TULSA — Even in death, Wayman Tisdale still gets standing ovations.

A memorial service for Tisdale Wednesday at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Tulsa opened with a call for the overflow crowd to give the former OU All-American one more standing ovation.

Several more would follow during the two-hour, open-casket event that filled the sanctuary with song, shouts of praise and stories from those gathered to remember Tisdale.

"He was the greatest basketball player, the greatest friend and had the best smile ever," Nate Harris, one of Tisdale's coaches at Tulsa's Booker T. Washington High School, said during the service.

Harris also revealed that Tisdale paid for championship rings won by Washington, a fact that Tisdale kept secret during his life.

In between anecdotes from Tisdale's acquaintances from both the basketball and music worlds, a choir added hymns. A band also provided background music throughout the testimonials, which seemed fitting for the jazz guitarist which put eight albums on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz chart.

"Wayman was so well-rounded in everything," Mike Mims, another of Tisdale's coaches, both at Booker T. Washington and at OU, said after the service. "His music, his basketball, his faith his family life,

his friendship with others. Everything was real. What you saw is what you got. And it was good."

In fact, of the four poster-sized portraits of Tisdale at the church, two featured him with his guitar. Only one showed him hooping it up, in a Phoenix suns uniform. The fourth showed Tisdale surrounded by his wife and four children.

Wednesday's service was just the first of three events planned to honor Tisdale within 24 hours. Thursday, Tulsa's Bank of Oklahoma Center will hold a public memorial service at 11 a.m.

A jazz concert will follow at 7 p.m. at the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame, which honored Tisdale with its Legacy tribute Award in 2002.