The Patsy Cline Story

 

Imagine That

Sweet Dreams

The Patsy Cline Story

Deluxe 2-Record Set

Decca Records DXB 176

1963

From the inside cover: "Oh Lord, I sing just like I hurt inside."

This was the way Patsy Cline liked to describe her sining, the unabashed emotion that she out into each song. But the moire I saw her, talked with her... the more I learned to know her. It seemed to me that what Patsy really meant was: "Ising just like I LOVE inside." because, you see, I don't think she ever realized that "hurting" and "loving" were almost synonymous. She'd never had time to read the poet who said" "Love is a sickness full of woes", she only knew that her life was full of "hurting" and "loving." Time for her was too precious, and life too short to bother about the matter of when one might begin and the other end.

Yes, Patsy Cline's life was full of hurt and love.

There were the mother, the sister and the brother who idolized her: the father who deserted her in her childhood; a first marriage destined for failure, the second, well, as her husband Charlie says, "Every day was Christmas!"

Patsy attracted love like a magnet. There was the little old lady in Dahlgren, Virginia, who watched her grow up, and who stood on the sidelines and applauded when she did her first tap dance at the age of four, who listened to her sing duets with her mother in church and watcher her on television when Arthur Godfrey said: "This gal can SING." And even though her only income was a pension, every year she sent a silver dollar to Patsy and Charlie's children on their birthdays.

There was Patsy's "White orchid" friend in California, an elderly gentleman who always saw to it that, when she appeared anywhere in his part of the country, there would be a white orchid in her dressing room.

There was the mother who had lost her only son and who somehow found solace in Patsy's singing.

And the college boy who wrote: "I don't care how silly it sounds... or how funny it many seem, but I want you to down... I loved her."

Yes, there were millions of fans. They came to see her at the Grand Ole Opry, at performances in schoolhouses and fairs, at Carnegie Hall and in the Hollywood Bowl.

They bought her presents. They bought her records. They begged for her autograph. And, most important of all... they loved her!

And Patsy? She loved EVERYBODY!

She loved without reservation, fiercely and foolishly... her family, her friends, life itself.

There are those who think it was her love for her friends that kept her from being in the "big time" years sooner. For example, in 1955, with a band from Martinsburg, Va., Patsy auditioned for the Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts Show. She was accepted but not the band, so she refused to appear.

Her concern for her fellow man almost cost her her life in 1960. In a serious automobile accident in which two people lost their lives and others were injured, Patsy insisted that the other injured persons be treated before she allowed the doctors to even look at her wounds. Actually, her injuries were serious, and she was hospitalized for three months with lacerations which left permanent scars.

As for Patsy's love for her family, well, let's start at the beginning: 

She was born Virginia Patterson Hensley, September 8, 1932, in Winchester, Va., the daughter of Samuel and Hilda Hensley. She had a younger brother and sister, Samuel Jr. and Sylvia Mae. Hers was not a happy childhood, and at 16 it became necessary for her to leave school and got to work to help support the family. During the day she worked as a clerk in a drugstore. At night she sang, sang everywhere, any place she could, on street corners, in church, in honky tonks, with or without bands, for nickels and quarters, occasionally for doors... but too often, for nothing! As pPatsy would tell it: " Mother would pick me pup at the drugstore after work and take me wherever I could get a job. We'd usually get home about three in the morning, and a few hours later I was up again getting ready to go to work in the drugstore. And you know something, I loved every minute of it!"

In the clubs, Patsy would sing popular songs, old standards. As husband Charlie Dick says: "Nobody could belt out a song like Patsy. She never liked to just stand still and sing, she pout everything she had into a song, lots of motion and 'E-motion'!"

But Patsy didn't like the clubs. At heart, she was a country/western singer, and early she acquired the ambition to become a star on WSM's Grand Ole Opry, the mecca of all country singers. And so she set out to do it. "I used to sing or hum along with just about every song I'd hear on the radio and one day I got real brave and walked into the radio station in Winchester when a hillbilly band was being featured. I told the leader: 'If you will just give me a chance to sing with you, I'll never ask for pay.' And he told me, 'If you've got nerve enough to stand before that microphone, I've got nerve enough to let you sing.'

That was the beginning! Any time nationally known country singers came anywhere near Winchester, Patsy would be on hand requesting, and usually getting, a chance to sing on their shows.

Wally Fowler was one of those entertainers, and he was so impressed with Patsy that he suggested she go to Nashville and have an audition at the Grand Ole Opry.

"When I first came to Nashville in 1948," she recounted afterwards, "I drove in with my mother, sister and a friend of the family. We shared expenses. I didn't even have enough money to rent a hotel room. The night before we were to audition we stopped outside town at a picnic site and I spent the night sleeping on a concrete bench." The first auction took place on Friday and Roy Acuff, who was at the station preparing for one of his programs, heard Patsy and asked her to be on his show that night. The station requested that she stay another day for another audition as a possible regular on the Opry. But she couldn't stay, her money was almost gone, there was barely enough for gasoline home. Then began 10 years of various ups and downs.

