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Patsy Cline (born Virginia Patterson Hensley September 8, 1932 – March 5, 1963) was a Country music/Pop music singer, who enjoyed Pop music cross-over success during the era of the Nashville Sound in the early 1960s. She became one of the first Country singers to have major success on the Pop charts. Since her death at the age of 30 in a 1963 plane crash during the height of her fame, she has been considered one of the most influential and successful female vocalists of the 20th Century. Her life and career has been the subject of numerous books, movies, documentaries, articles and stage plays. Cline was best known for her voice. Many artists over the years have tried to re-create Cline's sound, like k.d. lang and LeAnn Rimes. Her signature songs include "Crazy", "I Fall to Pieces", "She's Got You", "So Wrong" and "Walkin' After Midnight". She has sold millions of albums over the past 50 years, which gave Patsy Cline an iconic fan status, similar to that of country artists like Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton.
Early Years
Cline began performing in area variety/talent shows early on and then, as she grew older, began to play popular nightclubs. To support her family after her father abandoned them, she quit high school and worked various jobs, soda jerking and waitressing by day and singing in clubs at night. Her mother, Hilda, made Cline's famous western stage outfits. During this period in her early 20s, Cline met two men who would be responsible for the name that would make her a household word: she married contractor Gerald Cline (whom she later divorced) in 1953, and she was given the name "Patsy" by her new manager, Bill Peer. Numerous appearances on local radio followed, and she attracted a large following in the Virginia/Maryland area, especially when Jimmy Dean learned of her. She became a regular on Connie B. Gay's Town and Country television show, broadcast out of Washington, D.C, which featured future Country star Jimmy Dean. In 1955, Cline was signed to Four Star Records, but her contract greatly limited her material, stating that she could record only compositions written by Four Star writers. Because of this, Cline never liked being under the record company, and later even called it a mistake. Her first record for Four Star was "A Church, A Courtroom & Then Good-Bye". The song attracted little attention, although it did lead to several appearances on The Grand Ole Opry. Between 1955 and 1957, Cline recorded straight up Honky Tonk material, with songs like "Fingerprints", "Pick Me Up On Your Way Down", and "A Stranger In My Arms". However, none of these songs gained any success for Cline. These songs only seemed to hint the potential that linked inside of Cline, according to her Decca Records producer Owen Bradley. Bradley thought her voice was best-suited for singing Pop Music. During her contract with Four Star, Cline recorded 51 songs. Success of "Walkin' After Midnight"
Cline continued to record under Four Star, without much success. In 1959, Cline met Randy Hughes, who became her manager. He helped Cline get a contract with Decca Records. Comeback Into Music In the 1960sWhen her Four Star contract expired in 1960, Cline signed with Decca Records-Nashville, under the direction of legendary producer Owen Bradley. He was not only responsible for much of Cline's career, but also for those of Brenda Lee and Loretta Lynn. Under Bradley's direction, Cline enjoyed country and pop music success both because of her versatile vocal ability and because of Bradley's arrangements and incorporation of instruments — such as strings — not typically used on country records. Bradley found that Cline's voice was best-suited for Country Pop-crossover songs. Cline never liked the fact that she sang Pop material. This new, more sophisticated instrumental style became known as “The Nashville Sound“, founded by Bradley and RCA’s Chet Atkins, who produced Jim Reeves, Skeeter Davis and Eddy Arnold. When Cline made her first recordings in 1955, Kitty Wells, known as "The Queen of Country Music", was the undisputed top female vocalist in the country music field. By the time Cline broke through as a consistent hit maker in 1961, Wells was still country's biggest female star. However, Cline dethroned Wells when, for two years in a row, she won Billboard Magazine's "Favorite Female Country & Western Artist" and the 1962 Music Reporter "Star of The Year" award. The two country queens could not have been more different, given that Cline's husky, full-throated, sophisticated sound was a marked contrast to