Patsy Cline

Patsy Cline
Bruised Voices and Faded Love

In 1957, Patsy Cline would appear on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, sing “Walkin’ After Midnight,” and have her notoriously bad luck rear its ugly head again.

This time, her ill fortune manifested itself through her publisher, Bill McCall, with whom she was under contract for another four years. McCall rigged it so that, even though “Walkin’ After Midnight” sold 2.5 million copies, Cline received only $900. The rest, of course, went to McCall.

Every time the Winchester native seemed on the verge of success, events conspired against her. Each time, though, she’d be able to mine, if not purposefully find, the silver lining. Her booming voice, for example, was the result of a near-fatal attack of rheumatic fever she got when she was 13. She later suffered a horrific car crash that left her broken and scarred — two weeks later, she was in the studio, recording many of her greatest hits. Listen to the hitched, pained note at the end of “Faded Love.” That note personifies not only longing, but physical pain from broken ribs.

Occasionally Patsy got lucky, and once was when she met Charlie Dick. But even then it was messy. She married Charlie, her second and last husband, in 1957. First husband Gerald Cline was a much older man and had pressured Patsy to give up her music. Charlie understood Patsy a little bit better. Charlottesville attorney Benjamin Dick, a cousin of Charlie’s, tells an astonishing story about the couple’s early days.

“My dad saw this,” Dick explains. “It was the Clark County fair, near Winchester, and Patsy was running the kissing booth. For charity. A dollar a go. Well, then Charlie comes driving up. He watches her in the kissing booth and he gets jealous. He says she’s kissing way too long, he goes up and tells her [this]. Well, they get into it right there, just yelling at each other. Everybody’s watching ‘em, they are going at it something awful. Then, they start to wrestle.”

Wrestle?

“Yeah, they were wrestling. And right next to the kissing booth was the pig sty. They rolled right into it. Now everybody is watching. They start throwing pig crap at each other and the next thing you know, Charlie just grabbed her and they kissed right there, then they ran over to his convertible, jumped in and they were gone.”

Cline’s first recordings for Four-Star were raw and often brilliant, but only one of the 17 singles she cut between 1955 and 1960 (“Walking After Midnight”) made a dent on the charts. With a move to Decca, producer Owen Bradley adorned her voice with pop-flavored string arrangements and vocal choruses, eschewing the rough edges. The retooling resulted in “I Fall to Pieces,” a pop/country crossover smash, and other early ‘60s hits followed the formula: “Crazy” (written by Willie Nelson), “She’s Got You,” and “Sweet Dreams.”

Patsy and Charlie would have two children, and would remain happily married until her death in a plane crash in 1963.

— D.R. Tyler Magill

Recommended on CD:
20th Century Masters: Classic Patsy Cline (MCA)
25 All-Time Greatest Recordings: The 4-Star Years (Varese Saraband)
The Patsy Cline Collection (MCA)

— Originally published in 64 Magazine, Jan.-Feb. 2001.