Honky Tonk Angel (44 page)

As she signed off, tears ran down her face.

From February 4 through February 7 she recorded. Bradley surrounded his star with his brigade of regulars—Floyd Cramer, piano; Harold Bradley, electric
bass; and Grady Martin, electric guitar, and the Jordanaires. Randy, as usual, played guitar. The producer used ten violins instead of the usual six or seven. Again he brought musician Bill McElhiney in to arrange.

Patsy called Jan Howard Monday morning to ask her if she was coming to the studio. “I don’t honestly know,” Jan replied. “But I don’t think so.”

“Why not, dammit?” Patsy assailed her.

“I’ve got things I need to take care of, and, really, Patsy, I don’t want to bug you when you’re working.”

“Ah, shit, Hoss, bug me!”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, God, yes! I’d kinda like to have you there.”

Jan and Harlan attended along with Dottie.

That first night Patsy recorded “Faded Love”; the Jimmie Hodges classic for the Mills Brothers in 1946, “Someday (You’ll Want Me to Want You)”; and the 1931 standard “Love Letters in the Sand,” a 1957 hit for Pat Boone.

Charlie, whose printing plant job was nearby, dropped into the Quonset hut studio on his supper break. As soon as he walked in, Bradley urgently waved for him to come to the control room.

“I want you out of here!” Bradley said loudly.

“What did I do? I just got here,” replied Charlie.

“You and Patsy have a fight or something?”

“No. Why? What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know, but she’s cried on every song she’s done. I
don’t
want to break the mood. I don’t want her to see you, so get out of here.” Charlie left.

“When Patsy finished her takes of ‘Faded Love,’” Jan commented, “I couldn’t talk. It was common politeness to say something nice. But I was spellbound, dumbfounded. When Patsy sang, she got you right in the gut, but never more than that night on that song. She sang it straight from the heart. It gave me cold chills. I stood there in awe of her.”

The following day, Patsy cut the session’s token country-sounding tune, Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky”; did her classic swoon rendition of Don Gibson’s “Sweet Dreams (of You),” already a hit for the writer and Faron Young; and Irving Berlin’s “Always.”

The next day’s tracks were “Does Your Heart Beat for Me?,” cowritten by Russ Morgan and Mitchell Parrish in 1936; and the ever-popular Hughie Cannon standard “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home,” which Patsy gave a new dimension with her sexy, slow build.

Teddy Wilburn found Patsy in Bradley’s office about 10:30 and, after listening to the playback, asked Patsy about Las Vegas. She took photos out of her purse and showed him.

“But,” Teddy probed, “you haven’t told me how it went.”

“It was fine,” she said. “We knocked ‘em out, Hoss. Knocked ’em out!”

“Did you do what I told you?”

“There weren’t no problems. Things came off real well,
but
I ain’t going back!”

The new songs came the following day: Harlan Howard’s “He Called Me Baby” and “You Took Him Off My Hands”; “Crazy Arms”; and “I’ll Sail My Ship Alone.”

“At the end of the session,” Jan noted, “Patsy complimented the Jordanaires
on a great job and, for once, was actually elated at how well things had gone. Afterward, as we went through the champagne ritual of listening to the playback in Owen’s office, Patsy went into Harry Silverstein’s office—he was Owen’s assistant and a Decca producer who died very young—and came out with a forty-five rpm record.”

Patsy said, “Well, here it is.” She held up the record.

“What are you talking about?” asked Owen.

“The record.”

“What record?” inquired Jan.

“Here’s ‘A Church, a Courtroom and Then Goodbye.’ It’s the first and the last.”

“Oh, Patsy, don’t say that,” Jan scolded.

“Hoss, what I mean is here’s the first record that came out and here we are listening to the last one. What a difference!”