Wells' pure-country, quivering vocals. Cline opened the door to greater pop-influence for country female vocalists and proved that she needed no "royal" title other than her name to prove her popularity. Cline, however, did not think of herself as anything other than a country singer. She also hired a new manager/promoter, Randy Hughes. Cline's first Decca release, in 1961, was the Country Pop ballad "I Fall to Pieces." It went on to become Cline's first #1 hit on the Country charts and peaked at #12 on the Pop charts. The song cemented Cline's status as a household name and proved that female Country singers could enjoy just as much crossover success as male counterparts such as Jim Reeves and Eddy Arnold. That same year, she was elected as a member of the Grand Ole Opry, the realization of a lifelong dream. Reportedly, she is the only Opry star in history to date to receive membership merely as a result of asking. During this period, Cline befriended and encouraged several women starting out in Country Music, including Loretta Lynn, Dottie West, Barbara Mandrell, Jan Howard and Brenda Lee, all of whom cite her as an influence in their careers. Near-Fatal Car AccidentThe year 1961 also brought the birth of Cline's son Randy. On June 14, 1961, Patsy and her brother Sam were involved in a head-on car collision. As detailed in the first Cline biography, Patsy Cline by Ellis Nassour, the impact of the accident threw Patsy through the windshield, nearly killing her. Upon her arrival at the scene, singer Dottie West picked the glass from Patsy's hair, while Patsy insisted that the other car's driver be treated before her. (Coincidentally, West would be involved in a serious car accident in 1991 and would not survive). Patsy later stated that she saw the female driver of the other car die before her eyes at the hospital. Suffering from a jagged cut across her forehead that required stitches, a broken wrist, and a dislocated hip, she spent a month in the hospital. When she left the hospital, her forehead was still visibly scarred. For the remainder of her career, she wore wigs to hide the scars and headbands to relieve pressure on her forehead. She returned to the road on crutches. Height of Her CareerOwing to her determination, outspoken nature, strong will, and a self-confidence that was a somewhat rare trait for women in Country Music at that time, Cline was the first female in the industry to prove that she could surpass her male competitors in terms of record sales and concert tickets. She headlined Carnegie Hall with fellow Opry members, The Hollywood Bowl with Johnny Cash, and eventually had her own show in Las Vegas in 1962, becoming the first female Country star to headline a show in Vegas. Cline is often considered a "heroine" by her female contemporaries, who claim that she broke down doors in the industry for women. Cline also reinvented her style by shedding her Western cowgirl outfits for elegant sequined gowns, cocktail dresses, and spiked heels. Cline's style in fashion and music were mocked at first by many but quickly copied. Reportedly, she was being paid at least $1,000 for her concert appearances towards the end of her life -- then an unheard-of fee for women in the Country Music industry. After the success of "I Fall to Pieces", Cline needed a follow-up, particularly because her near-fatal car accident had required that she spend a month in the hospital, which meant lost time from touring and promotions. The famous follow-up to her hit was written by Willie Nelson and called "Crazy", which Cline originally hated. Her first recording session recrding "Crazy" turned out to be a disaster. The entire day in the studio at Decca was a head-on fight between Cline and Owen Bradley. However, when the song was finally recorded the next week, it became a classic and, ultimately, Cline's signature song -- the one for which she remains best known. In late 1961, the song was an immediate Country Pop crossover hit, and was also her biggest Pop hit, when it went into the Top Ten there. In 1961, Cline released her second album called Showcase With the Jordanaires and in 1962 released her next single called "She's Got You", which became another major Country/Pop crossover smash. In 1962, Cline had a string of minor hits, including "Imagine That", "When I Get Thru' With You" and "So Wrong". These were followed by an appearance on American Bandstand and the release of a third album that August called Sentimentally Yours. Most albums of unreleased material followed posthumously, starting with "The Patsy Cline Story" in the summer of 1963. This album replaced Cline's planned fourth