On a Sunday morning in May 2009, Toby Keith picked up his phone and dialed a number he knew by heart. Nobody was going to answer. His friend Wayman Tisdale had died two days earlier. Toby Keith just wanted to hear his voice on the voicemail one more time.
What he did after he hung up became one of the most personal songs of his career.
A Text Message on Friday Morning
Wayman Tisdale died on Friday, May 15, 2009, at St. John Medical Center in Tulsa. He was 44 years old and had been fighting cancer for about two years.
Toby Keith learned the news the way so many people learn bad news now. In an interview with CMT, he remembered that a text message came in that Friday morning saying Wayman had passed away. He did not know what to do with it.
“So all the rest of Friday and Saturday, I just reeled around in a fog.”
The Phone Call on Sunday Morning
When Sunday came, Toby Keith did something that anyone who has lost someone will understand. He told CMT that the first thing he did that morning was dial Wayman’s cell phone and listen to the voicemail one more time.
Then he reached for his guitar.
“I grabbed my guitar and sat down and wrote this song.”
The song was “Cryin’ for Me (Wayman’s Song).” Toby Keith wrote it for one reason. He wanted to sing it at his friend’s funeral.
The Funeral Song He Couldn’t Sing
When the funeral came, the song was too new and the loss was too fresh. Toby Keith later admitted it plainly.
“I wrote this for [the funeral], but I could not get through it.”
Instead, he sang Willie Nelson’s “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground,” a song he loved but was not tied to in the same raw way. Even after the funeral, his own song stayed hard to sing. He said it was weeks before he could make it all the way through.
Recording It With Wayman’s Friends
Two of the musicians who played at Wayman Tisdale’s funeral were jazz saxophonist Dave Koz and bassist Marcus Miller. Toby Keith asked them both to play on the record. Marcus Miller took the bass part, the instrument Wayman himself had played, and Dave Koz added the saxophone.
Then Toby Keith made one more choice. The finished track opens with Wayman Tisdale’s own outgoing voicemail message, the same voice Toby had called to hear that Sunday morning.
He described the song simply: “It’s kind of a goodbye song; it’s kind of my way of venting my pain, if you will.”
“Cryin’ for Me (Wayman’s Song)” appeared on Toby Keith’s album American Ride in October 2009 and was released as a single that fall. It climbed to No. 6 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, carrying Wayman’s voice onto radios across America.
Who Wayman Tisdale Was
To Oklahoma fans, Wayman Tisdale needed no introduction. He was a three-time All-American at the University of Oklahoma, and the first OU athlete in any sport to have his jersey number retired. He won an Olympic gold medal in 1984 and played 12 seasons in the NBA.
When basketball ended, he became a successful jazz bassist, recording eight albums. In 2007, cancer cost him his right leg. He kept playing anyway, wearing a crimson prosthetic leg in Oklahoma’s colors.
Toby Keith remembered him as “a great guy with a charismatic smile, and the closest thing to Jesus I’ve ever met.”
A Goodbye That Is Still Playing
Most tribute songs talk about the person who is gone. This one lets him speak. Every time “Cryin’ for Me” starts, listeners hear Wayman Tisdale’s voice before they hear Toby Keith’s.
Have you ever kept an old voicemail just to hear someone’s voice again? You are not alone. Toby Keith did too, and he turned it into a song.