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The Patsy Cline Story
Patsy Cline’s is a story of triumph and tragedy, and of
a little woman who couldn’t be kept down – the very stuff of country music songs
and legends. Patsy Cline, who held jobs plucking chickens, worked in a meat packing plant
and waitressed in a bus terminal, rose to be named the most promising country and western
female artist of 1957 by Billboard Magazine.
She was born in Gore, Virginia, on September 8, 1932 as
Virginia Patterson Hensley, and her first childhood heroine was Shirley Temple, whom she
idolized and who inspired her to win a tap dancing contest at the age of four. By eight she’d learned to play piano by ear,
and such was her evident talent that a teacher said formal training would not be wise
because it might stifle her.
At thirteen the girl was hospitalized with a throat infection
which turned out to be the result of rheumatic fever. In 1957 Patsy said, “I
developed a terrible throat infection and my heart even stopped beating. You might say it
was my return to the living after several days that launched me as a singer. The fever
affected my throat and when I recovered I had this booming voice like Kate Smith.”
As Ginny Hensley she began performing in a variety of local
and regional clubs and inns, and gained an audition for radio station WINC, then known as
a “hillbilly” station, where she became a regular performer in the late 1940s
and early 1950s. In 1948 she tried out in
Nashville on WSM, the home of the Grand Ole Opry,
at which she dreamed of playing. She was
regarded as “too unpolished” then, but Roy Acuff heard her audition and asked
her to sing on his own Noontime Neighbors radio
show.
By 1952 Ginny was featured vocalist with Bill Peer and his
Melody Boys, and Peer urged her to change her name to Patsy, derived from her middle name,
Patterson. When, on March 7, 1953, she
married a construction industry mogul named Gerald Cline, she became Patsy Cline –
the name by which she is remembered.
She won a $100 prize and a weekday job singing commercials at
Washington, D.C.’s WMAL in 1954. That
also led directly to a spot on sister station WARL in Arlington, Virginia, as a regular on
Jimmy Dean’s Town and Country Time show.
It was then that Patsy made her first record, a cover of Kitty
Wells’ hit, “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels.”
In the middle of 1954 the president of California-based Four
Star Records, Bill McCall, who was already recording Jimmy Dean, came to Washington and
heard Patsy. He immediately signed her, and
began making arrangements with Paul Cohen at Decca to lease her recordings to that
label.
On June 1, 1955 Patsy made her first recording for Four Star
in Nashville. Her first records were "A Church, A Courtroom then Goodbye,"
"Turn the Card Slowly," "Honky-tonk Merry-go-Round" and "Hiding
Out." Patsy’s honky-tonk growl and yodeling style were evident in these early
recordings but her first single, "A Church," was not a chart success.
In 1956 Paul Cohen decided to bring in a rookie A&R man,
Owen Bradley, to handle Patsy’s sessions. Bill McCall called Bradley and was quoted
telling him, “I’m going to send you a girl to record – she’s mean as
hell and hard to get along with.” Though Patsy was known to have a spirited, spunky
attitude with a matching vocabulary, Bradley actually found her to be “very pleasant.
She was just like me; she was trying to get along. It was an early assignment for me as an
A&R man. I was trying to get started in the line and she was trying to become a
singer. We were sort of in the same boat.”
On November 8, 1956, Patsy and Owen had a hit when they made
a record of the Don Hecht-Alan Block composition, "Walkin’ After Midnight."
The song was originally written for Kay Starr, who turned it down. Cline wasn’t
initially very impressed with the song, calling it “nothin’ but a little
ol’ pop song.” When she sang it on Arthur
Godfrey’s Talent Scouts show on January
21, 1957, she not only won the competition, her single shot onto the country charts
reaching #2.
Godfrey told her, “You are the most innocent, the most
nervous, the most truthful and honest performer I’ve ever seen” and promptly
booked her for several additional shows. Meanwhile the “little ol’ pop
song” leaped over onto the national pop charts in February 23, 1957, reaching #12 and
selling over 750,000 copies, making Patsy Cline one of the first country female singers to
be accepted by the vast pop audience. A Decca publicity photo, autographed at one of her
concerts, was recently put up for auction at $77.
Her self-titled first album was released on August 5, 1957
and though her career was on the rise, her marriage to Gerald Cline was collapsing. On
September 15th, Virginia Patterson “Patsy” Hensley Cline married Charlie Dick,
whom she had known, passingly, since she was 16.
Her career was not by any means a straight rise to the top. At times she was broke, and she struggled to find
the right material, suffering through dry periods. But
in 1960 she became a member at last of the Grand Ole Opry, and in April "I Fall to
Pieces" climbed the charts to #1 country and #12 pop. Ray Walker of the Jordanaires
said, “She came into the studio and said, ‘Ray, honey! They can’t take that
refrigerator now. They’ll never get my car now. I paid cash for them and they’re
mine and I’m keeping them.” Showbills
from this period have been reprinted in more recent times and can be found at auction for
as little as $10.