album, originally to have been released that March and titled Faded Love. Owen Bradley produced all of these tracks. The majority featured the legendary back-up vocal group The Jordanaires, who also appeared on many of Elvis Presley's albums. During her short career of only five and a half years, Patsy Cline received 12 prestigious awards for her achievements in music and three more following her death. Most of these were Cashbox, Music Reporter, and Billboard Awards, which were considered high honors during her time. Awards such as the ACM and CMA's were not established until after her death, and the Nashville chapter of The Grammys wasn't founded until 1964. Tragic DeathIn the months leading up to her death, Cline confided in her closest friends, June Carter and in great detail, in Nassour's Cline biography, by Dottie West, that she felt a sense of impending doom and suspected that she was not going to live much longer[citation needed]. On March 3, 1963, Patsy performed for the last time at a benefit show in Kansas City, Missouri for the family of a disc jockey, Cactus Jack Call, who had recently died. Also performing on the show were George Jones, George Riddle and The Jones Boys, Billy Walker, Dottie West, Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper,and George McCormick and the Clinch Mountain Clan. Afterwards, Patsy boarded a private plane bound for Nashville, flown by her manager Randy Hughes, along with Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins. After stopping to refuel in Dyersburg, Tennessee, the plane took off at 6:07 pm. According to revelations by the airfield manager in the Nassour biography, he suggested that they stay the night after advising of high winds and inclement weather on the flight path, but Hughes responded, "I've already come this far. We'll be there before you know it." Unfortunately, they never made it to Nashville. The plane flew into severe weather and crashed at 6:20 p.m. (according to Patsy's wrist watch) in a forest just outside of Camden, Tennessee, only 90 miles from the destination. There were no survivors. Patsy Cline was 30 years old.[2] Nashville was in shock over the losses. Thousands attended Patsy Cline's memorial service. Hours later, news that singer Jack Anglin had died on the way to her service surfaced, and the Opry mounted a special tribute show to honor the victims. (March, 1963 would prove to be the grimmest month in Opry history, ending with the death of former Opry star Texas Ruby, one of Cline's early influences, in a fire on March 29, bringing the total of Opry star deaths in one month to five.) Three songs became hits after Cline's death: "Sweet Dreams", "Leavin' On Your Mind" and "Faded Love". She was buried in her hometown of Winchester, Virginia where a bell tower, erected in her memory, plays hymns daily at 6:00 p.m., the hour of her death. Her mother had her grave marked with a simple bronze plaque, which reads: "Death Cannot Kill What Never Dies: Love". A memorial marks the place where the plane crashed outside of Camden, Tennessee. While Cline's life may have ended, her fan following did not. In fact, her life and career have acquired almost iconic status, so that she has become a rather greater and more widely-admired star in death than she was in life. Legacy: 1963-1985As the 1960s and early 70s moved on, MCA (new owner of Cline’s former label, "Decca") continued to issue Patsy Cline albums, so that Cline has had several posthumous hits. Her Greatest Hit album continues to appear on the Country Music charts to this day. It held the record as being the album to stay on the Country Charts the longest, until Garth Brooks surpassed it in the 1990s. However, it still holds the record for an album by a female artist. In 1973, Cline was elected to The Country Music Hall of Fame along with guitarist/RCA producer Chet Atkins, making her the first female solo artist in Country Music history to receive that honor. Along with the standard induction bronze plaque, the Hall houses a few of Cline's stage outfits, letters to her fan club president, and personal effects recovered from the crash site, including her "Dixie" cigarette lighter. By the late 70s, Cline’s name occasionally appeared in magazine articles and television interviews by her friends, namely Dottie West and Loretta Lynn, who credited her with inspiration. It was encounters with MCA/Decca recording star Loretta Lynn by MCA manager of artist relations Ellis Nassour that led to a series of magazine profiles and the first of two complete biographies by Nassour with interviews with Patsy's mother Hilda Hensley, her husbands, intimate friends and