Here’s one for all you young people out there, because I know the young people like Slim Whitman.

WTF, you might be asking, as the kids say “What the fuck?” nowadays.

Well, I was prompted to write about the classic singer of classic cowboy songs after watching a few minutes of daytime cable TV this morning.

I don’t watch a lot of cable TV. I’m more likely to watch something streaming. And I never really watch much cable during the day. But I was channel surfing this morning, trying without luck to find something to occupy my brain for a few minutes before I submitted a horror novella for consideration, when I observed how awful the basic cable commercials are.

Lots of prescription medicine, over the counter medicine, snakeoil medicine, etc. Some gadgety things that involve shedding more light on your driveway or making it easier to hear the TV. I don’t know about you, but the last thing I ever have any trouble hearing is the commercials in TV.

So I thought back to the misspent days of my misspent youth and the times I watched local TV channels and I swear to god it seemed like nearly every other commercial back was for record albums.

You might know them as vinyl.

Most of the commercials were for record collections: Hits of the 60s or earlier, great country songs, Boxcar Willie, Fats Domino and Slim Whitman.

For those of you who don’t know: Slim Whitman, pictured here, was a country singer who was known for his falsetto and his yodel. His bio says he opened for Elvis Presley at one point. His greatest claim to fame in the last quarter of the 20th century came when his song “Indian Love Call” caused the invading Martians’ brains to explode in the Tim Burton sci-fi spoof “Mars Attacks!” which was itself loosely based on a vintage set of bubblegum cards.

Whitman, who died at age 90 in 2013, was a bigger star in the United Kingdom than in the United States.

So there you go, young people. Aren’t you glad you asked?