Slim Whitman — the country crooner and yodeler who influenced members of the Beatles and whose voice helped repel an alien invasion in director Tim Burton's 1996 sci-fi parody "Mars Attacks!" — died Wednesday at a hospital in Orange Park, Florida. He was 90.
The cause was heart and kidney ailments, said Roy Beagle, one of his sons-in-law.
To his fans, Whitman's music was wholesome and sentimental. To others, it was just plain cornball.