Honky Tonk Angel (43 page)

Charlie stated that Patsy made $6,300 a week, “but that included the band and Randy’s commission. He also noted that he felt Patsy didn’t really want to go. “I think she was scared.” The first night they arrived, Patsy went on a crying jag. “Patsy wanted to go home! I don’t know whether she thought she wasn’t prepared, or that she’d heard so much about Vegas and all the big names out there and it frightened her.”

“Patsy started to show some real fears,” said Gordon Stoker of the Jordanaires. “You’d never think she was fearful of anything. She confided in me, ‘How can a nothing like me even be doing what I’m doing?’ I told her, ‘Because you realize you’re nothing. We all are, say, compared to Christ. And she shot back, ‘Well, you gotta start somewhere!’”

Patsy opened on November 23, with Hilda and Charlie in the audience. The Merri-Mint wasn’t a Vegas showroom as they are known today. It was tacky and seedy. Patsy Cline was the classiest thing it had seen. And the casino got their money’s worth out of their star. She worked seven nights a week. To the Las Vegas press and audiences, Patsy was a major record star. “So Wrong” made it to number 14 on the
Billboard
country chart in August and to 85 in the pop top-100. Surprisingly, “Heartaches” wasn’t making any country waves but was number 73 on the pop chart. The powers in Vegas saw her potential as a regular, and Randy negotiated to bring her back to town, but not downtown.

A few days into her run, Patsy encountered that disease dreaded by all entertainers who play Vegas—dry throat. Charlie noted that for a couple of performances, she had to mime her own records from a music system rigged behind the curtains. Despite this problem, the Sahara entertainment executives who came several times to hear her loved her and moved to book her for a one-nighter in their main showroom on the strip. When Randy broke the news to her, she balked.

“Hoss, that’s too uptown for me. I don’t wanna wear fancy gowns. I want to wear my cowgirl outfits.”

“Here we go again! Those days are finished. Look where you are!”

“Yeah, and I’m miserable. Listen, Randy, I’m tired and I don’t want to hear any more about it. I miss my kids.”

“Yes, ma’am, Miss Cline. Anything you say. Let me arrange for your supper. Something with a lot of sugar.”

“It won’t help!”

“And we can continue this conversation tomorrow.”

“It won’t do no good, so you can
dis
continue it right now!”

As Christmas approached, Patsy tried to do her shopping for the children’s presents, but her heart wasn’t in it. She called home twice a day to hear Julie and
little Randy’s voices. Onstage Christmas Eve, she broke out crying in the middle of “Am I a Fool?”
³²
When she came off, she said the lyrics really got to her.

“No matter what, I’ll never do this again,” she swore. “This is a time to be with your family, not away from them.”

Randy made no mention that he had been continuing to negotiate with the Sahara for Patsy’s return in early 1963. The engagement ended on Friday, December 28, so he had to get Patsy to the Sahara for a trial run. The day after Christmas he broke it to her.

“Patsy, we won’t be going home Friday.”

“What?”

“As soon as we finish here, we’re doing one night at the Sahara. I just sewed it up. They want to see you on their stage.”

“I keep telling you I wanna slow down, that I gotta slow down. But you don’t hear me. No one listens to what I want I have to go out there and do the work.”

“Patsy, we can’t stop now!”

“Tell ’em I said thanks but no thanks.”

“No way, baby!”

“Goddamn, don’t it matter what I want?”

Randy rushed out, and standing in the doorway was a man from Patsy’s past.

“Hello,” he said quietly. “Is it okay to come in?”

“Donn Hecht! My God, what a wonderful surprise!”

“I had to see your show. Las Vegas is the big time, and so are you!”

“Yeah, so I been hearing! You look great.”

“A little dusty. We just drove in from L.A. Let me look at you!”

“No. No. Please don’t. All I can say is that I’m alive! I’ll look better after the show. One more less to do.”

