"The Audio Art of a Legendary Country Classic"

Patsy Cline, the sassy femme firebrand of contemporary country music’s infancy, practically cornered the market on triumph and tragedy. A contemporary of Nashville female pioneers, Kitty Wells and Jean Shepherd, Patsy was the leader of the pack when it came to crossing over to the mass appeal of the Pop charts. In fact, prior to her untimely death in a 1963 plane crash, Cline had reached the Pop Top 100 thirteen times, including her groundbreaking 1957 hit, "Walking After Midnight."

Her voice was both startling in its power and depth yet captivating in its delicate, angelic beauty.

Country kingpin Eddie Arnold once stated: "Patsy had the style and the charisma and the sound. She had it all, my gosh, that woman could sing. She could sing anything. She could sing country, she could sing pop, she could sing jazz. She could do anything, oh yeah!"

Hit maker Roy Clark added "Instead of the band backing Patsy Cline up, Patsy Cline lead the band where she wanted them to go. Absolutely tore the roof off! She had to have confidence in her voice because when she sang a song, that song had been sung!"

Patsy’s early life as Virginia Patterson Hensley was indicative of her dogged determination to succeed as an entertainer. Born in rural Gore, Virginia on September 8, 1932, the daughter of Sam and Hilda Hensley won a tap dancing contest competition at age four, imitating her childhood heroine, Shirley Temple. She learned to play piano by ear by her eighth birthday, but at age 13 faced her first of three bouts with death when she was hospitalized with a throat infection brought on as a result of rheumatic fever. In a 1957 interview Patsy stated: "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."

That "booming voice" and her initiative earned 16 year old Ginny Hensley (as she was than known) a variety of regional performance opportunities at clubs and inns and an audition at hillbilly radio station WINC, where she would become a regular performer in the late 40’s and early 50’s. She began wearing cowgirl outfits complete with white hat and fringes on her dress. The frocks, sewn by her mother, would later become a Patsy Cline trademark.

In 1948 she was invited to come to a Nashville tryout on WSM radio, the home of the Grand Ole Opry. "Diamond in the rough" Ginny Hensley was too unpolished for the high standards of the Opry, but her audition was heard by Roy Acuff who asked her to sing on his "Noontime Neighbors" radio show. The opportunity boosted her self-confidence and determination to return one day as an "Opry" performer.

By 1952 Ginny had joined Bill Peer and his Melody Boys as featured vocalist and it was Peer who recommended she change from Ginnie to Patsy Hensley, which was a creative derivative of her middle name, Patterson. Her simultaneous romance with construction industry magnate Gerald Cline led to her March 7, 1953 marriage, hence the legendary name Patsy Cline.

A win as best female vocalist at the national championship country music contest sponsored by Washington’s WMAL radio in 1954 earned the new bride a $100 prize, a weekday job singing commercials on the station and a spot on WMAL’s sister station WARL in Arlington, Virginia as a regular on their "Town and Country Time" show starring Jimmy Dean. It was at this time Patsy recorded her first song, a cover of the Kitty Wells hit "It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-tonk Angels."

In mid 1954, California based Four Star Records President; Bill McCall (who had previously signed Jimmy Dean) came to Washington and discovered Patsy, signing her to record on September 30, 1954. While McCall made arrangements to lease her recordings to Paul Cohen at Decca (and its Coral affiliate) for distribution, the 22 year old vocalist along with Bill Peer and his Melody Boys, made their way to New York to audition for Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts CBS TV show. Patsy’s sense of ethics came to the fore when Godfrey’s producers asked her to perform minus her group and she refused, thus killing her chance (at least for the time being) to be seen on America’s most popular talent show.

On June 1, 1955 Patsy experienced her first recording for Four Star in Nashville. Labelmate, Roy Clark gave an insight into the casual approach to the company’s sessions at the time: "There was a recording studio there – if you want to call it that. It was a room that had a recording machine in it. This was back in the days where the next step, if you were playing clubs, was to hear yourself on radio. It wasn’t about having big hit records. That was a distant dream. It was a co-op thing. Jimmy Dean would go in one day and record and we’d all back him up. The next day I’d go in and they would back me up and the same with Patsy."

The first results of her efforts 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 didn’t help here first single, "A Church" chart upon its July 20^th release.

By 1956 Paul Cohen decided to bring in rookie A&R "jack of all musical trades," Owen Bradley to stabilize the sessions and nurture the self described blues, country and hillbilly stylist. Bill McCall called Bradley and was quoted as 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, take no prisoners attitude and matching vocabulary, Bradley 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 hit upon musical magic when they recorded the Don Hecht-Alan Block composition "Walkin’ After Midnight." The song was originally written for Kay Starr, who turned it down. The "strutting like a peacock" rhythm created by Bradley worked wonders alongside Patsy’s torchy pop country posturing. Cline wasn’t very impressed with the song saying "Why it ain’t nothin’ but a little ole pop song." When she sang it on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts show on January 21, 1957, she not only won the competition, her Decca single shot onto the country charts reaching #2. Godfrey himself said, "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 ole pop song" took a historic turn when it jumped onto the national pop charts (February 23, 1957) reaching #12 and selling over 750,000 copies, making Patsy Cline one of the first country females to be accepted by the vast pop audience.

