When I watch the performance video of Mel Street, below, I am once
again made to wonder at the senseless waste of a human life. We have
lost so many great performers in the past few years, but it is
particularly troubling to me, when the death of a friend did not have
to happen. Mel Street, Keith Whitley and Faron Young chose to leave us
way too soon. Mel Street, who got up from the family table and went
upstairs to take his own life with a pistol shot. What a horrible
ending to such a special life. I still have a problem getting my mind
around it happening.
I knew Mel before he even came to Nashville, meeting him at a concert in the West Virginia-Tennessee-Kentucky-North Carolina border country around Bluefield, WV, in the late 60’s. Mel was singing and running his auto body shop but looking to move ahead in entertainment and move to Nashville. His “Loving On Back Streets” and later “Borrowed Angel” just took him quickly to the top of the charts. He had moved to Hendersonville, Tennessee and everyone thought he was on top of the world. When I would run into him and we would stop to visit he seemed upbeat and happy. What in the world could change that? What could make someone move to take their own life? I don’t suppose I’ll ever know, but the loss of his vibrant personality and great way with a song hit the music community really hard.
Keith Whitley, who I don’t believe meant to take his life, but the result of his actions had the same conclusion. Here was a man to walk the high trails with, a man of warmth, faith, integrity and passion for his art and who possessed a gift of song that few could ever hope to achieve. That terrible morning, as I sat at my desk upstairs in my Music Row office at CMT, Keith’s manager, Jack McFadden, called me, crying so hard I could hardly understand him…..finally realizing he was saying, “Keith is gone!” When he finally could talk and tell me how it happened, I was astounded. I considered that I knew Keith very well, we were buddies and around each other a lot. I had never seen Keith even take a sip of alcohol. Never seen him under any kind of influence of drugs or drink. Yet, Jack had just told me that Keith had drank himself to death with an overdose of alcohol. I know now that Keith was a long time alcoholic who preferred to drink in secret. He had started drinking early on in his Bluegrass music career at about 14 and progressed from there to the day of consumption of such a large amount that he died of alcoholic poisoning. Most of us, his friends, did not see it coming, and few were aware that he even had a problem. There is hardly a day goes by that I don’t miss him.
Faron Young, loud, funny, embarrassingly vulgar in his speech, kind, gentle, rough as a cob, a singer of extraordinary talent, a consummate performer…and I loved him with all his faults and all his virtues. In 1960, Paul Harvey did a story on our work at the Good Samaritan Boys Ranch on his syndicated radio show. Faron must have heard it in Nashville and in a few weeks, we started getting a personal check in the mail at the Ranch, a donation from Faron Young. On my first night on the Grand Ole Opry, a couple years later, Faron befriended me, and then when I moved to Nashville in 1962 and opened an office on Music Row for Si Siman’s music publishing company, the office was in the building where Faron had his offices. I would go in and have coffee with Faron on many mornings, and then one day, in my office upstairs, I heard this yelling and thumping coming from the office below me. I hurried down the stairs just in time to see Faron, on top of his then business manager (name not mentioned as a courtesy)down on the floor of his office just beating the crap out of the poor guy. It was pretty ugly. So, Faron had many facets to his personality, depending on how you viewed him on any particular day. When I would work shows with him, he was just a great entertainer, funny, charming, singing so fine. He always treated me great, so that is the Faron I knew and loved. But, what happened when the fame and fortune started to slip in his mature years? This man who had success in performance, in business and I thought, life. I know he started having some health problems, but that is just the challenges of life, we all face that at one time or another. This great, gifted man had achieved so much, but he couldn’t seem to accept the problems of getting older. I did not see Faron in his final years, for I had moved to Branson to do another television network after the sale of CMT but they say Faron withdrew from everyone and grew very bitter at an industry that he felt had turned it’s back on him. Finally, I suppose, his despondency grew to the point where he could not take it any more. He shot himself to death in December of ’96. This man who had always been so full of life…had emptied out and gone.
I don’t know what goes on in a persons mind to do something to end a life. These are only three, but there are others in our music that made the same choice, either by suicide or just living such a harmful life that it ended prematurely. Such a waste.
