Toby Keith Only Intended for This Top 10 Hit to Be Played at a Funeral

In 2009, Toby Keith released “Cryin’ For Me (Wayman’s Song)”, as part of his American Ride album. The song, written solely by Keith, became a Top 10 hit. 

Perhaps no one was more surprised than Keith that the song did so well, since he never planned on releasing it at all. Instead, Keith wrote “Cryin’ For Me (Wayman’s Song)” to play at the funeral of his close friend, Wayman Tisdale, a basketball player and jazz musician. Tisdale died from cancer.

“At first, I just wanted to do it at his funeral, something really personal – a gift from me to the world, to the funeral in his world,” Keith explains. “That’s what he was to me, a gentleman and just the perfect person he was. After I wrote it, I said, ‘I’ve got to record this thing.’ So the beauty of it was Dave Koz, the jazz sax player, Marcus Miller, another one of his jazz buddies, were all there playing at the funeral, so I asked both of them. … Marcus played bass, and Koz is playing sax. It ended up being a really nice tribute.”

What Toby Keith Says About Writing “Cryin’ For Me (Wayman’s Song)”

“Cryin’ For Me (Wayman’s Song)” begins with, “Got the news on Friday morning / But a tear I couldn’t find / You showed me how I am supposed to live / Now you showed me how to die.” For Keith, it was the most accurate way to convey his feelings about the loss of his close friend.

“I reeled around there for two days in a stupor,” Keith recalls. “He was a great guy with a charismatic smile, and the closest thing to Jesus I’ve ever met. There’s a line in the song that says, ‘You showed me how to live.’ He was a perfect, perfect human. I got up Sunday morning, realized I was just going to have to face it all [and] couldn’t believe that he was gone. We had gotten really, really close. 

“I was the first one he would call when he would come out of surgery,” Keith adds. “He passed away on May 15. Anyway, I got up Sunday morning, called his cell phone to hear his voice one more time, I grabbed my guitar and sat down and wrote this song, and went in and put it on the album.”

Ironically, Keith chose not to perform “Cryin’ For Me (Wayman’s Song)” at Tisdale’s funeral. Fearing he would be overcome with emotion, he instead performed “Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground” by Willie Nelson.

In 2024, Keith also passed away from cancer.

Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic