This day in 1989, Keith Whitley was found dead of alcohol poisoning in his Nashville home. Sadly, his career had just hit an all time high. He was survived by his wife, Lorrie Morgan.

On the morning of Tuesday, May 9, 1989, Whitley awoke and had a brief phone call with his mother. He was then visited by his brother-in-law Lane Palmer, and the two had coffee and they were planning a day of golf and having lunch, after which Whitley had planned to start writing songs for Lorrie Morgan and himself to record when she returned from her concert tour. Palmer departed at approximately 8:30 a.m., informing Whitley to be ready to leave within an hour. Upon returning, Palmer found Whitley unconscious on his bed and called an ambulance. Whitley was pronounced dead at the hospital.

The official cause of death was determined to be acute alcohol poisoning and Davidson County Medical Examiner Charles Harlan stated that his blood alcohol level was 0.47 (the equivalent of 20 1-ounce shots of 100-proof whiskey and almost five times the then Tennessee level of 0.10 legal driving limit, and nearly six times the current 0.08 legal limit to drive). Whitley was 33.

The day after his death, Music Row was lined with black ribbons in memory of Whitley. He is buried in the Spring Hill Cemetery outside Nashville, Tennessee. His gravestone reads, “Forever yours faithfully” and “His being was my reason”. The “yours” in part one means Whitley, and the “my” in part two means Morgan, who has a future burial spot next to him.

Source: Wikipedia

This day in 1999: Martina McBride played herself in a cameo appearance on CBS-TV’s “Early Edition.”The show was about a guy named Gary, who magically gets tomorrow’s paper a day early so he can prevent tragedies from occurring. In the episode, he read in “the paper” that Martina would be seriously injured while rehearsing with her band, so he raced to the concert hall to save her.

This day in 1949: Hank Williams made his first appearance at #1 on the Billboard country singles chart with “Lovesick Blues.”

“Lovesick Blues” is a show tune written by Cliff Friend and Irving Mills. The song first appeared in the 1922 musical Oh, Ernest. It was recorded by Emmett Miller in 1925 and 1928, and later by country music singer Rex Griffin. The recordings by Griffin and Miller inspired Hank Williams to perform the song during his first appearances on the Louisiana Hayride in 1948. Receiving an enthusiastic reception from the audience, Williams decided to record his own version despite initial push back from his producer Fred Rose and his band.

MGM Records released “Lovesick Blues” in February 1949, and it became an overnight success, quickly reaching number one on Billboard’s Top C&W singles and number 24 on the Most Played in Jukeboxes list. The publication named it the top country and western record of the year, while Cashbox named it “Best Hillbilly Record of the Year”.

In 2004, Williams’ version was added to the National Recording Registry.

This day in 1974: Merle Haggard appeared on the cover of Time Magazine in the US.  The cover story was “Country Music: Songs of Love, Loyalty and Doubt”.

This day in 2000: In an incident that no one has ever been able to truly explain, Roseanne Barr crashed the party that Lonestar’s record company hosted following the ACM Awards show. Lonestar and their friends were busy celebrating their ACM Single of the Year award for “Amazed,” so it’s not surprising that it took some time before anyone noticed that someone had walked away with the trophy presented to the record label. A few days later, Roseanne admitted that she hid the award under her jacket as she left the celebration at the ritzy Posto Restaurant in Los Angeles. She followed her confession by sending the trophy to Nashville, where it was placed on display at the record label’s office.