Honky Tonk Angel (29 page)

There was to be a fourth tune, another of Cochran’s called “Perfect Example of a Fool.” When things dragged during the prerecord of “Lovin’ in Vain,” Hank
went for a drink. When time came to work on the new song, Patsy discovered she’d left the demo at home. Cochran returned about 5:30, which was quitting time.

As they listened to the playback of “I Fall to Pieces,” Bradley remembered that Patsy told him, “I think I’ve found out who I am and what we’ve been looking for.”

“What do you mean?”

“We don’t have to search for my identity anymore,” she replied. “This is it. We’re doing it right!”

As she walked away, she turned and winked, saying, “And, after all, if we don’t do well, we can
always
go back to selling ten to fifteen thousand copies!”

“The day after the session, Patsy and Charlie came over to the house,” Jan recalled. “We were talking as Harlan and Hawkshaw Hawkins played a hockey game. Patsy was going off Saturday to Louisville for a fair date. She and Harlan got on well. They shared the same birthday, so they considered that special. They’d been kidding around and she remarked, ‘Guess I’m gonna have to start singing “I Fall to Pieces.” I don’t like it worth a damn, so I’ve never learned it. And I gotta do it this weekend.’ Harlan didn’t bat an eye. He didn’t care what she thought, as long as she recorded it!”

There’s an aspect to Patsy Cline that continues to mystify music historians. She was less than sure of her own musical instincts and uncertain whether Bradley was leading her down the right road. Patsy consistently sought peer approval.

That weekend before she set off for Kentucky, Patsy was at the WSM studios in the National Life Building on the “Friday Night Frolics.” Between performances, she and Teddy Wilburn went to his office, where Patsy played an acetate of “I Fall to Pieces.”

“She told me how much she hated it,” Teddy commented, “and how Brenda and Roy turned it down. She insisted Owen forced it on her. When I heard it, I was surprised. I liked it. She seemed relieved. I told her, ‘I have one complaint. I don’t care for the guitar work. You have some great sidemen there, but I don’t like it.’

“It goes to show how much I knew! The guitars were part of what made the song such a hit.”

“From the songwriter’s viewpoint,” explained Harlan Howard, “Patsy Cline was the greatest reader of lyrics that I’ve ever worked with. She understood that certain lines in a song are just there to be sung. They’re not emotional lines.

“Patsy had the knack to hold back on those lines, then when she got to the really juicy part of the song she’d give it everything she had. Songwriters love that because we know, in order to write a song lyric, every word in the song can’t be great. You have to have lines that lead to the best part. Patsy comprehended that. She realized there was more to singing than standing at the mike and doing a song.”

Through the sophistication and instincts of Owen Bradley, Patsy Cline was gaining confidence. It would just take a while longer to strike paydirt.

Christmas came and went with Patsy and Charlie still struggling. She had high hopes “Lovin’ in Vain” would finally produce a hit.

On January 21—in her ninth month—Patsy made one of her required appearances on the Opry. Charlie got off work and came to the Opry, but Patsy went home alone. She had a restless night Charlie came home at 6:00 A.M. Sunday morning and crawled into bed. Patsy woke him about an hour later and complained of intense labor pains. He said he thought it was a guise to get him up or penalize him for staying out all night. Patsy called neighbor Joyce Blair. “Blair, it’s time!” announced Patsy. “Charlie won’t budge. Will you take me to the hospital?”

The Blairs rushed over. In the excitement, Charlie woke, mumbled a few choice comments and went back to sleep. Mrs. Blair took Patsy to St. Thomas Hospital. As they neared the entrance, her car stalled. Attendants rushed Patsy in through Emergency and up to the maternity floor.

When Charlie got up hours later, the house was quiet. He thought it was a joke and slowly maneuvered from room to room. No one was home. Julie was with the neighbors. Patsy was about to deliver. He jumped in the car and sped to her side.

Patsy gave birth to a boy, whom the Dicks named Randolph. Everyone assumed he was named after Randy Hughes, but the name came from Patsy’s half-brother. He was to be known as “little” Randy, so as not to be confused with Hughes.

Upon its release January 30, “I Fall to Pieces” had as much impact as Patsy’s Four-Star material. The hit Bradley predicted didn’t happen, “and don’t think Patsy didn’t remind mel I can honestly say that, while I never got sick of Patsy, I swear sometimes I thought she was trying to push me over the edge.”

Deejays virtually ignored the song, but Hal Smith of Pamper Music had great faith in the potential of Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard. He hired promotion man Pat Nelson to work the road. His strategy was to tell country programming directors what a radical departure the song was for Patsy. To their pop counterparts, he pointed out what a radical departure it was for a country artist. According to Charlie, in spite of Nelson’s efforts, it didn’t happen. “It received limited play, but not the big boom you need for a hit. When everyone was about to give up, Pat stayed on the job.”

On February 9, less than three weeks after Randy’s birth, Patsy was in Bradley’s studio filming a segment for the army’s syndicated TV version of “Country Style, U.S.A.” Her on-again, off-again battle with the waistline was a losing one, especially after her pregnancy. She looked bloated.

Faron Young was the guest host in a country store setting. He introduced Patsy, who sang “Walkin’ After Midnight.” Reported Lightnin’ Chance, who played on the date, “They brought in bolts and bolts of fabric and stacked them on a countertop. Patsy had her hair pulled in a bun and was overly made up. She had on a short-sleeved white blouse and this pleated gingham dress with two wide straps running up from her waist over the shoulders. It looked like an apron. I charged up and told her, ‘Well, hello! You look like you just got back from town selling eggs and milk.’ And she picked up one of those bolts and whacked me in the head.

