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Jesse Keith Whitley & Parker Diffie Are Teaming Up As “Sons Of Country” To Carry On The Legacies Of Their Legendary Fathers
The next generation continuing the legacy started by their fathers. When it comes to country music pedigrees, you won’t find many better than Jesse Keith Whitley and Parker Diffie. Jesse is, of course, the son of the legendary Keith Whitley and Lorrie Morgan, while Parker is the son of the late, great ’90s country legend Joe Diffie. Between the two, their fathers combined for some of the greatest country music of the ’80s and ’90s, with so many songs that […] The post Jesse Keith Whitley & Parker Diffie Are Teaming Up As “Sons Of Country” To Carry On The Legacies Of Their Legendary Fathers first appeared on Whiskey Riff.
The next generation continuing the legacy started by their fathers.
When it comes to country music pedigrees, you won’t find many better than Jesse Keith Whitley and Parker Diffie.
Jesse is, of course, the son of the legendary Keith Whitley and Lorrie Morgan, while Parker is the son of the late, great ’90s country legend Joe Diffie.
Between the two, their fathers combined for some of the greatest country music of the ’80s and ’90s, with so many songs that are still classics to this day. I mean, good luck walking into a bar in Nashville, or a country bar anywhere in the country, and not hearing “Don’t Close Your Eyes,” “I’m No Stranger To The Rain,” “John Deere Green” or “Pickup Man” at least once throughout the night.
Unfortunately we lost both of the country music heavyweights entirely too soon. Keith Whitley passed away back in 1989 at only 34 years old, and we lost Joe Diffie back in 2020 in the early days of COVID. But their sons have come together to do their best to keep their legacies alive.
Jesse and Parker have teamed up to form a duo appropriately called “Sons of Country,” and will be performing tonight at the Nashville Palace along with many of their friends.
But Jesse tells Whiskey Riff that they have big plans for the duo, which is reminiscent of his own mother Lorrie Morgan (the daughter of legendary country star George Morgan) teaming up with Pam Tillis, the daughter of Mel Tillis.
Obviously there’s nobody better to keep their fathers’ legacies alive, so it’s pretty cool to see the next generation of some of country music’s biggest stars together not only to honor their dads, but also to share their own music too.
Jesse Keith Whitley Shares His Thoughts On Morgan Wallen’s “Miami”
Morgan Wallen upset a lot of country music traditionalists with his new song “Miami,” released back in May as part of his massive I’m The Problem album.
Ahead of the album’s release, Morgan had teased that “Miami” would be a “flip” of the Keith Whitley classic “Miami, My Amy,” and even threw out the idea of including a rap feature on it:
“I got a song on my record called ‘Miami.’ It’s a Keith Whitley flip… that’s one of his bigger songs, I guess. But we flipped it and turned it into more of a rap style. But it’s cool, I like it.
It seemed like it could use rapper on there, but I didn’t end up using a feature, we ended up just making a second verse. But it’s one of those songs that it wouldn’t be surprising if we got a remix and did that once it’s out.”
And this past week, Morgan did in fact release a remix of the song, featuring Lil Wayne and Rick Ross. He’s even started using the song during his walkouts at live shows, replacing his “Whiskey Whiskey” collab with Moneybagg Yo.
@andreweclark Morgan Wallen Walkout Phoenix Night 2 #foryoupage #foryou #fyp #morganwallen #morganwallenconcert
Well after the song was released, a lot of people were upset with Morgan for his take on the Keith Whitley classic. We saw a ton of comments that “Keith Whitley would be rolling over in his grave” or calling the song “disrespectful” to his legacy.
And while everybody has their opinions, it didn’t seem like anybody was asking Keith’s family what THEY thought about the song, which seems like an important opinion on the subject. So that’s what we did.
Whiskey Riff reached out to Jesse Keith Whitley, an artist himself and the son of the legendary Keith Whitley and Lorrie Morgan, to see if he wanted to share his thoughts on the song.
And as he told me, he doesn’t have a problem with it:
“I don’t think this is a bad deal at all, whatsoever. Do I think it’s barebones country, Keith Whitley country? Of course not. That’s why he said, ‘we did a flip on it.’ And I wouldn’t even consider it a flip, I would just say they grabbed this piece out of the chorus because it works… I think it’s great.”
Jesse also mentioned the song bringing new awareness to Keith Whitley’s original song – with even rappers like Rick Ross and Lil Wayne now aware of who he was and the impact that he had on music:
“It’s cool as s–t to me that he’s got Lil Wayne and Rick Ross… He had to tell them, ‘Hey, look, this is a song, I got this idea from Keith Whitley’ and they probably have discovered Keith Whitley at this point, right? I don’t have a problem with it at all. I actually really like the song.”
As the son of a country music legend, Jesse is fiercely protective of his dad’s legacy, as he should be. (In fact he also revealed – and gave me permission to share – that he’s working on putting together a tribute album to his late, great father).
So while a lot of people on the internet may have a problem with Morgan sampling Keith Whitley’s song, as it turns out, his own son isn’t one of them:
“I don’t understand what the deal is.”
And there you have it.
