I’m No Stranger to the Rain

Thirty years ago today, I was in my parents garage working on my car when a guy named JD Spangler was doing afternoons on US99. I didn’t know that he would eventually become a friend and mentor to me. On that day, I remember JD saying that Keith Whitley had passed. For some reason, when KW sang, you could hear the pain in his songs. It was real. He, by all accounts was like a lot of my High School friends ten feet tall and crazy! It’s a wonder KW made it as long as he did. His story of car wrecks and drinking were off the charts. Most people only knew of him after his success and the wedding pictures of he and Lorrie Morgan surfaced. But he had a troubled past and even more trouble with drinking. Hard to think what he would have become if he lived, because he was so good. He was on the level of Jones, Strait, and Hank—he was that good. I think these lyrics sum up his life…“I’ll put this cloud behind me, that’s how the man designed me, to ride the wind and dance in a hurricane, I’m no stranger to the rain” —now the Country Music Hall of Fame owes him an induction.

RR