Honky Tonk Angel (19 page)

On Sunday afternoon, September 15, fifty friends and family members gathered at 720 South Kent Street, the large brick house Patsy was renting for her family. Mrs. Hensley decorated the living room elegantly for the occasion. A minister friend officiated at the wedding.

Patsy wore a pink two-piece knit suit, heels with a paisley print, pearl earrings, a wide inverted bowl hat with sheaves of ostrich feathers, and a large orchid corsage. Charlie had on a beige suit with a colorful tie and suede shoes. He chain-smoked before and after the brief ceremony.

Rice was strewn everywhere. Mrs. Hensley followed the couple with a broom, sweeping up. Late that afternoon, after a quick change of clothes, a reception was held at the crepe paper- and gladioli-bedecked Mountain Side Inn out on Highway 50 near North Mountain, Virginia. Patsy, sporting her trademark dangling earrings, changed into a black-and-white taffeta cocktail dress pinned with her corsage. Charlie wore his suitcoat jacket with black slacks.

Under a sign proclaiming “Welcome, Patsy, ‘Here[’s] to the Star that likes to Shine—Winchester[’] Own Patsy Cline,” the couple posed for the traditional picture of the bride feeding the groom cake. Patsy and Charlie waltzed alongside another homemade sign that read “Welcome Patsy and Charlie. Sept. 15.”

With Patsy working and Charlie at Fort Bragg, there was no honeymoon.

There were other newlyweds back in the Brunswick Triangle. Gerald took Geraldine Hottle for his third wife.

“Gerry was what Gerald always tried to be and never could achieve,” said Nevin Cline. “She had looks and class. She was somebody. The only problem was that she went into the marriage with a big misconception. She thought Gerald had money. He didn’t. She didn’t find out until after the wedding. The jewelry store called and demanded immediate payment for her engagement and wedding rings.

“She got so angry, Gerry got all of Gerald’s clothes and threw them out the windows and front door. And when he got home that night, she threw him out, too! I know, because he called me to come and pick him up.”

Geraldine eventually divorced Gerald, and he married yet again.

A few days after her marriage, Patsy was in New York to appear on “Arthur Godfrey and Friends.” During the afternoon rehearsal, Godfrey passed through the studio and stopped to speak.

“Hello, you pretty thing!”

“Oh, Mr. Godfrey. How are you?”

“Fine. Just fine. Hey, I just heard you got married.”

“Well, yes, sir, I did.”

“Are you happy?”

“I sure am! Just as happy as if I had good sense.”

It was another new beginning for Patsy—one filled with career highs, career lows, and sadness. Whenever she was asked if she was happy, she said her marriage to Charlie was “made in heaven.” But it was full of hell.

P
atsy had stardom but couldn’t capitalize on it It wasn’t as if all the forces in her life were conspiring against it She was in the studio, on TV, and on the road helping to beat the drums. “To be near my man,” Patsy moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where she and Charlie rented a house on Pool Drive.

While Charlie became enmeshed in the secrets of the First L & L, Patsy uncrated wedding gifts, bought furniture and drapery, and busied herself decorating. She told her mother and friends she was “taking this marriage seriously, putting supper on the table like a good wife, making friends with the neighbors, and working on having a healthy baby instead of hit records.” Still, she commuted to Nashville and road appearances.

“Country Song Roundup” had Patsy on its list of New Faces of ’7, but Patsy wasn’t feeling too inspired about what was happening in the studio. On November 13 she arrived in Nashville for the WSM Birthday Celebration and D.J. Convention to hype her new single, to be officially released on the eighteenth, of “Then You’ll Know” with the new version of “I Don’t Wanta” from the May sessions. That Friday, Lee Burrows ran into Patsy at the Andrew Jackson Hotel. She had a handsome soldier on her arm.

“Hello, Patsy!”

“Lee, good to see you!”

“How’re you doing?”

“I’m fine. Doing great! In fact, I’m married. Lee, this is my husband Charlie.”

“Congratulations, Patsy. It’s nice to meet you, Charlie.”

Lee didn’t seem too enthusiastic, and Patsy gave her a look. “I was disappointed, and, knowing Patsy, she wanted a good reaction. Maybe it was the stigma of a man in uniform. If Gerald looked like her uncle, it was altogether different with Charlie. He looked like a kid in his uniform. Well, they were kids, really.”