Her first radio appearance was on Station WINC in Winchester. "When she first came to the station," says Manager Phillip Whitney, "she was just a youngster and very quiet, the wide-eyed type. She wasn't very good and her inexperience was obvious. But she was willing to work and she worked like the devil. She developed a good style and really labored on it. She always wanted advice and took it seriously."

Her first singing job of any note was with Bill Peer and his Melody Boys at Brunswick, Md. She sang with ice every Saturday night for three years. Then gradually her career blossomed. She was featured on Jimmy Dean's Town and Country Time on a Washington radio station, and began making guest appearances on the Grand Ole Opry. It was a t this team she began touring with Opry stars, Faron Young, Ferlin Husky and others.

By this time, Oatsy had singed a recording contract with William McCall, President of Four Star Records and he became her personal manager. Her first record... A Church, A courtroom, Then Goodbye and Honky Tonk Merry Go Round... was released by Coral in 1955. Then followed Turn The Cards Slowly... Hidin' Out... Come Right IN... and others, after which came a song called Walking After Midnight. Although it had not been released, this was the song that Patsy chose to sing on the Arthur Godfrey Show and suddenly, all American knew Patsy Cline!

Meantime, Patsy's marriage to Gerald Cline in 1953 had ended in divorce three years later and on September 15, 1957, she married a soldier and a fellow townsman, Charles Dick, and in 1958 dropped out of show business to start a career as a housewife and mother. They had two children, a daughter Julia born Augst 25, 1958 and a son Randy born January 21, 1961.

But Patsy had to sing and Charlie knew this, so together they decided to leave Winchester and make their home in Music City, USA!

Charlie easily found employment at Newspaper Printing Corporation in Nashville... and Patsy was free to make guest appearance s on the Grand Ole Opry... as well as personal appearances through the South and later the whole country. By 1960, ti began to look as if the sun was really beginning to shine for Patsy and Charlie. Patsy has become a member of the Grand Ole Opry and signed a new contract wit Decca Records. Her first recording I Fall To Pieces was a smash gin success. Then on June 14, 1961, just as I Fall To Pieces was getting started, tragedy struck again. Patsy was critically injured in an automobile accident. She was hospitalized for months, finally going back to work on crutches.

Then came a whole series of hit recordings, Crazy, She's Got You, Heartaches; then personal appearances in Las Vegas, New York, California, but almost every Saturday night would find Patsy on the stage of the old Roman Auditorium, a Star of the Grand Ole Opry.

For the first time in her life, there was more than enough money for everybody she loved! There was a dome and a car for her mother, brother and sister; a Cadillac for her and Charlie; a new home "with real gold dust sprinkled on the wall of the bath;" closets full of clothes for her children; and there was money to buy presents for friends. 

There were more important things too – endowment funds for the children's education, and annuities for Mom and Charlie. For the first time in her life Patsy seemed to be "putting her house in order!"

And then...

On Sunday, March 3 1963 members of the Grand Ole Opry, Billy Walker, Cowboy Copas, Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper, Randy Hughes, Hawkshaw Hawkins and Patsy headed for Kansas City to play a benefit for the window of Jack McCall, a disc jockey they all had known. Wilma Lee and Stoney drove (they had to make a personal appearance Monday in Minnesota). Cowboy Hawk, Patsy and Randy would fly in Randy's plane. Billy would go by a commercial air liner since there was only room for four in Randy's plane!

Three days later in the early dawn of March 6th the wreckage of the plane was found on a mountain top in Camden, Tennessee. And when a radio announcer was handed the news bulletin, he hesitated a moment and said: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, There were no survivors."

As Ott Devine, Manager of the Grand Ole Opry said: "What do we say when we lose such friends" We can reflect upon their contributions to all of us through entertainment, their acts of charity and of love. We can think of the pleasure they brought to the lives of millions and take some comfort in knowing that they found fulfillment in the time allowed to them."

I like to think of Patsy as I saw her last. She came by the office only a few days before the accident, to tell me about her new album. At the time we had a group of Senior Citizens in the studio and I asked if she wouldn't like to go in and sing for them. "Sure," she said, "you thing they'd like Bill Bailey?"

I nodded. She turned and went into the studio and without rehearsal... and just sang.

And how she sang... giving herself to others with a voice full of love.

That's the way I'll remember Patsy. I think she'd want you to remember her that way too. – Trudy Stamper, Radio Station WSM – Grand Ole Opry

Heartaches

She'S Got You

Walking After Midnight 

Stange

Leaving' On Your Mind

South Of The Border

Foolin' 'Round

I Fall To Pieces

A Poor Man's Roses

Tra Le La Le La Triangle

True Love

Imagine That

Back In Baby's Arms

Crazy

You're Stronger Than Me

Seven Lonely Days

Sweet Dreams

Your Cheatin' Heart

San Antonio Rose

Why Can't He Be You

The Wayward Wind

So Wrong 

I Love You So Much It Hurts

You Belong To Me