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Because she was one of my mom's favorites....
Patsy Cline (born Virginia Patterson Hensley; September 8, 1932 – March 5, 1963) was an American singer. She is considered one of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century and was one of the first country music artists to successfully crossover into pop music.[8][9] Cline recorded several songs that became major hits during her eight-year career, including 2 number-one hits on the Billboard Hot Country and Western Sides chart.
Cline's family eventually settled in Winchester, Virginia. Her first professional performances began at the local WINC radio station when she was fifteen. In the early 1950s, Cline began appearing in a local band led by performer Bill Peer. Various local appearances led to featured performances on Connie B. Gay's Town and Country television broadcasts. It also led to the signing of her first recording contract with the Four Star label in 1954. She had minor success with her earliest Four Star singles including "A Church, A Courtroom and Goodbye" (1955) and "I've Loved and Lost Again" (1956). In 1957 however, Cline made her first national television appearance on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. After performing "Walkin' After Midnight", the single would become her first major hit on both the country and pop charts.
Cline's further singles with Four Star Records were unsuccessful, although she continued performing and recording. After marrying in 1957 and giving birth in 1958, she moved to Nashville, Tennessee to further her career. Working with new manager Randy Hughes, Cline would become a member of the Grand Ole Opry and then move to Decca Records in 1960. Under the direction of producer Owen Bradley, her musical sound shifted and she achieved consistent success. The 1961 single "I Fall to Pieces" would become her first to top the Billboard country chart. As the song became a hit, Cline was severely injured in an automobile accident, which caused her to spend a month in the hospital. After recovering, her next single release "Crazy" would also become a major hit.
Between 1962 and 1963, Cline had hits with "She's Got You", "When I Get Through with You", "So Wrong" and "Leavin' on Your Mind". She also toured and headlined shows with more frequency. In March 1963, Cline appeared at a benefit show in Kansas City, Kansas. To return home, she boarded a plane along with country performers Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins and manager Randy Hughes. Upon hitting rough weather, the plane crashed outside of Camden, Tennessee, killing all those on board.
Since her death, Cline has been cited as one of the most celebrated, respected and influential performers of the 20th century. She has also been seen as a forerunner for women in country music for being among the first to sell records and headline concerts. Her music has also influenced performers of various styles and genres.[10] In 1973, she became the first female performer to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In the 1980s, she was portrayed twice in major motion pictures, including the 1985 biopic Sweet Dreams starring Jessica Lange as Cline.
Patsy Cline (born Virginia Patterson Hensley; September 8, 1932 – March 5, 1963) was an American singer. She is considered one of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century and was one of the first country music artists to successfully crossover into pop music.[8][9] Cline recorded several songs that became major hits during her eight-year career, including 2 number-one hits on the Billboard Hot Country and Western Sides chart.
Cline's family eventually settled in Winchester, Virginia. Her first professional performances began at the local WINC radio station when she was fifteen. In the early 1950s, Cline began appearing in a local band led by performer Bill Peer. Various local appearances led to featured performances on Connie B. Gay's Town and Country television broadcasts. It also led to the signing of her first recording contract with the Four Star label in 1954. She had minor success with her earliest Four Star singles including "A Church, A Courtroom and Goodbye" (1955) and "I've Loved and Lost Again" (1956). In 1957 however, Cline made her first national television appearance on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. After performing "Walkin' After Midnight", the single would become her first major hit on both the country and pop charts.
Cline's further singles with Four Star Records were unsuccessful, although she continued performing and recording. After marrying in 1957 and giving birth in 1958, she moved to Nashville, Tennessee to further her career. Working with new manager Randy Hughes, Cline would become a member of the Grand Ole Opry and then move to Decca Records in 1960. Under the direction of producer Owen Bradley, her musical sound shifted and she achieved consistent success. The 1961 single "I Fall to Pieces" would become her first to top the Billboard country chart. As the song became a hit, Cline was severely injured in an automobile accident, which caused her to spend a month in the hospital. After recovering, her next single release "Crazy" would also become a major hit.
Between 1962 and 1963, Cline had hits with "She's Got You", "When I Get Through with You", "So Wrong" and "Leavin' on Your Mind". She also toured and headlined shows with more frequency. In March 1963, Cline appeared at a benefit show in Kansas City, Kansas. To return home, she boarded a plane along with country performers Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins and manager Randy Hughes. Upon hitting rough weather, the plane crashed outside of Camden, Tennessee, killing all those on board.