Patsy told Lee, “I’m really in love this time. It’s the real thing!”

“I’m happy for you,” Lee enthused, “and wish you well.”

Recalled Del Wood, “When I met Charlie at the Opry that weekend, I wondered if ole Patsy had a bag over her head. I couldn’t stand him. I don’t know what on earth attracted her to him. Well, from the way Patsy carried on, maybe I do. But I thought, ‘What else do they have in common? They come from two different worlds.’ I knew if he was in the service, he couldn’t afford to keep Patsy in the style she’d become accustomed to.

“They really seemed mad about each other, and love is love. If it’s blind, we don’t know it till later. However, I have to say that the more I hung around Charlie, the more I liked him.”

On Friday night, dressed in a tight-fitting, sleeveless silk cocktail dress, Patsy was presented with
Billboard’s
Most Promising Country & Western Female Artist award and
Music Vendor
magazine’s award for Greatest Achievement in Records in 1957 for “Walkin’ After Midnight.” Patsy was presented with trade magazine awards on December 5 by Red Foley during the telecast of “Jubilee U.S.A.” in Springfield, Missouri.

She was riding a crest, except in the release of record product. Decca did nothing to promote the new single, and the deejays made no effort to play it. McCall’s material, once more, proved to be wrong. After the massive success and sales of “Walkin’ After Midnight,” Patsy Cline was cold. She had an idea that she hoped would make her hot. She was a major recording and TV star, so why not have a manager in charge of her career?

Back home in Fayetteville, the Dicks had a delightful early Christmas present. Patsy got one of her wishes. At the doctor’s for a routine physical, she discovered she was pregnant. She set about making baby clothes and becoming the best “mom-to-be in the whole world.”

According to colleagues, her pregnancy exposed the two sides of Patsy. “She was happy to be having a baby,” informed a male entertainer she was to work with extensively, “especially after her miscarriage while married to Gerald. And at the same time, Patsy was concerned how, just as she was gaining ground professionally, having a baby might affect her career.

“Patsy talked about a lot of things, but that was her way of rambling on and hoping you’d help her find the answer she was looking for. When she saw how excited Charlie was about the baby, she put all other thoughts out of her mind. Suddenly, where she’d been climbing the ladder to stardom, Patsy switched horses
and became devoted to motherhood. That was Patsy. Just when you thought you figured her out, she’d do a full reverse.”

As Dale Turner found out, “After Patsy married, I didn’t want to lose touch. We spoke on the phone and corresponded. She wasn’t having it easy. She asked, ‘How long does it take to see a few bucks from a hit?’ and I told her not to hold her breath.

“Bill McCall figured Patsy owed him since her hit gave her the opportunity to go on the road. She tried to get work in North Carolina. In the D.C. area, we were stars on the ‘Jamboree,’ but, where she was, no one had even seen it

“As soon as she was pregnant, Patsy threw me a surprise. She talked about retiring. I laughed. This was not the Patsy I knew. But she sounded serious.”

On December 13, Patsy and Charlie drove to Nashville, where McCall and Cohen, searching for that elusive but all-important follow-up hit, had her record another batch of Four-Star songs. There was traditional country: Hal and Ginger Wallis’s standout “Walking Dream,” “Stop the World (and Let Me Off),” and “If I. Could See the World (Through the Eyes of a Child),” a lovely if inappropriate tune for a hoped-for hit which Patsy may have been attracted to because of impending motherhood. The “sure thing” at this session was “Cry Not for Me,” cowritten by Donn Hecht.

That song and “Walking Dream” marked the first time since “Walkin’ After Midnight” Owen Bradley, beset with constant requests from McCall and Decca executives, went for a pop sound. The Anita Kerr Singers, with their choruses of “bop, bop, bop” seem to be showcased equally on the former. But, in the mishmash of material, as Patsy once quipped, “nothing flew out of the coop.” She was straddling the fence, with one side pushing her toward pop and her feelings leaning toward country.

“I was experimenting,” Bradley said. “We’d try anything that would stick.”