Jordanaire Gordon Stoker pointed out, “From some of the strange things Patsy said, I didn’t think she was planning on being around long. It went back to a coupla things. During ‘Crazy’ she walked in on her crutches and said, ‘Fellas, the third time is charmed.’ I asked her, ‘What in the world are you talking about? You’ve got a cat’s nine lives!’ We all laughed, and Patsy got to talking about an illness when she was ten, about the car wreck she survived, and said again, ‘The third time is charmed. The third time I go. It’ll be all she wrote!’”

On February 9, Patsy was one of three featured guests on the 10:45—11:00 segment of the Opry, hosted by Cowboy Copas, who sang two of his famous recordings, “Alabam” and “Signed, Sealed and Delivered.” Patsy, with Randy on guitar and Lightnin’ Chance on bass, performed “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home.”

Two nights later, an incident involving Pearl Butler showed Patsy’s fragile state. For years, Pearl had sung only at Sunday gatherings. Admirers of her raw, natural talent encouraged her—after a few drinks and eating all her food—to sing more often. When she finally grew tired of being a tag-along on husband Carl’s shows, she moved into the show business arena to duets with Carl and eventually even a solo spot (though several who loved her dearly described her voice as “one of the worst in country music history”).

“We were booked to do our first tour together, a two-week tour in California,” Pearl said. “Carl had costumes. I didn’t. Goldie Hill
³³
told me, ‘Patsy don’t want her costumes no more. Why don’t you call her and see what she’s gonna do with ’em. I think she’s planning on giving ‘em away.’ I figured if she was gonna be giving things away, I might as well be on the receiving end.

“We were in Goodlettsville at Les and Dot Leverett‘s—he’s the WSM/Grand Ole Opry photographer—not far from Patsy, so I called. I told her, ‘Hon, I ain’t got nothing to wear, and I can’t let Carl out-spangle me! Could you let me borrow a couple of your old things?’”

Patsy got real angry. Pearl had to hold the receiver from her ear. “Listen,
Pearl,” she admonished her. “I’m ashamed of you for even thinking you have to ask! Get your tail over here and we’ll go through the closets and see what we can come up with. But, I have to warn you, my things are old and pretty worn. But if you see anything you like, it’s yours!”

Pearl felt funny going to Nella Drive by herself and couldn’t get anyone to go with her. Finally, a friend said she’d go. The women arrived about twenty minutes later. They drove down the driveway to enter Patsy and Charlie’s music room from the patio. As they got out of the car, they heard loud voices. Patsy’s mood had changed drastically. Charlie and Randy were in the room along with Julie and little Randy. The kids were screaming and crying. Patsy was alternately castigating Charlie and the children.

“What kind of goddamn man are you?” she rebuked Charlie. “Don’t you have any balls?”

“Patsy,” replied Charlie, “I’m sorry.”

“You sure are!”

To the friend, it was obvious Patsy and Charlie had been drinking. When the kids, in the middle of the floor surrounded by all manner of toys, tried to escape the commotion, Patsy grabbed them by the sleeve and shouted, “Where are you going, damnit? Didn’t I tell y’all to stay put? And shut that crying up!”

The visitors edged closer to the open door.

“You no-good mother!” ranted Patsy. “A simple thing like I asked and you can’t do it. Must I depend on Randy for everything?”

As the women began creeping back to the car to leave, Julie saw Pearl and got up.

“Young lady, what’d I just tell you?”

Julie, crying, pointed to the door.

“What?” Patsy wanted to know.

“Mommy, Auntie Pearl.”

Patsy spun around, and suddenly it became quiet.

“Oh, howdy, Pearl!”

“Patsy, hon, if we’ve come at a bad time—”

“Naw! Y’all come on in! We was just having a little business meeting. Some things needed straightening out.”

It was all smiles. Patsy brushed past Charlie and took Pearl and her friend upstairs to her huge closet.

“Pearl, you can have anything you want,” Patsy offered, opening the closet. “I’m real proud of ’em ’cause Mama made them.” Pearl picked out six outfits.
³⁴

“Is that all you want?”

“Oh, honey, it’s more than enough. They’ll do me fine. I don’t know how to thank you.”