Since her death, Cline has been cited as one of the most celebrated, respected and influential performers of the 20th century. She has also been seen as a forerunner for women in country music for being among the first to sell records and headline concerts. Her music has also influenced performers of various styles and genres.[10] In 1973, she became the first female performer to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In the 1980s, she was portrayed twice in major motion pictures, including the 1985 biopic Sweet Dreams starring Jessica Lange as Cline.
Patsy Cline - Wikipedia
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Patsy Cline Remembering Patsy Documentary
Patsy Cline (September 8, 1932 - March 5, 1963) Monday, March 5, 2018, marked the 55th. anniversary of the tragic death of singer Patsy Cline. Cline (Virgini...
Thank you, my friend Maj Marty Hogan for making us aware that September 8 is the anniversary of the birth of American singer Patsy Cline (born Virginia Patterson Hensley) who " is considered one of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century and was one of the first country music artists to successfully crossover into pop music."
Rest in peace Patsy Cline
Patsy Cline Remembering Patsy Documentary
"Monday, March 5, 2018, marked the 55th. anniversary of the tragic death of singer Patsy Cline. Cline (Virginia Patterson Hensley), 30, along with fellow singers Cowboy Copas (Lloyd Estel Copas), 49, Hawkshaw Hawkins (Harold Franklin Hawkins), 41, and Cline's manager, and Copas's son-in-law, Randy Hughes (Ramsey Dorris Hughes), 34, were killed in a single-engine plane crash near Camden, Tennessee, in a heavily wooded area. Hughes was the pilot... To this very day, Patsy Cline is the barometer, by which all female country music singers are measured."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XzGOPwCEeY
Images:
1. Patsy Cline relaxing.
2. Virginia Hensley - Patsy Cline in front of the microphone.
3. Patsy Cline and her husband Charles Dick with their son Randy Dick and daughter Julie Dick.
4. Virginia Hensley - Patsy Cline.
Biographies
1. encyclopediavirginia.org
2. Allmusic
1. Background from [https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cline_Patsy_1932-1963#start_entry]
"Patsy Cline (1932–1963)
Contributed by Douglas Gomery and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography
Early Years
Cline was born Virginia Patterson Hensley, in a Winchester hospital, on September 8, 1932. Her parents, forty-three-year-old Samuel Lawrence Hensley, a blacksmith, and his second wife, sixteen-year-old Hilda Virginia Patterson Hensley, had married six days before the birth. Until 1937 Hensley lived on her paternal grandparents' farm near Elkton and with her maternal grandparents in Gore, just outside Winchester in Frederick County. The Hensley family moved nineteen times in sixteen years to various towns in the Shenandoah Valley, including Lexington, and during World War II to Portsmouth. They had returned to Winchester by 1948, when Samuel Hensley deserted his wife and three children. Hensley quit school shortly after her sixteenth birthday and to help support her family began working, first in a poultry plant and then later at a bus depot and as a soda clerk at a drugstore. She also began singing professionally at night and on weekends to supplement the money her mother made as a seamstress.
During the next few years Hensley won amateur contests, sang both country and western tunes and popular standards on local radio stations, and performed with a number of bands. She auditioned in Nashville for the Grand Ole Opry but was deemed too young. In September 1952 Hensley auditioned for the country bandleader Clarence William "Bill" Peer, who had a radio show on a station in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Peer liked what he heard, hired her full-time to sing with his Melody Boys and Girls on the Maryland, Northern Virginia, and Washington music circuit, and gave her the stage name of Patsy. On March 7, 1953, she married Gerald E. Cline, the divorced son of a wealthy contractor from Frederick, Maryland. Virginia Patterson Hensley thereafter became known as Patsy Cline.
Musical Career
In September 1954 Cline signed a contract with the 4 Star Record Company, Inc., and the following June recorded her first songs in Nashville: "Hidin' Out," "Honky-Tonk Merry-Go-Round," "Turn the Cards Slowly," and "A Church, a Courtroom, and Then Goodbye." Her first record, released in July 1955 on the Coral Records label, was unsuccessful, although it was produced by the former bandleader Owen Bradley, who was helping create what became the Nashville Sound, a synthesis of country and popular music designed to attract a mass audience. Cline initially resisted his attempts to tone down her "hillbilly" sound with pop arrangements for which he thought her voice was better suited. In 1954 Cline began a series of guest appearances on Town and Country Time, the half-hour daily music-variety television program of Connie Barriott Gay, the premier country music promoter in the Washington area. Usually she performed on the regionally broadcast program as the female vocalist with Jimmy Dean and the Texas Wildcats. This exposure won Cline a booking on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, a televised variety show and talent competition, and on January 21, 1957, she won the competition by singing "Walkin' After Midnight." The publicity from this appearance increased sales of the Bradley-produced song, recorded for the Decca Records label on November 8, 1956, and by March "Walkin' After Midnight" held the second spot on Billboard's country music chart and twelfth place on the popular music chart.