Country music veteran George Hamilton IV said: "I remember the thing that struck me was her powerful personality. She had charisma, stage presence, confidence---here was this gal that came on like gangbusters. When she hit that stage it was her stage, it was her audience." If there was any doubt that her audience was pop as well as country it was dispelled when Patsy performed in February on Allen Freed’s rock-n-roll radio show.

In the spring of 1957 Patsy and Owen were back in the studio recording her album debut. Among the three session’s 14 songs were "Too Many Secrets," "I Can’t Forget," "That Wonderful Someone" and "Hungry for Love" (four of the songs included on this CD). Bradley didn’t have to be hit by a freight train to realize Patsy’s sound crossed barriers and the recordings he did with her reflected the pop assimilation no matter what the root style was. "Too Many Secrets" for example was the epitome of uptown honky-tonk, "Hungry for Love" was a bouncy country blues, "That Wonderful Someone" was a ballad and "I Can’t Forget" a country waltz yet with Patsy’s vocals all became pop songs, while never losing their strong country base. Still Owen knew where and when to draw the line. Loretta Lynn remembered, "Patsy loved to yodel-that was funny and Owen couldn’t keep her from yodeling. She’d come in and say, ‘I wanna yodel. I wanna yodel!’ but Owen kept telling her, ‘Patsy, don’t yodel on these songs cause this is not the time.’" To further balance the pop and country sides of her recordings, Bradley began using the Anita Kerr’s Singers for background and a string ensemble often numbering 14 members.

In May of 1957, Patsy embarked on her first tour along with Brenda Lee and Porter Wagner. Country music veteran George Jones said: "When I first heard her sing, it knocked me out. We were starting to do dates on the road, working out of Nashville, with some of the people and we got to work some dates here and there with Patsy and I just fell in love with her singing-everybody did. She was what we used to call "a real trooper." She’d just get right to the point and she was blunt. That’s what everybody liked about her."

Her self-titled first album was released on August 5, 1957 and though her career was in full swing, her marriage to Gerald Cline was on the rocks and in the final stage of dissolution. On September 15^th, Virginia Patterson "Patsy" Hensley Cline married Charlie Dick whom she had known, though only in passing since she was 16. She met him in earnest after a performance in April 1956 at the Armory in Ferryville, Virginia.

By year’s end, Patsy Cline, who held pre-singing jobs plucking chickens, working in a meat packing plant and waitressing in a bus terminal, had been named the most promising country and western female artist of 1957 by Billboard Magazine.

Her only session of 1958 (on February 13^th) produced six sides, including the softly swaying rhythm ballad "Just Out of Reach" and the sophisticated supper club styled "If I Could Only Stay Asleep." Still, finding that follow up hit to "Walkin’ After Midnight" remained elusive. The highlight of her year was the August 25^th birth of her first child, Julie Simadore Dick.

By July 3, 1959, Patsy had been hitless for over two years and entered Bradley’s barn (as his recording studio was known) counting on recording. Owen recalled: "She came in and she was pretty much down. We couldn’t find anything out of the stack that he (McCall) had sent her or they had sent to me that we thought was any good. I said, ‘Patsy, why don’t you just come back another time. Then she started crying, she said, ‘I don’t have any money, Owen. I’m really up against it. He (McCall) won’t give me any money unless I record.’ And so I said, ‘he can claim p.d. (public domain) songs. That was a common practice at the time so when she had first come to town she had sung at the all night sings. She had sung "A Closer Walk with Thee" and a lot of people had talked about it. So I said, ‘why don’t you do "A Closer Walk with Thee" and maybe he can claim that. ‘That would be great,’ she said. I told her when I was a kid up in the country they used to sing an old song, "Life is Like a Mountain" (actually "Life’s Railway to Heaven" an old sacred and traditional song). So we did those two songs."

1960 began on an up note, as Patsy became a member of the Grand Ole Opry (January 9^th). Jan Howard a 30 time country chart artist fondly remembered: "I was living in California and had a top ten record at the time, so I was asked to appear on the Opry. Johnny Cash said, ‘When you go to Nashville and do the Opry. Don’t hang around cause that’s when you get in trouble. I don’t know what trouble I was supposed to get into, but he was more an authority on that I guess. I’d do my spot, and if Patsy was on I’d hang around so I could hear her sing. But I never met her ‘cause I didn’t have the courage to walk up and say, ‘I’m Jan Howard and I’ve always been a fan.’ As soon as she would sing I’d go back to the ladies restroom and change clothes. I was back there changing one night when the door flew open and there stood Patsy in her cowgirl outfit, fringes, boots and everything. I was like wow! It was like a giant had walked in. She put her hands on her hips and said, ‘Well, you’re a conceited little son of a bitch.’

"I said, ‘What?’

"‘You just waltz in here, do your spot and waltz out. You don’t say hello or kiss my foot or say anything to anybody.’

