Toby Keith remembers friend Wayman Tisdale on new album

Posted by brandy

on October 6, 2009M at 12:21 pm

Toby Keith performs Willie Nelson’s “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” at a memorial service for Wayman Tisdale May 21 in Tulsa. (Associated Press photo)

Toby Keith pays tribute to his friend Wayman Tisdale on “Cryin’ for Me (Wayman’s Song),” a touching jazz-tinged track on his new album “American Ride,” out today.

Tisdale, an University of Oklahoma and NBA basketball standout who later became a respected jazz bassist, died in May from complications related to bone cancer.

In an interview last week, Keith told me, “I never at any time ever had a closer celebrity friend than Wayman.”

Tisdale’s sudden passing clearly took many of his family and friends by surprise, and Keith was no exception. In the press materials for “American Ride,” the Oklahoma country music star says that Tisdale called him on a Thursday evening with plans to lease a couple of a Keith’s buses to take on the road. The next day, the athlete-turned-musician died.

Keith recalled for me going to visit Tisdale in the hospital after the former basketball player had his cancerous right leg amputated.

“I’m thinking, ‘Man, he ain’t gonna be in no mood, he just got his leg cut off, he ain’t gonna be in no mood for no visitors. I go up there, he’s all high-fiving, and he looks like he’s just got a tooth filled,” Keith said.

“I sat with him in all his hospital stuff a lot. He would say, ‘You better come up here and see me’ and I would. He talked a lot of hours about life and the music business and just got really close. So, losing him was very sudden.”

Jazz stars Dave Koz and Marcus Miller, who were good friends of Tisdale, and one of Tisdale’s bandmates, Arthur Thompson, are featured on “Cryin’ for Me.”

Read more about Keith’s new CD and his thoughts on Tisdale Friday here at BAM’s Blog.

-BAM