In October 1955 Cline broke both professionally and personally with Peer, with whom she had been having an affair. Gerald Cline, jealous of his wife's success and frustrated that she did not stay at home like a traditional housewife, separated from Patsy Cline, and the childless couple divorced in Maryland on March 28, 1957. Cline had met Charles Allen Dick, a linotype operator for the local newspaper, at a Berryville dance in April 1956. They married on September 15, 1957, and had one daughter and one son. Dick was serving in the U.S. Army at Fort Bragg, and without a hit to follow "Walkin' After Midnight" and with an infant to care for, Cline was back to scraping by as a regional performer. A few months after Dick was mustered out of the army in February 1959, the couple moved to Nashville.
Cline, who had appeared several times as a guest in the mid-1950s, joined the Grand Ole Opry as a regular cast member in January 1960. She began to record more songs and performed to supplement the income from her husband's printing job. The couple struggled until January 1961, when Decca released "I Fall to Pieces." This Cline-Bradley masterwork topped the country chart and reached the twelfth spot on the pop chart. In June, Cline was critically injured in an automobile accident but had returned to the studio by August, when she recorded "Crazy," a song written by Willie Nelson that rose to second place on the country chart and ninth place on the pop chart. In December 1961 she recorded "She's Got You," which became her second number-one country hit.
Achieving newfound success, Cline won several outstanding female country singer awards during the next two years. Beginning in January 1962 she frequently appeared as the second-billed performer in a concert tour organized by Johnny Cash that also featured June Carter and George Jones. Her touring schedule included television performances on American Bandstand and the Tennessee Ernie Ford Show as well as concerts at Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and the Mint Casino in Las Vegas. By early in 1963 she had recorded more than 100 songs. Her well-controlled, instantly recognizable voice wrung the last drop of emotion from every lyric.
On March 5, 1963, while flying home to Nashville after a benefit concert in Kansas City, Missouri, in a plane piloted by her manager, Patsy Cline and the country music luminaries Lloyd Estel "Cowboy" Copas and Harold Franklin "Hawkshaw" Hawkins died in a crash near Camden, Tennessee. After a prayer service in Nashville, her remains were returned to Winchester, where her funeral attracted the news media and thousands of fans. She was buried in Shenandoah Memorial Park just outside the city.
Posthumous Success
In the decades following her death, Cline became a musical icon. In 1973 she was the first solo woman performer to be elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, and in 1981 she was inducted into the Virginia Folk Music Association's Virginia Country Music Hall of Fame. Her recordings have sold millions of copies, and she has been the subject of numerous biographies, several musicals, a tribute album, and a feature film, Sweet Dreams (1985). The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences recognized Cline with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995 and with Grammy Hall of Fame awards in 1992 and 2001 for "Crazy" (1961) and "I Fall to Pieces" (recorded 1960, released 1961), respectively. At the end of the twentieth century, her recording of "Crazy" remained the song most often played on jukeboxes. Cline has fan clubs around the world, a United States commemorative postage stamp, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (although she never made a movie). In Winchester there is a bell tower erected in her memory at Shenandoah Memorial Park, an annual Labor Day celebration of her life, and the Patsy Cline Memorial Highway (Route 522) and Patsy Cline Boulevard. Her soulful interpretations of lyrics and her unmistakable voice continue to win admirers across musical genres and to inspire generations of vocalists, from Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton to Linda Ronstadt and k. d. lang.
Time Line
September 8, 1932 - Virginia Patterson Hensley is born in a Winchester hospital to Samuel Lawrence Hensley and Hilda Virginia Patterson Hensley.
September 1952 - Virginia Patterson Hensley auditions for country bandleader Clarence William "Bill" Peer, who hires her to sing with his touring group, Peer's Melody Boys and Girls. He also gives Hensley the stage name Patsy.
March 7, 1953 - Virginia Patterson "Patsy" Hensley marries Gerald E. Cline and thereafter is known as Patsy Cline.
1954 - Patsy Cline begins a series of guest appearances on the music-variety television program Town and Country Time.
September 1954 - Patsy Cline signs a recording contract with the 4 Star Record Company, Inc.
October 1955 - Patsy Cline breaks professionally and personally with Clarence William "Bill" Peer.
January 21, 1957 - Patsy Cline wins the talent competition on the television program Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts by singing "Walkin' After Midnight."