That night Patsy brought Hecht onstage. “I’d like you all to meet a really fine country and pop writer who’s played an important role in my career. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Donn Hecht, the cowriter of my first number one hit, ‘Walkin’ After Midnight.’ Donn, take a bow.”

After the performance, Hecht said, “We visited backstage for quite a while. Though she was dressed to the nines, Patsy didn’t look better. She was exhausted, pale, unsure. Only the heart was there. At first, I thought it was overwork, but the lines on her young face spelled much more. She was only thirty, but looked so much older. She, Randy, and I were going to eat that night, but Patsy canceled abruptly, saying, ‘I need some rest more than I need any food.’

“She told me how much it meant to her that I’d come so far just to see her. Patsy persuaded me to say and talk to her. She complained of not feeling well, which she attributed to the flu bug. While she was fixing her hair, looking at me through the mirror, she brought up Bill McCall. Patsy was still bitter. When she went to get up, she had a slight wobble. She complained of some tight, aching muscles over her shoulders and neck. She wanted to know if I couldn’t do anything.

“I stood in back of her, folded her arms over her chest, and gently lifted her bear-hug fashion to stretch her back. I heard a pop and said, ‘There. That should
relax you. It works. I do it to my wife.’ Patsy told me, ‘I feel better already. Okay, you can unsqueeze me now.’ So I let her go, hoping she didn’t take it the wrong way.

“In a manner that appeared somewhat ominous, she began talking softly about her life and things she had to take care of when she got home. It was like she was going through the eerie motions of settling accounts.”

“I don’t understand it, Donn.”

“What’s that, Patsy?”

“I know people who have schooling and all but don’t have half my talent. Yet they seem to have everything good happen to them without half trying.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen that.”

“Hell, all my life it’s been uphill! Even now. I tried to do everything without stepping on or hurting anyone—even when it meant hurting me. But all that’s gonna stop. Experience is a hard teacher. She gives the tests first—”

“And the lessons come after.”

“Right I’ve got a lot of living to do with people I wanna do it with. And for
once
in my life I’m damn well gonna do it You remember in 1957 I recorded your song ‘Cry Not for Me’?”

“I sure do.”

“And that son of a bitch McCall wouldn’t release it until 1959. He didn’t want to spend any money promoting it.”

“That was Bill’s Patsy Cline insurance. He got wind you might fly the coop, so he sat on it.”

“Well, there’s a story in that song about my life.”

“How, Patsy? This is no time for crying. You’ve reached a place hundreds of would-bes envy.”

“Don’t kid yourself. I don’t. Every time I’ve had what I wanted here—”she held out the palm of her hand—“something pulls the rug out from under me. Sickness, accidents, hospital bills,
McCall.
I’d like to do that song again. Listen, ‘Cry not for me / when I am far away / there’s nothing more to say / cry not for me.’”

“God, you still remember the words!”

“Sure, but I don’t want anybody to cry for me.”

“What do you expect those who love you to do?”

“Listen to the songs and how I did my damnedest to sing them right.”

“You’re a songwriter’s dream!”

“Or nightmare!”

“Patsy, you’ve got a lot of songs to sing before you join ‘Hillbilly Heaven.’”

Patsy laughed. Hecht said it was the first time all night. “If there’re a bunch of hillbillies up there, you can be damn sure I’ll get in.” She continued to talk. “And I owe you a lot.”

“How’s that?”

“Your way of thinking things out. About music being music and crossing fences to see what people and things are really like.”

“Thanks, but you don’t owe me. We learn from relationships we have along the way. I feel proud to share in your career.”

“There was nothing for me musically before ‘Walkin’ After Midnight.’ My one
regret was that it had to be shoved down my throat! It musta been like giving medicine to a baby! The baby doesn’t want it—”

“But I keep saying, ‘But, baby, it’s good for you!”

“Donn, I want to record more of your material!”

“We can work that out, make that same spark happen again. If I have another song I really think you can do, I’ll submit it to you.”

“My manager. There, I’ve got a problem. Not the kind you may think, but he’s the decisionmaker in the family.”