As I have reached this part of my journey, I realize so strongly how precious is life, how great a gift from the Creator. I have known people with far harder challenges to face then my three friends I have mentioned would ever know. But, these people struggled on, fought the good fight, some times overcoming sometimes not, but still fighting to the end. That is the example I want to follow. Still climbing the mountains, slugging out of the valleys, never giving in to depression or failure, for every day is a new beginning, new opportunities, new challenges for sure, but that is what makes life so interesting. I pray for all of us to have increased Faith, strength to sustain us and the will to survive, whatever comes. -Stan
I knew Mel before he even came to Nashville, meeting him at a concert in the West Virginia-Tennessee-Kentucky-North Carolina border country around Bluefield, WV, in the late 60’s. Mel was singing and running his auto body shop but looking to move ahead in entertainment and move to Nashville. His “Loving On Back Streets” and later “Borrowed Angel” just took him quickly to the top of the charts. He had moved to Hendersonville, Tennessee and everyone thought he was on top of the world. When I would run into him and we would stop to visit he seemed upbeat and happy. What in the world could change that? What could make someone move to take their own life? I don’t suppose I’ll ever know, but the loss of his vibrant personality and great way with a song hit the music community really hard.
Keith Whitley, who I don’t believe meant to take his life, but the result of his actions had the same conclusion. Here was a man to walk the high trails with, a man of warmth, faith, integrity and passion for his art and who possessed a gift of song that few could ever hope to achieve. That terrible morning, as I sat at my desk upstairs in my Music Row office at CMT, Keith’s manager, Jack McFadden, called me, crying so hard I could hardly understand him…..finally realizing he was saying, “Keith is gone!” When he finally could talk and tell me how it happened, I was astounded. I considered that I knew Keith very well, we were buddies and around each other a lot. I had never seen Keith even take a sip of alcohol. Never seen him under any kind of influence of drugs or drink. Yet, Jack had just told me that Keith had drank himself to death with an overdose of alcohol. I know now that Keith was a long time alcoholic who preferred to drink in secret. He had started drinking early on in his Bluegrass music career at about 14 and progressed from there to the day of consumption of such a large amount that he died of alcoholic poisoning. Most of us, his friends, did not see it coming, and few were aware that he even had a problem. There is hardly a day goes by that I don’t miss him.
Faron Young, loud, funny, embarrassingly vulgar in his speech, kind, gentle, rough as a cob, a singer of extraordinary talent, a consummate performer…and I loved him with all his faults and all his virtues. In 1960, Paul Harvey did a story on our work at the Good Samaritan Boys Ranch on his syndicated radio show. Faron must have heard it in Nashville and in a few weeks, we started getting a personal check in the mail at the Ranch, a donation from Faron Young. On my first night on the Grand Ole Opry, a couple years later, Faron befriended me, and then when I moved to Nashville in 1962 and opened an office on Music Row for Si Siman’s music publishing company, the office was in the building where Faron had his offices. I would go in and have coffee with Faron on many mornings, and then one day, in my office upstairs, I heard this yelling and thumping coming from the office below me. I hurried down the stairs just in time to see Faron, on top of his then business manager (name not mentioned as a courtesy)down on the floor of his office just beating the crap out of the poor guy. It was pretty ugly. So, Faron had many facets to his personality, depending on how you viewed him on any particular day. When I would work shows with him, he was just a great entertainer, funny, charming, singing so fine. He always treated me great, so that is the Faron I knew and loved. But, what happened when the fame and fortune started to slip in his mature years? This man who had success in performance, in business and I thought, life. I know he started having some health problems, but that is just the challenges of life, we all face that at one time or another. This great, gifted man had achieved so much, but he couldn’t seem to accept the problems of getting older. I did not see Faron in his final years, for I had moved to Branson to do another television network after the sale of CMT but they say Faron withdrew from everyone and grew very bitter at an industry that he felt had turned it’s back on him. Finally, I suppose, his despondency grew to the point where he could not take it any more. He shot himself to death in December of ’96. This man who had always been so full of life…had emptied out and gone.
I don’t know what goes on in a persons mind to do something to end a life. These are only three, but there are others in our music that made the same choice, either by suicide or just living such a harmful life that it ended prematurely. Such a waste.
As I have reached this part of my journey, I realize so strongly how precious is life, how great a gift from the Creator. I have known people with far harder challenges to face then my three friends I have mentioned would ever know. But, these people struggled on, fought the good fight, some times overcoming sometimes not, but still fighting to the end. That is the example I want to follow. Still climbing the mountains, slugging out of the valleys, never giving in to depression or failure, for every day is a new beginning, new opportunities, new challenges for sure, but that is what makes life so interesting. I pray for all of us to have increased Faith, strength to sustain us and the will to survive, whatever comes. -Stan
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