Honky Tonk Angel (5 page)

Virginia worked at the drug store and continued her singing dates. She waited and waited for the call from WSM and the Grand Ole Opry. Through nine years of ups and downs, she remained undaunted.

“After all, Mama,” she told her mother, “Wally Fowler, Moon Mullican, and Roy Acuff thought I was great!”

V
irginia’s job at the drug store didn’t put an end to her singing ambitions. With Jumbo Rinker on keyboards, Virginia sang at church socials, benefits, fraternal parties, carnivals, and minstrels. As her reputation spread, other singing dates were offered. Gene Shiner, her neighbor on South Kent Street, formed the Metronomes, a pop music band, and hired Virginia as lead vocalist. She held that job for about four months, but it wouldn’t be the last time she worked with Shiner.

Mrs. Hensley was busy making western costumes for her daughter’s singing engagements. The Gaunts, like family now, let Virginia off early to perform. Like most artists starting out, Virginia worked some rough places—everything from taverns to honky tonks. In addition to Gaunt’s Drug Store, she had part-time jobs at Winchester’s Greyhound terminal and Front Royal’s Virginia Gentleman restaurant, where she also sang. Though not quite five foot four, Patsy knew how to take care of herself. What she didn’t know, Rinker taught her. “The guys knew not to manhandle her,” he said.

Patsy later told Del Wood, “Nothing men do surprise me. I’m ready for them. I know how to whack below the belt.” In 1960, Patsy Cline spoke of those days of working day and night. “Mama would pick me up and take me to wherever I had
a job. We had the one car, so she dropped me off and came back to get me later or she’d stay the whole night. Mama didn’t trust me with anyone! Knowing me, it was probably just as well. We’d get home about one in the morning, totally exhausted. At six I was up with Mom fixing breakfast for the kids, then off to work. And, you know what, we loved every minute of it!”

“Though she wasn’t a beauty,” said Rinker, “men fell at Virginia’s feet. She possessed much allure. She was well-endowed and had the right moves. Virginia had pretty brown hair and sparkling brown eyes. She’d smile and guys would be hog-tied, but Virginia was chasing rainbows. She liked to get serious without having to get serious. She had no plans to get tied down. She enjoyed playing the field and having a good time. She liked the fast crowd. If anything scared her, I didn’t know about it. As far as Virginia and me, we were romantic friends but not headed for any altar.”

Besides Rinker, Virginia dated Elias Blanchfield of Martinsburg, to whom she was briefly engaged at seventeen, and Ray Horner of Le Gore, Maryland.

Not everyone liked Virginia, according to her early friends, nor did she make it easy to like her. “She was aloof,” Rinker observed, “which a lot of people misunderstood for being conceited or thinking she was better than they were.”

“The Hensley gal,” as she was often referred to, could be tough and tomboyish. She was notorious for her vulgar mouth, but could turn around and be the perfect genteel lady. Part of the perceived problem was that Virginia didn’t always make the “correct” or acceptable choices for her day and age. She wore tight-fitting sweaters, dresses and jeans, red lipstick, lots of makeup, and long, dangling earrings. More often than not, she chose gaudy colors and styles. It didn’t take long for her to earn a reputation as a “loose woman, a hard-boiled teaser out only for herself.” The men with whom she flirted and teased nicknamed her the “Honky Tonk Angel.”

In 1951, Virginia, nineteen, became a regular at George and Katherine Frye’s Rainbow Inn on Greenwood Road south of town. Virginia wore a colorful array of cowgirl outfits made by her mother. Sonny Frye, who played guitar, and the Playboys (a frequently used tag for bands in the region)—Bobby Lee, Jimmy, and Del—were sons of the owners and, along with Harold Senseny, made up the house band.

The club has been described as “an old henhouse of a dive,” but it was a rather tame Texas-style dance hall, famous locally from the 1940s for its country ham sandwiches. Sonny Frye said, “People came out on Saturday night and let their hair down. There was plenty of beer and live country music. We also had a jukebox with about twenty records. People played them over and over again and everybody sang along.”

Frye said there was hardly ever time to rehearse, especially with Virginia Hensley. “She impressed us with her talent and how well she knew her material. We didn’t have music stands or sheet music. Usually, with Virginia we went on cold turkey. She’d just tell us what key she wanted and we took it from there.”

The Virginia that Sonny, brother Bobby Lee, and Bobby’s wife, Betty, knew differs greatly from her honky tonk angel persona. “She was a down-to-earth, good ole country girl,” Betty Frye observed. “There wasn’t anything smart about her.
Virginia was everybody’s friend. We’d sit and talk for hours. Virginia wasn’t fancy or full of herself. She liked mashed potatoes and fried chicken just like I did.”

The Winchester area had numerous dance halls, and the Playboys played them all—Bert’s on Route 50 West, the Shamrock on Route 7, and Chuck and Ray’s on Route 11. They were regulars on the club and drive-in theater circuit within a hundred-mile radius of town. Usually, wherever the Playboys appeared, Virginia Hensley would show up to sing.

“We had a reputation for knowing all the best songs,” