career, resulting in everything from a first-time appearance on ''The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson'' to Whitman being parodied in a comic skit on SCTV with him (played by Joe Flaherty) starring in the Che-like male lead in an Evita-like Broadway musical on the life of Indira Gandhi. More importantly, the TV albums gave him a brief resurgence in mainstream country music with new album releases on major labels and a few new singles making the country charts. During this time he toured Europe and Australia with moderate success. On January 20th, 2008, coincidently on what was Whitman's 85th birthday, a premature obituary believed to have been started by an erroneous report was published by the ''Nashville Tennessean'' newspaper, which was later picked up virally on the newspapers website.. In 2010, after more than eight years in production, Whitman released the album ''Twilight on the Trail'', his first new studio album in 26 years. It was produced by his son Byron Whitman and featuring many well known session musicians, including long time band member Harold Bradley.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Slim Whitman」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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