Hi Jane,
Glad the autographs were of interest . If anything similar corps up I will let you know. Now that you have Slim's musicians and are waiting for a T.T.M. form the man himself, have you thought of going after a Byron Keltgh. He is Slim Whitman's son and accompanied him on his last tour of England in 1977, performing many live duets with his father.
#2 ---- Sherman "Sugarfoot" Collins played with Slim Whitman for most of his career and was indeed the rhythm guitarist on many of his well known records.
to appreciate where Sugarfoot's nickname originated from you need to go back to a wonderful guitarist called Hank Garland. Garland was unique in that his first love was the jazz guitar, but could play extraordinarily skilful country lead guitar. He played a jazz based country piece called "Sugarfoot Rag", and played at the time under the name of Hank Garland and his Sugarfooters. Sherman Collins played as part of the group, and after the group disbanded retained the nickname "Sugarfoot.
Collins was almost certainly playing rhythm guitar on "Rose Marie" but Whitman, who was himself a good guitarist, was also probably playing.
Whitman only had one recording session in England ( at the West Hampstead Decca studios in 1957 ) and brought his own American musicians with him -- including Collins, Lester "Tinker" Fry and Jack Davis. Sugarfoot Collins remained with Whitman throughout most of his career, but the rest of the line up changed from time to time. In 1957, Whitman brought Tinker Fry across to play steel guitar, but as the Rose Marie recording that held the number one position in the British charts for a considerable number of weeks was made in 1955, the steel guitar player on "Rose Marie" would probably have been Tommy "Hoot" Rains.
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