Patsy slapped Pearl across the back and exclaimed, “Now, Hoss, don’t go and get sentimental on me. You of all folks don’t have to thank me. I’m glad I can do something for you. You can have ’em all—boots and everything.”

“Oh no, Patsy, I couldn’t.”

“I don’t know why not.”

“Thank you so much, but I really just couldn’t.”

Patsy gave Pearl a tight squeeze and said, “I’m so happy you’re making your dream come true.”

“Wish me luck!” Pearl replied.

“I do, but you won’t need it. Just go out there and be Pearl!”

They said their good-byes.

“All the way home I couldn’t get that scene out of my mind,” Pearl sighed. “It was pitiful and sad, not the type of thing you’d ever want to see again. I felt such deep pain for Patsy and Charlie.”

The friend told Pearl, “That was the most awful woman I’ve ever seen in my life! Please don’t ever ask me to go back to that house again!”

Several times that winter, Ralph Emery tried to interview Patsy when she dropped. by his all-night WSM radio program, but it never worked. “Patsy would be with Charlie and some of their buddies. It was around midnight and they’d be cutting up and making inside jokes. It was frustrating. I was at the end of the party. But this particular Wednesday night [February 13], Patsy dropped in by herself. She and I began rapping, and it was really good. We covered the spectrum of her career, and she was real down, but in a talkative mood.

“She told me, ‘I played hard, but I worked hard.’ I kick myself every time I think about not rolling the tape. But my previous attempts to interview Patsy had been disasters.”

Music publisher Al Gallico, a friend of Patsy’s since before Arthur Godfrey, was in town that weekend. “I saw Patsy and Charlie at the Opry and they invited me over to their new home for a party. Randy and I got to talking about road dates. He was bragging about his plane. I told him, ‘Hey, do me a favor, please. Give up that shitbox you fly in before something happens.’ He shot back, ‘Hey, Al, don’t worry. I don’t take chances.’”

The following Friday, Billy Walker worked a country package show with Patsy in Lima, Ohio. “Charlie and Randy were on that trip, and we were talking about the benefit the next weekend in Kansas City for Cactus Jack Call. Charlie’d been drinking quite a bit, and he became quite abusive to Patsy. It got so embarrassing, Randy and I tried to do something, but you just had to hope Charlie’d go off by himself.

“The next night in Toledo the whole show was simply Patsy and the orchestra. It wasn’t unusual for Patsy to play a country gig one night and then turn around and do a pop concert the next, all in the same area. I was coming along to be in the audience. It was a two-hour program, and Patsy came to Randy and said, ‘What do I do?’

“She could have done it—before the accident. Since then she’d been plagued with aches, pains, and headaches. She’d get so nervous, she’d stop what she was doing and go rest. I asked, ‘You want me to help out?’ I had some pop crossover, especially with ‘Charlie’s Shoes.’ Patsy replied, ‘Hoss, would you?’ I told her, ‘Sure. You don’t need to ask.’ I opened for an hour, then she did an hour and fifteen minutes.

“Afterward, we waited and waited as Patsy posed for pictures and signed autographs. We kept looking at our watches. Finally, I said, ‘Well, are you coming or are we gonna have to stay here till you sign autographs for every last person in the hall?’”

En route to dates in Massachusetts after Toledo, Randy reminded Patsy that she still hadn’t done her taxes. She told him she was preparing everything—which meant she was “trying to force the top down on my shoe box of receipts and bills.” Patsy wanted to know if she could deduct the expense of her new dresses and gowns. In the hotel Sunday morning before she was scheduled to leave, Patsy wrote Herman Longley, her cousin and a public accountant in Elkton, Virginia, that she desperately needed his help. She wrote, “I’ve got this benefit to do in Kansas City, but as soon as I get home I’m picking up Charlie and the kids and heading to Winchester. I’m bringing everything you’ll need to do my taxes, but I’m warning you now it will take you and two Philadelphia lawyers to figure this mess out.”