![\"slim-and-chet\"](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/slim-and-chet.jpg\")
<\/h1>\n<\/h1>\nThe longer we live, the longer our past, the shorter our future, the fewer our friends and heroes.<\/p>\n
Wednesday was particularly bad.<\/p>\n
I always enjoy grossing people out by relating how, some 30-plus years ago, I gave up backstage passes to Springsteen in Madison, Wisconsin, to drive to Milwaukee to see Slim Whitman. I\u2019d say it\u2019s the smartest thing I ever did, but in all fairness, I can\u2019t remember if it was Slim or Mickey Gilley\u2014which might not have been the smartest thing.<\/p>\n
Whitman, though, was heaven\u2014the voice that lends meaning to the word \u201cethereal.\u201d Breathtaking. When he sang \u201cUna Paloma Blanca\u201d\u2014the centerpiece of his phenomenally successful and pioneering direct-marketing TV campaign behind the album compilation All My Best\u2014the packed concert hall crowd leapt to their feet cheering after he effortlessly, operatically swooped up an octave at the end of the first chorus.<\/p>\n
Swear to God, the friend I was with had actually seen The Beatles, and said the Slim show was better.<\/p>\n
But there was a bigger Beatles connection: George Harrison once said that Slim was the first person he\u2019d ever seen playing a guitar, while Paul McCartney said that a poster of Slim, who played guitar left-handed due to losing most of his second finger on his left hand in an accident, gave him the idea of playing left-handed, too. And as that old TV commercial said, Slim \u201cwas number one in England longer than Elvis and The Beatles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Years later I met Harold Bradley, Owen\u2019s brother, said to be the most recorded guitarist ever. I saw him play behind Whitman with the greatest instrumental sensitivity, as required by a voice that could soar high as \u201ca bird in the sky,\u201d to quote from \u201cUna Paloma Blanca.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slim\u2019s death brought me back in touch with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve lost a wonderful friend, and the world lost a wonderful talent,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n
Harold lamented the fact that Slim had long lost his profile in Nashville, and rightly railed against the Country Music Hall of Fame for not having inducted him. And as effective as they were in selling millions of albums, those TV commercials also made Slim an easy target of late-night comedians, not to mention Mars Attacks!, which famously used his recording of \u201cIndian Love Call\u201d to kill off the space invaders.<\/p>\n
But two of the coolest people ever, Bill Tush and Andy Kaufman, were totally hip to Slim. Tush, who became cable TV\u2019s first star at Ted Turner\u2019s Superstation WTBS in Atlanta, where he anchored the off-the-wall late-night news program before hosting the one hour skit-comedy show Tush, enlisted Slim as Tush\u2019s first guest star. And Kaufmann was clearly awestruck when he introduced Slim to a Midnight Special audience in 1981, though he, too, had goofed on him in the past.<\/p>\n
Within an hour of talking with Harold, I too lost a wonderful friend and the world lost a wonderful talent.<\/p>\n
Chet Flippo was my music journalism hero back in Madison. I\u2019d just begun writing for a throwaway music paper that was stacked on cigarette machines in the bars and clubs, and I\u2019d done a piece on Dolly Parton. But I was also a big Rolling Stones fan, and Chet was the only writer I knew who was likewise a fan of both.<\/p>\n
I sent Chet a note a few weeks before I took a trip to NYC, to see if I could meet with him. Of course I hoped he might let me write for him, but I was nowhere in the same country as he was talent-wise. Still, he wrote back, and sure enough, let me come by the Rolling Stone office, where he worked at the time. I still can\u2019t believe that we became friends when I made the move to New York a few years later, and after he moved to Nashville and became Billboard\u2019s bureau chief there, I actually did get to work for him.<\/p>\n
Chet was as decent, honest, and committed a journalist as ever there was. Both he and Slim always remained true to themselves, and their audiences.<\/p>\n
Some heroes, at least, live on.<\/p>\n
Jim Bessman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SLIM & CHET The longer we live, the longer our past, the shorter our future, the fewer our friends and heroes. Wednesday was particularly bad. I always enjoy grossing people out by relating how, some 30-plus years ago, I gave up backstage passes to Springsteen in Madison, Wisconsin, to drive to Milwaukee to see Slim […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4976],"tags":[6751],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10115,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10113\/revisions\/10115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}