March 28, 1957 - Patsy Cline and Gerald E. Cline divorce in Maryland.
September 15, 1957 - Patsy Cline marries Charles Allen Dick. They will have one daughter and one son.
January 1960 - Patsy Cline joins the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, as a regular cast member.
January 1961 - Decca Records releases Patsy Cline's "I Fall to Pieces." The song tops the country chart and reaches the twelfth spot on the Billboard pop chart.
June 14, 1961 - Patsy Cline is critically injured in an automobile accident in Nashville, Tennessee.
August 1961 - Patsy Cline records "Crazy," written by Willie Nelson. The song reaches second place on the country chart and ninth place on the pop chart.
December 1961 - Patsy Cline records "She's Got You," which becomes her second number-one country hit.
March 5, 1963 - Patsy Cline dies in a plane crash near Camden, Tennessee.
1973 - Patsy Cline becomes the first solo woman performer to be elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee.
1981 - Patsy Cline is inducted into the Virginia Folk Music Association's Virginia Country Music Hall of Fame.
Categories Twentieth Century History (1901–2000) Women's History Music Performing Arts
Further Reading
Bego, Mark. I Fall to Pieces: The Music and the Life of Patsy Cline. Holbrook, Massachusetts: Adams Publishing, 1995.
Bufwack, Mary A. and Robert K. Oermann. Finding Her Voice: The Saga of Women in Country Music. New York: Crown Publishers, 1993.
Gomery, Douglas. "Cline, Patsy." In The Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Vol. 3, edited by Sara B. Bearss et al., 303–305. Richmond: Library of Virginia, 2006.
Gomery, Douglas. Patsy Cline: The Making of an Icon. Bloomington, Indiana: Trafford Press, 2011.
Hazen, Cindy, and Mike Freeman, eds. Love Always, Patsy: Patsy Cline's Letters to a Friend. New York: Berkley Books, 1999.
Jensen, Joli. "Patsy Cline's Recording Career: The Search for a Sound." Journal of Country Music 9, no. 2 (1982): 34–46.
Jones, Margaret. Patsy: The Life and Times of Patsy Cline. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.
Nassour, Ellis. Honky Tonk Angel: The Intimate Story of Patsy Cline. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
Roy, Don. "The Patsy Cline Discography." Journal of Country Music 9, no. 2 (1982): 47–49.
Shestack, Melvin. The Country Music Encyclopedia. New York: T. Y. Crowell Company, 1974.
Cite This Entry
APA Citation:
Gomery, D., & the Dictionary of Virginia Biography. Patsy Cline (1932–1963). (2014, November 4). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Cline_Patsy_1932-1963.
MLA Citation:
Gomery, Douglas and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography. "Patsy Cline (1932–1963)." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 4 Nov. 2014. Web. 9 Sept. 2019.
Patsy Cline was a singer whose biggest hits—"Walkin' After Midnight," "I Fall to Pieces," and "Crazy"—embody the so-called Nashville Sound, a synthesis of country and popular music. Born Virginia Patterson Hensley in Winchester, Cline began singing professionally to help support her family. She rose to national fame in 1957 after winning a talent competition on a television variety show by singing "Walkin' After Midnight." She joined the Grand Ole Opry as a regular cast member in January 1960, and in January 1962 began appearing as the second-billed performer in a concert tour organized by Johnny Cash. Cline died at age thirty in a plane crash near Camden, Tennessee, in 1963, and became a musical icon in the decades following her death. In 1973 she became the first solo woman performer to be elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee."
2. Background from [https://www.allmusic.com/artist/patsy-cline-mn [login to see] /biography]
"Artist Biography by Richie Unterberger
One of the greatest singers in the history of country music, Patsy Cline also helped blaze a trail for female singers to assert themselves as an integral part of the Nashville-dominated country music industry. She was not alone in this regard; Kitty Wells had become a star several years before Cline's big hits in the early '60s. Brenda Lee, who shared Cline's producer, did just as much to create a country-pop crossover during the same era; Skeeter Davis briefly enjoyed similar success. Cline has the most legendary aura of any female country singer, however, perhaps due to an early death that cut her off just after she had entered her prime.
Cline began recording in the mid-'50s, and although she recorded quite a bit of material between 1955 and 1960 (17 singles in all), only one of them was a hit. That song, "Walkin' After Midnight," was both a classic and a Top 20 pop smash. Those who are accustomed to Cline's famous early-'60s hits are in for a bit of a shock when surveying her '50s sessions (which have been reissued on several Rhino compilations). At times she sang flat-out rockabilly; she also tried some churchy tear-weepers. She couldn't follow up "Walkin' After Midnight," however, in part because of an exploitative deal that limited her to songs from one publishing company.