Cline’s autograph is rare and hard to come by;
apparently she did not sign many. One autograph cut from a collectors scrapbook was
recently auctioned on eBay for around $350. (The seller claims it is an almost impossible
signature to obtain, because of her early death.)
Patsy’s elation did not last long. On June 14th, she was
thrown through the windshield in a head-on car crash outside Madison High School in
Nashville. Her near-fatal injuries didn’t stop her from going on stage at The Opry in
a wheelchair to tell her fans she would soon be singing again. Indeed, on August 21st, she
was back in the studio on crutches to record a song called "Crazy," written by
Nashville newcomer Willie Nelson.
In February, 1963, Patsy attended her last recording session.
Among those present were her friends, Dottie West and Jan Howard. Patsy had just recorded
"Faded Love" and Dottie recalled, “The thing that I remember so well, and
it really gives me cold chills to this day, she went into Harry Silverstein’s office
and was in there for awhile. She came back with a record. It was her first record, ‘A
Church, A Courtroom and then Goodbye.’ She said, ‘Well here it is, the first and
the last.’ I said, ‘God! Don’t say that.’ Patsy said, ‘Oh, I just
meant the first recording and this one, don’t get upset.’ It really got to me,
especially later.”
Later was Tuesday, March 5th. Roy Acuff, George
Jones, Dottie West, Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and Patsy had all assembled in Kansas
City that Sunday to perform at a benefit concert for the family of local disc jockey,
“Cactus” Jack Call, who had died in a car accident in January. Patsy closed the
Sunday night tribute to Call. The last song she sang was “Life’s Railway to
Heaven.” A poster for this concert has
been offered on eBay for $6 – with the caveat that it is a reprint and may not even
be an authentic reprint, but “all of these posters are in excellent condition and
people love them.”
Two days of bad weather kept Patsy, Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw
Hawkins and Patsy’s manager and pilot Randy Hughes waiting in Kansas City. Finally,
on Tuesday, they took off for Nashville – stopping in Dyersburg, Tennessee about 150
miles from their destination. The last leg of the trip was never finished. Heavy rain and
turbulent air forced the plane down into the hills near Camden, Tennessee. Dottie West
said after the crash, “She almost rode back to Nashville in the car with Bill and me,
rather than flying, because Randy kept going to the phone and calling the weather bureau.
There were no flights – it was a bad, foggy rain. The last thing I said to Patsy was,
‘I’m really going to be worried about you flying in this weather.’ She
said, ‘Don’t worry about me hoss! When it’s my time to go, it’s my
time.’”
On June 10, 1963 over 25,000 mourners attended her funeral. Life magazine’s March 22, 1963, issue ran a
two-page spread on the plane crash and it was recently up for auction, going for just over
$15.
But Patsy lives on through her recordings and through the
wonders of today’s technology, Patsy’s eloquent vocals have been removed from
her classic old recordings and neatly spliced into new arrangements along with fresh vocal
partnerships such as Crystal Gayle dueting on "I Can’t Forget You," Beth
Nielson Chapman and Patsy on "If I Could Only Stay Asleep," Glen Campbell
harmonizing on "Too Many Secrets," Waylon Jennings joining with Patsy on
"Just out of Reach" and the legendary "Walkin’ After Midnight"
with newcomer Michelle Wright in combination with Patsy on Patsy Cline Duets, on Private/Mercury Records. This recently released CD is Volume One of an
anticipated three volumes.
For those who want her original recordings, the 1991 box set,
The Patsy Cline Collection, on MCA, has them all
– plus early radio transcriptions, alternate takes and previously unreleased
recordings – on four CDs. Amazon.com
has this set for just under $50.00, but it’s been auctioned on eBay for as little as
$20. Many of her original records are
also available on auction. They include a
picture disk for $19, original Decca LPs for
as little as $3, and many of her 45 singles, also going for less than $5. Perhaps the oddest item offered on eBay is a
metal street sign which says “Patsy Cline St. 43 E.” It was offered at $12.
There is also the 1985 movie, Sweet Dreams, the story of Patsy Cline, starring
Jessica Lange in the title role, available on video from HBO Home Video, with a running
time of 115 minutes. A copy was
recently offered on eBay for $17, with the claim that it is no longer easy to find.
In 1992 Patsy was inducted in the Grammy Awards Recording
Hall of Fame, and in 1993 the U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative Patsy Cline
stamp. In 1995 her Greatest Hits album sold its six millionth copy,
and had been on the Billboard charts for over eight years.
The boxed set was certified gold, after selling over a half million.
Willie Nelson summed her up: “Patsy Cline had such a unique, good voice that naturally everyone who heard it did a double take. It’s been said a million times. There’s only one Patsy Cline. There was something that set her apart and you can’t describe it. I can’t.”
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