peers such as Dottie West, Brenda Lee and Faron Young. Loretta Lynn published her biography, “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, which featured a chapter dedicated to her friendship with Cline. Lynn’s biopic of the same name followed and featured actress Beverly D'Angelo, (who used her own voice) as Cline. Public interest in Patsy Cline began to increase. Movies & documentariesImage:Jessicapatsy.JPG Jessica Lange as Patsy Cline in the 1985 bio film Sweet Dreams. In 1985, HBO/Tri Star Pictures produced Sweet Dreams: The Life and Times of Patsy Cline, starring actress Jessica Lange, lip-synching as Cline, actor Ed Harris as Cline’s husband, Charlie Dick, and actress Ann Wedgeworth as Hilda Hensley, Cline's mother. The film depicted Cline's marriage to Dick as abusive, falsely portraying Cline as a victim of domestic violence. Cline’s family and friends claimed that this and other sequences in the film were inaccurately fictionalized for Hollywood and were not pleased with the final product. Cline's mother was quoted in a 1985 edition of People magazine: "The producers told me they were going to make a love story. I saw the film once. That was enough." However, the picture became a hit, and Lange was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance. The soundtrack to the film was a great success, and Patsy Cline’s discography began to climb the record charts again. Hoping to set the record straight on her personal life, Cline’s family and friends have produced a series of videos/documentaries since Sweet Dreams including The Real Patsy Cline, Remembering Patsy and most recently Sweet Dreams Still: The Live Collection. 1990-presentIn 1992, the U.S. Postal Service honored her, along with Hank Williams, on a U.S. postage stamp, and in 1995, she was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, along with Barbra Streisand and Peggy Lee. Also in 1992, MCA released a 4 CD/Cassette Collection of the discography, called The Patsy Cline Collection. This boxed set, which includes a booklet chronicling Cline's career (with many rare photos), remains one of the top 10 bestselling boxed collections in the record industry. In 1993, the Grand Ole Opry opened its museum beside The Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville. It includes a permanent Patsy Cline exhibit, displaying several of her awards, stage outfits, wigs, make-up, hairbrush, and a fully-furnished replica of her dream home’s music room. That same year, the musical play Always…Patsy Cline premiered, produced by Ted Swidley, chronicling the real-life story of Mississippi native Louise Seger, at the time a Houston, Texas fan who met Cline after a concert one evening and became a lifelong friend. The revue has made its way across the U.S., running off-Broadway in New York, New York and for over a year at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium where it starred singer Mandy Barnett and sold out nightly. Other plays, based on Cline's life and career, have followed; including A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline and Patsy! (a version of A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline that was performed only at the Grand Palace in Branson, MO). These are the only plays licensed by Legacy, Inc., the company operated by the family. All "Patsy Cline" related plays and merchandising are handled through the Legacy, Inc. office in the Nashville area. Cline became a member of the Texas Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1994. Cline was portrayed on film again in the 1995 CBS bio pic Big Dreams and Broken Hearts: The Dottie West Story, featuring Michele Lee as Dottie West and actress Tere Myers as Cline. In 1997, Cline's recording of "Crazy" was named the #1 Jukebox Hit of All Time. "I Fall to Pieces" came in at # 17. In 1998, she was nominated to The Hollywood Walk of Fame by a dedicated fan and a street was named after her on the back lot of Universal Studios in 1999. Also in 1999, VH1 named Cline #11 on its “100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll” and in 2002, CMT named her #1 on its “40 Greatest Women of Country Music”. She was also honored with the Nashville Golden Voice Award in its Legend Category that same year. Cline's hit song "I Fall to Pieces" was listed at #107 on RIAA's list of Songs of the Century in 2001. Throughout her career, country legend Reba McEntire has cited Cline as one of her childhood inspirations and, upon reaching stardom in the 1980s, several of her first albums featured Cline's hits. McEntire closed her live shows for years with Cline's signature hit "Sweet Dreams", but discontinued