Circumstances were not wholly to blame for Cline's commercial failures. She would have never made it as a rockabilly singer, lacking the conviction of Wanda Jackson or the spunk of Brenda Lee. In fact, in comparison with her best work, she sounds rather stiff and ill-at-ease on most of her early singles. Things took a radical turn for the better on all fronts in 1960, when her initial contract expired. With the help of producer Owen Bradley (who had worked on her sessions all along), Cline began selecting material that was both more suitable and of a higher quality than her previous outings.
"I Fall to Pieces," cut at the very first session where Cline was at liberty to record what she wanted, was the turning point in her career. Reaching number one in the country charts and number 12 pop, it was the first of several country-pop crossovers she was to enjoy over the next couple of years. More important, it set a prototype for commercial Nashville country at its best. Owen Bradley crafted lush orchestral arrangements, with weeping strings and backup vocals by the Jordanaires, that owed more to pop (in the best sense) than country.
The country elements were provided by the cream of Nashville's session musicians, including guitarist Hank Garland, pianist Floyd Cramer, and drummer Buddy Harmon. Cline's voice sounded richer, more confident, and more mature, with ageless wise and vulnerable qualities that have enabled her records to maintain their appeal with subsequent generations. When k.d. lang recorded her 1988 album Shadowland with Owen Bradley, it was this phase of Cline's career that she was specifically attempting to emulate.
It's arguable that too much has been made of Cline's crossover appeal to the pop market. Brenda Lee, whose records were graced with similar Bradley productions, was actually more successful in this area (although her records were likely targeted toward a younger audience). Cline's appeal was undeniably more adult, but she was always more successful with country listeners. Her final four Top Ten country singles, in fact, didn't make the pop Top 40.
Despite a severe auto accident in 1961, Cline remained hot through 1961 and 1962, with "Crazy" and "She's Got You" both becoming big country and pop hits. Much of her achingly romantic material was supplied by fresh talent like Hank Cochran, Harlan Howard, and Willie Nelson (who penned "Crazy"). Although her commercial momentum had faded slightly, she was still at the top of her game when she died in a plane crash in March of 1963, at the age of 30. She was only a big star for a couple of years, but her influence was and remains huge. While the standards of professionalism on her recordings have been emulated ever since, they've rarely been complemented by as much palpable, at times heartbreaking emotion in the performances. For those who could do without some of more elaborate arrangements of her later years, many of her relatively unadorned appearances on radio broadcasts have been thankfully preserved and issued."
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Rest in peace Patsy Cline
Patsy Cline Remembering Patsy Documentary
"Monday, March 5, 2018, marked the 55th. anniversary of the tragic death of singer Patsy Cline. Cline (Virginia Patterson Hensley), 30, along with fellow singers Cowboy Copas (Lloyd Estel Copas), 49, Hawkshaw Hawkins (Harold Franklin Hawkins), 41, and Cline's manager, and Copas's son-in-law, Randy Hughes (Ramsey Dorris Hughes), 34, were killed in a single-engine plane crash near Camden, Tennessee, in a heavily wooded area. Hughes was the pilot... To this very day, Patsy Cline is the barometer, by which all female country music singers are measured."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XzGOPwCEeY
Images:
1. Patsy Cline relaxing.
2. Virginia Hensley - Patsy Cline in front of the microphone.
3. Patsy Cline and her husband Charles Dick with their son Randy Dick and daughter Julie Dick.
4. Virginia Hensley - Patsy Cline.
Biographies
1. encyclopediavirginia.org
2. Allmusic
1. Background from [https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cline_Patsy_1932-1963#start_entry]
"Patsy Cline (1932–1963)
Contributed by Douglas Gomery and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography
Early Years
Cline was born Virginia Patterson Hensley, in a Winchester hospital, on September 8, 1932. Her parents, forty-three-year-old Samuel Lawrence Hensley, a blacksmith, and his second wife, sixteen-year-old Hilda Virginia Patterson Hensley, had married six days before the birth. Until 1937 Hensley lived on her paternal grandparents' farm near Elkton and with her maternal grandparents in Gore, just outside Winchester in Frederick County. The Hensley family moved nineteen times in sixteen years to various towns in the Shenandoah Valley, including Lexington, and during World War II to Portsmouth. They had returned to Winchester by 1948, when Samuel Hensley deserted his wife and three children. Hensley quit school shortly after her sixteenth birthday and to help support her family began working, first in a poultry plant and then later at a bus depot and as a soda clerk at a drugstore. She also began singing professionally at night and on weekends to supplement the money her mother made as a seamstress.
