Ottis Dewey “Slim” Whitman Jr. was a singer, songwriter, and guitarist most famous for his yodeling talents.
Born in Oak Park, he listened to and admired the music of country stars Jimmie Rodgers and Gene Autry. While serving in the South Pacific, he often entertained his fellow soldiers by singing the classics he grew up hearing. After the war, he began pursuing a musical career and landed success with his 1948 single “I’m Casting My Lasso Towards the Sky.” Later hits were “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” “Singing Hills,” and “The Cattle Call.”
Slim was also hugely popular in the United Kingdom, where his song “Rose-Marie” stayed at the number one spot on the UK Singles Chart for eleven weeks straight in 1955. In the U.S., “Indian Love Call” and his cover of Doris Day’s “Secret Love” charted at number two on Billboard Country, setting him as a successful artist in multiple national markets.
With a mixture of yodeling and falsetto vocal techniques mixed with themes of love and romance, he continued to record until 2010 and produced around 100 albums in his lifetime. He is also known by many through his music through film. “Indian Love Call” was set in the 1996 parody Mars Attacks! as well as “I Remember You” in the 2003 horror film House of 1000 Corpses. His music inspired other notable talents such as George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Michael Jackson.