the encore after closing a show with it on March 15, 1991 when the airplane carrying her band crashed and killed everyone aboard early the next morning. McEntire has been compared to Cline in regards to her career control as a woman. Grammy Award winning country singer LeAnn Rimes has often been touted to be the heir to Cline's legacy, because her remarkably rich, powerful vocals are quite similar to that of Cline's. In fact, Rimes has released covers of Cline's hit songs such as "Crazy" and "I Fall to Pieces", and has performed "Crazy" at the White House for George W. Bush and his wife, Laura Bush. Each year, fans from around the globe gather in Cline’s hometown of Winchester, where she is buried, to pay homage to her during its Labor Day and Memorial Day events. Efforts to erect a Patsy Cline museum in Winchester, Virginia, are still in the works. Sadly, a feud between her siblings regarding Patsy's mother's estate put Cline's stage costumes on the auction block in 2003 to pay for court costs. The feud attracted national media attention and the outspoken disappointment of Cline's fans, who had hoped to see the items donated to a museum, as Cline's mother had intended. However, the group behind the museum effort, Celebrating Patsy Cline Inc., claims that the items are in good hands. Cline's brother died not long after the auctions. With the support and efforts of Patsy fans and supporters of the preservation of Patsy's life and career, a few items were secured from the auctions. One of the outfits (sold to an unknown bidder) has turned up in a Smithsonian Institution exhibit. In 2005, the album Patsy Cline's Greatest Hits was certified by the RIAA as Diamond, reaching sales of 10 million copies. That same year, that same album was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for staying on the overall music charts the longest of any female artist of any music genre in history. Cline's career and musical influence have been cited as inspirations by countless vocalists, including Tammy Wynette, Cyndi Lauper, Marianne Faithful, Patti Smith, Dottie West, Barbara Mandrell, Michelle Branch, Amy Grant, Reba McEntire, Trisha Yearwood and LeAnn Rimes. k.d. lang built her early career and first 5 albums on a character that was basically a tribute to Cline, both in vocal characteristics, fashion sense (the early Cline image of Western cowgirl skirts and cowboy boots), musical material covered and Lang's band was even named the Re-Clines. Perhaps the greatest testament to her legacy, aside from her discography, is a fan base that continues to grow throughout the years, spanning generations and continents. Family todayIn December 1998, Cline’s mother, Hilda Hensley, died in Winchester, Virginia of natural causes (Cline's father had died in the 1950s). Hensley rarely granted live interviews.Image:PatsyClinesMother.JPG Cline's mother, Hilda Hensley, remembering her beloved daughter (People Magazine, 1985) Patsy's husband, Charlie Dick, resides in Nashville, where he continues to be a well-known member of the Country Music community, producing documentaries on Cline and other artists through his video production company. Dick is very involved with Cline's fan base and considers them an extension of family, attending many fan functions. Daughter Julie joins him in representing Cline’s estate at public functions and has four children of her own (one, Virginia, named for Cline, was killed in an automobile accident in 1994) and three grandchildren, making Patsy Cline a great-grandmother. Son Randy was the drummer of a Nashville band and still resides in Nashville, although he chooses not to live in the limelight. Dick's brother, Mel, heads up the "Always...Patsy Cline" fan organization. After Cline’s death, Charlie Dick married singer Jamey Ryan in 1965, but the two divorced years later. Charlie & Jamey have a son, and two more grandchildren. Ironically, Jamey Ryan provided the vocals for two songs in the film Sweet Dreams: "Bill Bailey (Won't You Please Come Home)" (a Cline concert favorite for many years, she finally recorded the song in 1963, during what would turn out to be her final series of recording sessions for Decca); and "Blue Christmas" (a tune that Cline never recorded). Ryan's sound is so close to Cline's that many fans search Cline's discography trying to find these two songs but soon discover that these tracks were recorded solely for the film and were not included on the soundtrack. Trivia
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DiscographySingles
Selected Albums
Cover Versions of Patsy Cline Songs
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