1923-2013: Country star Slim Whitman of Middleburg has died
By Dan Scanlan
Known as “America’s Favorite Folksinger,” Slim Whitman’s songs were marked with his soaring yodel.
Mr. Whitman, who has lived in Middleburg for years, is dead at 90. He passed away at 1 a.m. Wednesday at Orange Park Medical Center, family friend Sherry Raymer said.
Many remember Mr. Whitman’s yodelling in his 1952 hit “Indian Love Call” as the weapon that killed invading aliens in the 1996 movie “Mars Attacks.”
“I’m the one who killed the blasted Martians,” he joked in a 2008 Times-Union interview.
But back in 1991, Mr. Whitman told The Associated Press he wanted to be remembered as “a nice guy.”
“I don’t think you’ve ever heard anything bad about me, and I’d like to keep it that way,” Mr. Whitman said. “I’d like my son [Byron] to remember me as a good dad. I’d like the people to remember me as having a good voice and a clean suit.”
He was a good man who never sang anything suggestive, said Raymer, who also knew him from the Jacksonville Church of the Brethren they attended. He died from heart failure, according to the AP, a bit more than four years after his wife of 67 years, Alma Crist Whitman, died at 84.