Tuesday it will have been a half-century since the premature
death of Patsy Cline deprived the world of one of the finest and
most charismatic musical stylists of the 20th century (or of any
other century, come to that).
Patsy’s many fans, which include me, have every reason to wonder
what might have been had she been given a few more decades to
perform and record. And every reason to mourn what is surely a
considerable loss. But damn I’m glad we had her while we did. What
she left behind is a treasure.
Those who love her music might celebrate on this melancholy
anniversary by rehearing her classics: “Crazy,” “Sweet Dreams,” “I
Fall to Pieces,” “Faded Love,” “She’s Got You,” “So Wrong,” et al.
These songs, hits on both the country and pop charts a half century
ago, still hold up today. (I came up with country, so Patsy was
always a country singer to me. But her songs are equally appealing
to many who never wore a cowboy hat or heard a steel guitar.)
Patsy also did upbeat numbers, including a fine job on the Hank
Williams, Sr. standard, “Lovesick Blues.” (Yes, a song named
“Lovesick Blues” can be upbeat. Check YouTube.) But it was in the
slow ballads that her rich, bold contralto voice, perfect pitch,
and raw emotional intensity took the love song to a new level, one
that, a half century out, has yet to be matched. It takes a heart
so hard a coyote wouldn’t eat to listen to a Patsy Cline love song
and not feel exactly what she meant you to feel. Patsy
lived a love song, and she made you live it too.
Robert K. Oermann, who writes about Nashville and country music,
nailed it with, “Patsy could paralyze audiences with her ballads.”
Just so. I know the feeling.
Ironically, Patsy had to be talked into recording some of what
turned out to be her signature songs. “Crazy” is Patsy
Cline. Written by a 27-year-old Willie Nelson, “Crazy” by Patsy
went on to become the number one jukebox tune of all time. But
Patsy didn’t like the demonstration tape of the song, performed by
Willie, who even then was always ahead or behind the beat. She had
to be dragooned into recording it, and she finally did it her way,
which turned out to be magic. She also didn’t like “I Fall to
Pieces,” a great country song that turned out to be Patsy’s second
hit (“Walkin’ After Midnight” was the first). She originally didn’t
like “Sweet Dreams” either, her rendition of which still gives
chill bumps. Many have recorded these songs after Patsy. No one has
improved on them.
Though Patsy’s fame is based largely on her slow songs of
thwarted love and yearning, she preferred performing the
red-hot-mama songs. Those who knew her speculate this is because
these matched her personality, which was sassy and brassy and
smart. Not especially pretty, she was well built and sexy. She was
loud and friendly (unless you crossed her), they say. She enjoyed a
drink, cussed like a sailor, and though married didn’t spend nights
alone on the road unless she wanted to. She called everybody
“hoss.” She was the life of the party, which was wherever she
was.
The songwriters who hung out in Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, across
the alley from the back door to the Grand Ole Opry building, say
Patsy was a regular there and always one of the boys. She could
tell a joke that was not just as raunchy as the boys told, but
funnier too. She didn’t look away when it was her turn to buy a
round. She was not arrogant, but uber-confident. In short, she was
quite a package. She stuffed a lot of life into her few years. And
she gave back a lot of life. She was, to use the technical phrase,
a hot ticket.
Things didn’t start out so hot for Patsy, who was born Virginia
Patterson Hensley, on September 8, 1932, in Gore, Virginia, just
six days after her parents’ shotgun wedding. Her mother was 16,
father 43. The only helpful thing the abusive father ever did for
the family was to bug out when Ginny, as she was then known, was
15, leaving her and her mother to scrape by financially. Patsy
dropped out of high school to work and to play as many road houses,
Moose Hall dance gigs, and county fairs as she could in order to
jump-start her musical career. By way of the Arthur Godfrey show
and the Grand Ole Opry, and a walk-on by first husband Gerald
Cline, whose only impression on Patsy was to leave her with a last
name, the world finally got to know Patsy Cline.
Tragically, we only knew her for a few years before she was
gone. Her career took off in the early sixties, with hit after hit
on the country and pop charts. In early March of 1963, Patsy flew
to Kansas City to play a benefit with several other country stars
for a DJ who had just died in an auto accident. After the concert,
Patsy and two other country singers, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw
Hawkins, decided to fly back to Nashville in a single-engine plane
flown by Patsy’s manager, Randy Hughes. The weather was dicey, so
singer Dottie West offered to drive Patsy to Nashville. Patsy
declined.
The flight was delayed a day, and then had to dodge around bad
weather, tacking its way back to Nashville. The luckless group made
it to a small airport at Dyersburg, Tennessee, just 90 miles from
Nashville. They took off from Dyersburg in bad weather and, minutes
later, crashed into a hill. No one survived. Pasty Cline was
30.
Two of Patsy’s big hits “Sweet Dreams,” and her rendition of the
Bob Wills classic “Faded Love,” recorded before Patsy’s Kansas City
trip, weren’t released until after she was gone. Albums of Patsy
Cline favorites have sold in the millions since her death, and rack
up respectable sales even now. (For TAS readers with a
Patsyless music library, I recommend “Patsy Cline’s Greatest Hits,”
1967.) People who weren’t yet born when Patsy died respond to her
music. You just have to say “Patsy” and they know who you
mean.
Patsy’s continuing popularity is because her music is as
timeless as love itself. In this way she is still with us. For
which we can be truly thankful. It takes more than a trifling half
century to make stale the work of the artist and great soul that
was Patsy Cline.