During the next few years Hensley won amateur contests, sang both country and western tunes and popular standards on local radio stations, and performed with a number of bands. She auditioned in Nashville for the Grand Ole Opry but was deemed too young. In September 1952 Hensley auditioned for the country bandleader Clarence William "Bill" Peer, who had a radio show on a station in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Peer liked what he heard, hired her full-time to sing with his Melody Boys and Girls on the Maryland, Northern Virginia, and Washington music circuit, and gave her the stage name of Patsy. On March 7, 1953, she married Gerald E. Cline, the divorced son of a wealthy contractor from Frederick, Maryland. Virginia Patterson Hensley thereafter became known as Patsy Cline.
Musical Career
In September 1954 Cline signed a contract with the 4 Star Record Company, Inc., and the following June recorded her first songs in Nashville: "Hidin' Out," "Honky-Tonk Merry-Go-Round," "Turn the Cards Slowly," and "A Church, a Courtroom, and Then Goodbye." Her first record, released in July 1955 on the Coral Records label, was unsuccessful, although it was produced by the former bandleader Owen Bradley, who was helping create what became the Nashville Sound, a synthesis of country and popular music designed to attract a mass audience. Cline initially resisted his attempts to tone down her "hillbilly" sound with pop arrangements for which he thought her voice was better suited. In 1954 Cline began a series of guest appearances on Town and Country Time, the half-hour daily music-variety television program of Connie Barriott Gay, the premier country music promoter in the Washington area. Usually she performed on the regionally broadcast program as the female vocalist with Jimmy Dean and the Texas Wildcats. This exposure won Cline a booking on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, a televised variety show and talent competition, and on January 21, 1957, she won the competition by singing "Walkin' After Midnight." The publicity from this appearance increased sales of the Bradley-produced song, recorded for the Decca Records label on November 8, 1956, and by March "Walkin' After Midnight" held the second spot on Billboard's country music chart and twelfth place on the popular music chart.
In October 1955 Cline broke both professionally and personally with Peer, with whom she had been having an affair. Gerald Cline, jealous of his wife's success and frustrated that she did not stay at home like a traditional housewife, separated from Patsy Cline, and the childless couple divorced in Maryland on March 28, 1957. Cline had met Charles Allen Dick, a linotype operator for the local newspaper, at a Berryville dance in April 1956. They married on September 15, 1957, and had one daughter and one son. Dick was serving in the U.S. Army at Fort Bragg, and without a hit to follow "Walkin' After Midnight" and with an infant to care for, Cline was back to scraping by as a regional performer. A few months after Dick was mustered out of the army in February 1959, the couple moved to Nashville.
Cline, who had appeared several times as a guest in the mid-1950s, joined the Grand Ole Opry as a regular cast member in January 1960. She began to record more songs and performed to supplement the income from her husband's printing job. The couple struggled until January 1961, when Decca released "I Fall to Pieces." This Cline-Bradley masterwork topped the country chart and reached the twelfth spot on the pop chart. In June, Cline was critically injured in an automobile accident but had returned to the studio by August, when she recorded "Crazy," a song written by Willie Nelson that rose to second place on the country chart and ninth place on the pop chart. In December 1961 she recorded "She's Got You," which became her second number-one country hit.
Achieving newfound success, Cline won several outstanding female country singer awards during the next two years. Beginning in January 1962 she frequently appeared as the second-billed performer in a concert tour organized by Johnny Cash that also featured June Carter and George Jones. Her touring schedule included television performances on American Bandstand and the Tennessee Ernie Ford Show as well as concerts at Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and the Mint Casino in Las Vegas. By early in 1963 she had recorded more than 100 songs. Her well-controlled, instantly recognizable voice wrung the last drop of emotion from every lyric.
On March 5, 1963, while flying home to Nashville after a benefit concert in Kansas City, Missouri, in a plane piloted by her manager, Patsy Cline and the country music luminaries Lloyd Estel "Cowboy" Copas and Harold Franklin "Hawkshaw" Hawkins died in a crash near Camden, Tennessee. After a prayer service in Nashville, her remains were returned to Winchester, where her funeral attracted the news media and thousands of fans. She was buried in Shenandoah Memorial Park just outside the city.