Thank God for the Grand Ole Opry. The money was a pittance, but considered worth what you had to give up because of the WSM and NBC Radio broadcasts. With a potentially vast audience, maybe someone who heard Patsy would go out and buy her records. When she appeared Saturday, January 11, 1958, Jean Shepard had a memorable meeting with Decca’s expectant songstress that night in the ladies’ dressing room. Patsy was stomping, raving mad and cursing as Jean entered.

“What’s the matter, kid?”

“Goddamn it, Jeanie! I’m pregnant.”

“Honey, that’s great. I’m thrilled for you. Is this your first?”

“Yeah. And you know what, it may be my last!”

“What are you so upset about? I think it’s wonderful.”

“Wonderful? It’s horrible, damnit!”

“You’ve gotta be kidding, Patsy. Everything’s going great guns for you.”

“Yeah. Here I am just coming off a big record and I go and get knocked up! I won’t be able to go on the road or do TV. It’s gonna really tie me down.”

“Frothing at the mouth ain’t gonna help any. It’s done. If you’d behaved yourself and done what you were supposed to do, things like this wouldn’t happen. But, honey, wait. You’ll see. Everything’s gonna be all right.”

“Everything’s gonna be awful!”

“Oh, you’ll change your mind.”

“No, I won’t!”

At another gabfest in the ladies’ room, Patsy told Del Wood about her retirement plans. “It wasn’t like Patsy to be talking of quitting. Her decision was ironic because when she was married to Gerald he’d have given anything if she quit the business.”

“Heck, hon, women have had babies and lived to sing again!” Del informed. “What you need to do is move to Nashville, where you can see and be seen. In this town, it’s out of sight and out of mind.”

“Del, it’s different now. I was so consumed with singing then, I didn’t care whether I made a living or not. It was something I had to do. But now I have the recognition and I want the money that goes along with it. You know, it’s pretty damn frustrating when you have a hit record and don’t make any damn money from it. And, try as I might, for the life of me I can’t come up with another hit.”

“You got a few good years left, girl! Whatever you do, don’t throw in the towel.”

Patsy’s new album was out and dying a quick death. The next day she left for a five-day engagement on “Arthur Godfrey Time” in New York, where she and Godfrey plugged her debut set.

Anyone who’d been in touch with Patsy or heard her talking must have registered surprise at the announcement a few days later in the magazine
Music Reporter
. Xavier X. Cosse was married to and manager of Martha Lou Carson, who’d gone from the Renfro Valley Barn Dance in Kentucky to stardom on the Opry and RCA Records. Under Cosse, she had left gospel music behind and was “experimenting with city sounds,” playing prominent supper clubs. Cosse was opening an office in Nashville to expand his client list, and the newest addition to his roster would be Patsy Cline.

Though the news item was small, Randy Hughes saw it.

According to Charlie, “Patsy should have been a wealthy woman from the way everything was going as a result of ‘Walkin’ After Midnight.’ Had she been signed directly to Decca, Patsy wouldn’t have a financial worry in the world. It was a disgrace the way she was taken advantage of by McCall. He had her coming and going.

“Patsy got the short end because McCall deducted every conceivable expense, such as her trip to California, hotels, meals, and phone calls, from her royalty pool. She was left with virtually nothing. To make matters worse, he controlled everything she did in the studio.

“The TV shows Patsy did paid very little back then. And she made damn little for her road dates. God, if anybody worked to earn a living, Patsy certainly did. She never stopped. I used to wonder where on earth she found the strength. She had sheer determination.”

Owen Bradley related, “Patsy would often come to me and cry about the selection of songs McCall was forcing on us. She used to get so down and depressed. She’d ask me, ‘Hoss, can’t you do something? I feel like a prisoner.’ I tried, but with her Four-Star contract, there was nothing we could do. I kept talking with
Paul [Cohen] about signing her direct to the label, which he wanted to do all along, when her Four-Star deal expired.”

The January 13 release of “Stop the World (and Let Me Off)” backed with “Walking Dream” did nothing to alleviate Patsy’s losing streak.

McCall and Cohen were determined to strike gold. Six songs were recorded February 13: “Let the Teardrops Fall,” “Never No More,” the very poignant but badly mistitled “If I Could Stay Asleep,” “Just Out of Reach,” “I Can See an Angel” and a pop remake of “Come On In,” the first time Bradley added brass on a session with Patsy. There was nothing exciting, except for her infectious “theme song”: