Who is Patsy Cline

Patsy Cline's recording career can be divided into 2 periods: 51 tracks for Four Star Records from 1955 to 1960, and 51 tracks for Decca from 1960 to 1963. All but two of her recording sessions were managed by producer Owen Bradley in Nashville. The two odd ones were held on April 24 and 25, 1957.

In the beginning of her career, Patsy was completely into country music, and recorded mostly up-tempo songs. Her later songs included slower ballads, more pop than country, but she made sure she didn't get too much "uptown" pop into her recordings, because she was really a country girl at heart...

At first, Patsy didn't have many hit records. The first one ("Walkin' After Midnight") was recorded on November 8, 1956. The record company didn't release it until after Patsy performed it on the Arthur Godfrey Talent Show - it was a total success!

Despite her success on the Godfrey Show, her next big hit (probably her biggest), "I Fall To Pieces" wasn't recorded until November 1960. After that, the hits were coming fairly regularly, "Crazy", "She's Got You", "Leavin' On Your Mind" -- just to mention a few.

One of Patsy's biggest hits, "Crazy", was recorded just after she was in a car crash. She was in studio for about 4 hours with it - which was a lot in those days, but Patsy couldn't hit the high notes due to the pain from a broken rib. So the musicians cut their tracks without Patsy, and she came back two weeks later and did the song in one take.

Patsy also had a number of big hits released after her death, among them "Faded Love" and "Sweet Dreams (Of You)".

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As stated in the 1980 Ellis Nassour biography "Patsy Cline", friends Dottie West and June Carter Cash both recalled Patsy telling them that she felt a sense of impending doom and didn't expect to live much longer in the months leading up to her death. Loretta Lynn was also informed by Cline of this, along with Cash and West, as early as September 1962. Cline even began giving away personal items to friends, writing out her own last will on Delta Air Lines stationery and asking close friends to care for her children if anything should happen to her. She reportedly told Jordanaire back up singer Ray Walker as she exited the Grand Ole Opry a week before her death: "Honey, I've had two bad ones (accidents). The third one will either be a charm or it'll kill me."

On March 3, 1963, Patsy, though ill with the flu, gave a stellar final performance at a benefit show at the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall, Kansas City, KS, for the family of a disc jockey, Cactus Jack Call, who had recently died in an automobile accident. 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. Cline wore a white chiffon gown and closed the show with her performance to a thunderous ovation. Her last song was the last one she recorded during her last sessions the previous month, "I'll Sail My Ship Alone."

Dottie West, wary of Cline flying, pleaded with her to ride back in the car with her and her husband, Bill. Cline, anxious to get home to her children, refused West's offer, saying "Don't worry about me, hoss. When it's my time to go, its my time." She called her mother from the airport and then boarded a Piper Comanche bound for Nashville, flown by her manager Randy Hughes, along with Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins. After stopping to refuel in Dyersburg, TN, 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." However, 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, TN, only 90 miles from the destination. There were no survivors. Patsy Cline was 30 years old.

Throughout the night, reports of the missing plane flooded the radio airwaves. Roger Miller told Patsy Cline author Ellis Nassour that he and a friend went searching for any survivors in the early hours of the morning: "As fast as I could I ran through the woods screaming their names -- through the brush and the trees and I came up over this little rise, oh, my God, there they were. It was ghastly. The plane had crashed nose down." Not long after the victims were removed, scavengers came to take what they could of the stars' personal belongings and pieces of the plane. Many of these items were later donated to The Country Music Hall of Fame, with the exception of the white chiffon dress that Patsy had worn for her last concert. It was never found.

Nashville was in shock over the losses. News of the tragedy screamed across headlines of newspapers the next morning. Per her wishes, Cline was brought home to her dream house for the last time before her memorial service, which thousands attended. 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.)

Patsy Cline was buried in her hometown of Winchester, VA, at Shenandoah Memorial Park. Her mother had her grave marked with a simple bronze plaque, which reads: "Death Cannot Kill What Never Dies: Love." With the help of Loretta Lynn and Dottie West a bell tower, erected in her memory at the cemetery, plays hymns daily at 6:00 p.m., the hour of her death. A memorial marks the place where the plane crashed in the still remote forest outside of Camden, Tennessee.