Somewhere in Virginia in the Rain

 Category: News/Obituary 

The new year begins as the old one ended: with sad news.  Misty Morgan has died.

Morgan, half of the duet of Jack Blanchard and Misty Morgan, died New Year's Day, less than a week after being diagnosed with cancer.  According to Blanchard (her husband of 53 years), Morgan was taken to the emergency room on Christmas day.  Surgery, per his Facebook posts, revealed that she had cancer and "not more than five months or so, if we're lucky."  By New Year's Eve, Blanchard's posts went from searching for hospice care to "she can't come home." 

This evening, around 6 PM, Blanchard posted, "I was sitting in the hospital room watching Misty sleep, and she died."

Although both were from Buffalo, New York (even born in the same hospital), Jack Blanchard and Misty Morgan didn't meet until 1963, in Florida.  They wed in 1967 and spent their career and lives together.

In 1970 America was blindsided by the novelty-style hit "Tennessee Bird Walk," the song about taking things away from birds that make them birds.  It went to #1 on the country charts and was a top 25 hit on the pop charts (amid things as diverse as Elvis, the Jackson Five, and Led Zeppelin).  Blanchard and Morgan would have a total of five top 40 country hits in their brief heyday, including another novelty song, "Humphrey the Camel," and the far more serious "Somewhere in Virginia in the Rain," before fading from commercial popularity. 

Misty Morgan was 75.