"I said, ‘Now wait just a damn minute,’ My Irish and Indian temper came up, ‘I’ve always been a fan of yours but right now I’m not. Besides that, where I’m from, when a stranger moves to town the people who live there make them feel welcome. There ain’t a damn soul in this town who’s made me feel welcome.’ Boy she laughed. You could here her a block away.

"‘You’re alright honey. Anybody that will talk back to the Cline is alright. We’re gonna be good friends.’ And we were, suddenly I wasn’t afraid of Patsy Cline."

The momentum of the "Opry" stint carried over to her January 27^th session in which she recorded the punchy, persistant, bluesy, "There He Goes" and the stereotypical 50’s styled country rockers "How Can I Face Tomorrow" and "Crazy Dreams."

Patsy’s next session on November 16^th escalated her reputation to the heights of a superior balladeer when she recorded "I Fall to Pieces." Twenty one days into 1961, Patsy performed again at the "Opry" but this time she was in her ninth month of pregnancy. Shortly thereafter she gave birth to her second child, Randy.

By April, "I Fall to Pieces" was charging up the charts to #1 country and #12 pop. The jubilation was evident as Ray Walker of the Jordanaires stated: "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 their mine and I’m keeping them."

Patsy’s elation was, unfortunately, short lived. On June 14^th, she faced her second brush with death when 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 the new country queen from going on stage at "the Opry" in a wheelchair to tell her fans she would be singing again soon. In fact, on August 21^st, the singing spitfire was back in the studio on crutches recording a song called "Crazy," written by a Nashville newcomer named Willie Nelson.

The song became her biggest pop hit, reaching #9 while rising to #2 country. Her pop presence contributed mightily to a historic New York night in November (29^th) when Patsy along with Jim Reeves, Faron Young, the Jordanaires, Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones played the first ever country showcase at Carnegie Hall.

More Cline classics such as "She’s Got You" (her biggest country hit at #1 for five weeks), "When I Get Through With You" and "Leavin’ On Your Mind" kept Patsy popular and productive through 1962 and early 1963 as she played everywhere from the Hollywood Bowl to the Las Vegas strip where she reportedly received over $36,000 for a five week stint at the Mint casino.

In February of 1963, Patsy attended, what would become her last recording session. Among those present were Owen Bradley and her regular musicians along with 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 (Owen’s assistant) and was in their 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 began on Sunday, March 3^rd when Roy Acuff, George Jones, Dottie West, Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins and Patsy all assembled in Kansas City 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.

Loretta Lynn remembered: "She asked me to go with her (to Kansas City). She told me she would give me fifty dollars. Fifty dollars was like a million dollars to me. Now that was Thursday, and I said, ‘Okay, I’ll go.’ On Friday I called her and told her that I had a job making seventy five dollars and I was going to stay. I would have been on that trip with her.

Patsy closed the Sunday night tribute to Call looking and feeling radiant in her white chiffon dress. The last song she sang was ironically, "Life’s Railway to Heaven." Two days of bad weather kept Patsy, Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins and Patsy’s manager and pilot Randy Hughes cooling their heels while Randy’s four seater, single engine piper Cherokee sat on the tarmac of the Kansas City airport. Finally, on Tuesday, March 5^th they took off for Nashville stopping in Dyersburg, Tennessee about 150 miles from their destination. The last leg of the trip was never completed. Heavy rain and turbulent air forced down the "piper" into the rugged hills near Camden, Tennessee. Patsy faced her third and last match with death. Something she was apparently fatalistic about. Dottie West was quoted 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.’

Patsy was a paradox, a big time star yet always a small town girl. A good natured woman who would secretly buy and hang drapes over Loretta Lynn’s windows yet a woman as George Hamilton IV would say about the tough but tender artist, "She could cuss and was not hesitant to lay one on ya. But she was never cold, never mean or petty. If you were cocky or arrogant, she would pull you off your high horse in about three seconds. She was strong, but she was a lady and underneath there was a gentle caring person."

On June 10, 1963, Patsy Cline was laid to rest while over 25,000 mourners attended her funeral. After her passing, a flood of tributes poured over the land like the storm that took her life. Rockabilly legend Carl Perkins: "She set patterns that will be followed and copied for as long as there is good country music."

George Hamilton IV stated: "I’m sure, if she had lived, she would be one of the biggest stars today."

Perhaps Willie Nelson summed it up best: "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."

Whether you could describe it or not, Patsy’s music left an indelible mark on millions and after 36 years still sets the standard for state of the art country music.

Jay Warner

Jay Warner is a six time Grammy winning music publisher with over120 Top 40 hits to his credit and isthe author of numerous books including Billboard’s Rock-n-Roll in Review (Schirmer Books) and The Billboard Book of American Singing Groups (Watson-Guptil Books).

Through the wonders of today’s technology, Patsy’s eloquent vocals have been removed from her classic old recordings and delicately balanced into new arrangements along with some outstanding 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 coupling with Patsy on "Just out of Reach" and the Legendary "Walkin’ After Midnight" with an infectuous rendering by new comer Michelle Wright in combination with Patsy.