“Family?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure I do. But I’ll go over some new material for you.”

“I’d like that.”

“I could use the money from a Patsy Cline hit.”

“So could I!”

“If it’s in the cards, as they say in Vegas, it’s in the cards! You know, I’ve never been to Nashville.”

“You’re kidding?”

“No. Just never got around to it.”

“Think we could get rolling soon?”

“In about a month.”

“Great.”

“It’s late, Patsy, and I’m going to have to head out.”

“Come on, let’s find Randy and we can all go.”

Outside on East Fremont Street, Patsy and Hecht hugged.

“I’ll see you in Nashville, Hoss!”

Patsy and Randy crossed the street Then Patsy turned, waved, and said, “Donn! Goodbye, Hoss. Have a safe trip!”

Upon reflection, Hecht commented, “I can’t arrive at any other conclusion than to say logic followed that Patsy and Randy were more than client/manager, and that things hadn’t been going well in her marriage. They walked down the street in a way that suggested much more than a business relationship. Perhaps, at last, she had found the man in her life.”

Not long after Patsy’s single of “Leavin’ on Your Mind” and “Tra Le La Le La Triangle” was released on January 7, 1963, Patsy and Loretta spent the day together. “She and Charlie had a fuss. Patsy came over to pick me up, and we were going into town to pick up a bunch of long gowns for Patsy.

“She’d been talking about what was going on between her and Charlie so I said, ‘Well, it looks like you’re leaving, girl!’ And we broke up laughing. She weren’t going anywhere. They had their squabbles, but there were pressures from several directions.”

After Christmas, Mrs. Hensley said, Patsy spoke quite seriously about divorcing Charlie and had an attorney draw up trust papers for the children.

Charlie refuted this. “That simply wasn’t true. Patsy talked about trust funds for the children and I agreed, but we never got around to it. I told her, ‘Heck, we’ve got plenty of time. We can do it the next time you have a breather.’ And if Patsy
was considering a divorce, she had a funny way of showing it. She wanted me with her constantly, and I was there.”

Jean Shepard summed up, “I heard the rumors. I wasn’t privy to Patsy’s confidences, but that was never the case. To say it was the happiest marriage in the world would be telling a lie. When you see people day in and day out, you get a gut feeling. And Patsy was trying to have another baby. We had the same doctor, Homer M. Pace. One day he was telling me, ‘That Cline woman has some temper! You know, Virginia Dick.’ I said, ‘Oh, Patsy.’ He went on, ‘She came in here and couldn’t be bothered waiting. She had an appointment and demanded to be seen immediately. I told her I’d be with her as soon as I could. And she waited.’

“Dr. Pace finished examining me, and as I was about to leave, he said, ‘And if you see Patsy, tell her to come in as soon as she can. That dame has the most screwed-up female problems of anyone I know.’ ”

In mid- to late January, Patsy and Charlie were returning in the car from an engagement “Jackie DeShannon came on the radio singing the old Bob Wills song ‘Faded Love,’” Charlie recalled. “I thought Patsy was in the back asleep, but she popped up, scaring the devil out of me. She said, ‘Everybody’s modulating down these days. I wonder why Jackie did it?’ I told her, ‘Probably the song’s not in her key. If it’s too high for her, it would be hard to do without bringing it down.’

“‘Oh, no, it wouldn’t,’ she replied: ‘I can do it’ I answered, ‘Oh, you can, huh?’ She said, ‘Yep. I sure as hell can.’”

On January 15 Patsy did an armed forces broadcast on “Country Music Time” that is telling in its content. Delivering a moving rendition of “Leavin’ on Your Mind,” she followed it with “Tennessee Waltz.” After the recruitment pitch, she warmly introduced new artist Clyde Bevis, who sang “Still Loving You.” Patsy then made a special comment about the musicians, singling out “ol’ Lightnin’” Chance. For her finale, she sang her favorite, the old gospel hymn, “Life’s Railroad to Heaven,” accompanied by the Jordanaires.