“She looked thirty pounds heavier, but it was more that dress than the fact she’d gained weight. It was all the rage to show country girls in gingham. On most
of the programs, they were always bringing in bales of hay. I thought, ‘Someday they’ll do a country show without a hayseed image.”’

Some of the loveliest pictures taken of Patsy are outdoor shots in everyday, casual clothes, such as slacks and sweaters. Yet, as though ashamed of her assets of piercing brown eyes and soft, wavy brown hair, she often disguised her natural beauty and made herself look cheap and ugly. As her popularity crossed over to pop, she wore bordello-style dresses, horrible wigs, and gaudy costume jewelry. She was heavy-handed with cosmetics, especially her ruby red lipstick.

In March, Pat Nelson had a breakthrough when a deejay at a Columbus, Ohio, pop station began playing “I Fall to Pieces.” By then Decca had written off any hope of seeing the tune become a hit. With his Columbus airplay, Nelson talked record distributors into ordering the single and fanning it across the area. His shrewdest move was getting “I Fall to Pieces” on jukeboxes. After four months, momentum built on the two levels—pop and country—Nelson had gone after. Decca saw movement and, their faith restored and much against established policy of ballyhooing product they’d considered a lost cause, began a heavy promotion campaign.

On April 1, Dottie West, twenty-eight, first met Patsy Cline backstage at the Opry. She went up to her and said, “Hello, I’m Dottie West.”

In her best high and mighty voice, Patsy snapped, “Oh, you are, hush?”

“Yes, and I just want to thank you for that letter you wrote me.”

Patsy gave Dottie a puzzled look. “What letter, Hoss?”

“Right after I first heard ‘Walkin’ After Midnight’ I wrote you to say what a big fan I was.”

“That was 1957!”

“But I remember. I still have it! You sent back a real nice reply. You told me if I ever came to Winchester, you hoped we could meet. Well, I never got to Winchester, but here we are now both in Nashville.”

“Ain’t it the truth! Where’re you from?”

“My husband and I just moved here from Cleveland, Ohio. But I was born outside McMinnville.”

“Where’s that, Hoss?”

“Oh, southeast of here, near Murfreesboro.”

“Okay. I know where that is.”

“I used to live here before I married.”

“Well, Dottie, are you a singer?”

“I’ve made a couple of records, but nothing like you. My husband Bill is a guitarist and record engineer.”

“Yeah?”

Dottie noted that Patsy showed a genuine interest in her career and, in a matter of minutes, they were like old friends. There are interesting similarities in their backgrounds.

Dottie was born Dorothy Marie Marsh, the eldest of ten children in a poor farm family. She loved music and played several instruments. At twelve, she made her debut on a Nashville radio show. Her budding career was cut short when her
father deserted the family. Mrs. Marsh moved to town and opened a restaurant, where Dottie worked as a waitress. She managed to finish high school and went to Tennessee Tech (Polytechnic) in Cookeville, where she studied the cello. She graduated in 1952.

With Bill West, whom she met in school, she moved to Ohio. They married later that year. In Cleveland, by 1955, Dottie and Bill became regulars on the popular regional TV show “Landmark Jubilee.” She made her first records in 1959 and, by 1961, was writing songs.

“Patsy invited me over to her house,” Dottie recalled, “and, before you knew it, we were visiting and calling each other as soon as we’d come in off the road. I wasn’t that busy, to say the least, in those days and, like everyone starting out, we were having a difficult time.

“With ‘I Fall to Pieces,’ Patsy was the hottest thing going. She finally had some money and she was extremely generous. No one had a heart as good as Patsy’s. There was no barrier so tall that she wouldn’t leap for you, no problem—financial or otherwise—she wouldn’t help you solve. She didn’t think only of herself. She thought nothing of buying a couple of bagfuls of groceries and dropping them off to someone in need. If kids were involved, she was especially thoughtful. She was constantly giving away clothes.

“Patsy’d have all us girl singers over. We’d have our little hen parties while the men drank. We thought of Brenda as more of a sister, but, all of a sudden, there we were looking up to her like a big star. She was so cute and tiny and, oh, what a personality! A kid, but so grown up. In many ways, thanks to Patsy!

“Patsy loved to cook. She made the greatest stuffing for pork chops, fantastic glazed and smoked country hams, and the best mashed potatoes you ever ate.

“She was very supportive. She used Bill from time to time to play steel guitar for her shows and invited me to tag along. We’d go from date to date in her car. Patsy loved fancy cars and she was so proud of her Cadillac. It was the biggest, whitest Cadillac she could find.

“Sometimes, when he could get off, Charlie’d go with us and drive, but, oh, boy, could Patsy drive that car. She was a daredevil behind the wheel. On one tour, Roy Orbison was a headliner and rode with us—once. Patsy scared the poor man to death. He was in the back seat, holding on for dear life. Every time he’d say something, Patsy’d laugh and say, ‘Relax, Hoss,’ and she’d go faster.

“None of us girl singers were working that much. It wasn’t long before Patsy put me to work when I didn’t have anything booked. I wasn’t singing, but helped with her wardrobe and hair. It was an exciting time with ‘I Fall to Pieces’ becoming a hit. Just by watching her, I was able to learn so much. She completely reinvented me as a singer. The best advice I ever got was when she told me, ‘Hoss, if you can’t do it with feeling, don’t do it.’”

“Patsy was the type who’d do anything for you!” Roger Miller boasted. “She didn’t know the meaning of ‘in harm’s way.’ A bunch of us musicians went into Juarez, Mexico, after a Faron Young date in El Paso. Patsy tagged along. The guys bought a little grass, then worried how they were going to get it back across the border.