Posthumous Success
In the decades following her death, Cline became a musical icon. In 1973 she was the first solo woman performer to be elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, and in 1981 she was inducted into the Virginia Folk Music Association's Virginia Country Music Hall of Fame. Her recordings have sold millions of copies, and she has been the subject of numerous biographies, several musicals, a tribute album, and a feature film, Sweet Dreams (1985). The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences recognized Cline with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995 and with Grammy Hall of Fame awards in 1992 and 2001 for "Crazy" (1961) and "I Fall to Pieces" (recorded 1960, released 1961), respectively. At the end of the twentieth century, her recording of "Crazy" remained the song most often played on jukeboxes. Cline has fan clubs around the world, a United States commemorative postage stamp, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (although she never made a movie). In Winchester there is a bell tower erected in her memory at Shenandoah Memorial Park, an annual Labor Day celebration of her life, and the Patsy Cline Memorial Highway (Route 522) and Patsy Cline Boulevard. Her soulful interpretations of lyrics and her unmistakable voice continue to win admirers across musical genres and to inspire generations of vocalists, from Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton to Linda Ronstadt and k. d. lang.
Time Line
September 8, 1932 - Virginia Patterson Hensley is born in a Winchester hospital to Samuel Lawrence Hensley and Hilda Virginia Patterson Hensley.
September 1952 - Virginia Patterson Hensley auditions for country bandleader Clarence William "Bill" Peer, who hires her to sing with his touring group, Peer's Melody Boys and Girls. He also gives Hensley the stage name Patsy.
March 7, 1953 - Virginia Patterson "Patsy" Hensley marries Gerald E. Cline and thereafter is known as Patsy Cline.
1954 - Patsy Cline begins a series of guest appearances on the music-variety television program Town and Country Time.
September 1954 - Patsy Cline signs a recording contract with the 4 Star Record Company, Inc.
October 1955 - Patsy Cline breaks professionally and personally with Clarence William "Bill" Peer.
January 21, 1957 - Patsy Cline wins the talent competition on the television program Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts by singing "Walkin' After Midnight."
March 28, 1957 - Patsy Cline and Gerald E. Cline divorce in Maryland.
September 15, 1957 - Patsy Cline marries Charles Allen Dick. They will have one daughter and one son.
January 1960 - Patsy Cline joins the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, as a regular cast member.
January 1961 - Decca Records releases Patsy Cline's "I Fall to Pieces." The song tops the country chart and reaches the twelfth spot on the Billboard pop chart.
June 14, 1961 - Patsy Cline is critically injured in an automobile accident in Nashville, Tennessee.
August 1961 - Patsy Cline records "Crazy," written by Willie Nelson. The song reaches second place on the country chart and ninth place on the pop chart.
December 1961 - Patsy Cline records "She's Got You," which becomes her second number-one country hit.
March 5, 1963 - Patsy Cline dies in a plane crash near Camden, Tennessee.
1973 - Patsy Cline becomes the first solo woman performer to be elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee.
1981 - Patsy Cline is inducted into the Virginia Folk Music Association's Virginia Country Music Hall of Fame.
Categories Twentieth Century History (1901–2000) Women's History Music Performing Arts
Further Reading
Bego, Mark. I Fall to Pieces: The Music and the Life of Patsy Cline. Holbrook, Massachusetts: Adams Publishing, 1995.
Bufwack, Mary A. and Robert K. Oermann. Finding Her Voice: The Saga of Women in Country Music. New York: Crown Publishers, 1993.
Gomery, Douglas. "Cline, Patsy." In The Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Vol. 3, edited by Sara B. Bearss et al., 303–305. Richmond: Library of Virginia, 2006.
Gomery, Douglas. Patsy Cline: The Making of an Icon. Bloomington, Indiana: Trafford Press, 2011.
Hazen, Cindy, and Mike Freeman, eds. Love Always, Patsy: Patsy Cline's Letters to a Friend. New York: Berkley Books, 1999.
Jensen, Joli. "Patsy Cline's Recording Career: The Search for a Sound." Journal of Country Music 9, no. 2 (1982): 34–46.
Jones, Margaret. Patsy: The Life and Times of Patsy Cline. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.
Nassour, Ellis. Honky Tonk Angel: The Intimate Story of Patsy Cline. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
Roy, Don. "The Patsy Cline Discography." Journal of Country Music 9, no. 2 (1982): 47–49.
Shestack, Melvin. The Country Music Encyclopedia. New York: T. Y. Crowell Company, 1974.
Cite This Entry
APA Citation:
Gomery, D., & the Dictionary of Virginia Biography. Patsy Cline (1932–1963). (2014, November 4). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Cline_Patsy_1932-1963.
MLA Citation:
Gomery, Douglas and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography. "Patsy Cline (1932–1963)." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 4 Nov. 2014. Web. 9 Sept. 2019.
Patsy Cline was a singer whose biggest hits—"Walkin' After Midnight," "I Fall to Pieces," and "Crazy"—embody the so-called Nashville Sound, a synthesis of country and popular music. Born Virginia Patterson Hensley in Winchester, Cline began singing professionally to help support her family. She rose to national fame in 1957 after winning a talent competition on a television variety show by singing "Walkin' After Midnight." She joined the Grand Ole Opry as a regular cast member in January 1960, and in January 1962 began appearing as the second-billed performer in a concert tour organized by Johnny Cash. Cline died at age thirty in a plane crash near Camden, Tennessee, in 1963, and became a musical icon in the decades following her death. In 1973 she became the first solo woman performer to be elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee."
2. Background from [https://www.allmusic.com/artist/patsy-cline-mn [login to see] /biography]
"Artist Biography by Richie Unterberger
One of the greatest singers in the history of country music, Patsy Cline also helped blaze a trail for female singers to assert themselves as an integral part of the Nashville-dominated country music industry. She was not alone in this regard; Kitty Wells had become a star several years before Cline's big hits in the early '60s. Brenda Lee, who shared Cline's producer, did just as much to create a country-pop crossover during the same era; Skeeter Davis briefly enjoyed similar success. Cline has the most legendary aura of any female country singer, however, perhaps due to an early death that cut her off just after she had entered her prime.
Cline began recording in the mid-'50s, and although she recorded quite a bit of material between 1955 and 1960 (17 singles in all), only one of them was a hit. That song, "Walkin' After Midnight," was both a classic and a Top 20 pop smash. Those who are accustomed to Cline's famous early-'60s hits are in for a bit of a shock when surveying her '50s sessions (which have been reissued on several Rhino compilations). At times she sang flat-out rockabilly; she also tried some churchy tear-weepers. She couldn't follow up "Walkin' After Midnight," however, in part because of an exploitative deal that limited her to songs from one publishing company.
Circumstances were not wholly to blame for Cline's commercial failures. She would have never made it as a rockabilly singer, lacking the conviction of Wanda Jackson or the spunk of Brenda Lee. In fact, in comparison with her best work, she sounds rather stiff and ill-at-ease on most of her early singles. Things took a radical turn for the better on all fronts in 1960, when her initial contract expired. With the help of producer Owen Bradley (who had worked on her sessions all along), Cline began selecting material that was both more suitable and of a higher quality than her previous outings.
"I Fall to Pieces," cut at the very first session where Cline was at liberty to record what she wanted, was the turning point in her career. Reaching number one in the country charts and number 12 pop, it was the first of several country-pop crossovers she was to enjoy over the next couple of years. More important, it set a prototype for commercial Nashville country at its best. Owen Bradley crafted lush orchestral arrangements, with weeping strings and backup vocals by the Jordanaires, that owed more to pop (in the best sense) than country.
The country elements were provided by the cream of Nashville's session musicians, including guitarist Hank Garland, pianist Floyd Cramer, and drummer Buddy Harmon. Cline's voice sounded richer, more confident, and more mature, with ageless wise and vulnerable qualities that have enabled her records to maintain their appeal with subsequent generations. When k.d. lang recorded her 1988 album Shadowland with Owen Bradley, it was this phase of Cline's career that she was specifically attempting to emulate.
It's arguable that too much has been made of Cline's crossover appeal to the pop market. Brenda Lee, whose records were graced with similar Bradley productions, was actually more successful in this area (although her records were likely targeted toward a younger audience). Cline's appeal was undeniably more adult, but she was always more successful with country listeners. Her final four Top Ten country singles, in fact, didn't make the pop Top 40.
Despite a severe auto accident in 1961, Cline remained hot through 1961 and 1962, with "Crazy" and "She's Got You" both becoming big country and pop hits. Much of her achingly romantic material was supplied by fresh talent like Hank Cochran, Harlan Howard, and Willie Nelson (who penned "Crazy"). Although her commercial momentum had faded slightly, she was still at the top of her game when she died in a plane crash in March of 1963, at the age of 30. She was only a big star for a couple of years, but her influence was and remains huge. While the standards of professionalism on her recordings have been emulated ever since, they've rarely been complemented by as much palpable, at times heartbreaking emotion in the performances. For those who could do without some of more elaborate arrangements of her later years, many of her relatively unadorned appearances on radio broadcasts have been thankfully preserved and issued."
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Thank you Maj Marty Hogan for the write up on Patsy Cline, whose songs I listened to back in the day...
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