Ray Whitley

Robert Ray Whitley started his first band age 14 and was soon spotted by Producer Felton Jarvis and introduced to Bill Lowery and given work as a staff songwriter for his company Lowery Music Publishers of Atlanta, Georgia.

In the 60’s Ray Whitley became an internationally known singer, producer, arranger and songwriter. He has written over 147 songs, (sadly I suspect that some have been mixed up with the actor/singer of the same name,) as shown in his BMI songwriters folder, many became hits for The Tams, Guy Darrell, Brian Hyland, December’s Children and more recently, Sonia Evans.

Here’s a Ray Whitley quote from a January 2011 news article.

“I was sitting in his (Lowery’s) office and the Tams walked up to me and asked if I had any songs,” Whitley recalled recently. “I took them down to the boiler room and sang for them ‘What Kind of Fool Do You Think I Am?'”

“I guess they liked it,” Whitley said. What made the connection even more unusual, considering that it was the early 1960s in the Deep South, is that the Tams are an all-black group and Whitley is white.

“But that never was a problem,” Whitley says.

But at the end of his life he lived as a homeless man on the streets. Choosing to sleep on the concrete floor of a shelter for the homeless at ‘Good News at Noon’, 979 Davis Street, Gainesville, Georgia 30501. He had lost much of his hearing and was trying to overcome a problem with alcohol.

Ray passed away aged 69 on Sunday, May 5, 2013, in Gainesville, Georgia, USA.

But his wonderful music lives on…

Rest In Peace, Ray Whitley.

Here is a lovely post from his school friend, Bobby Tony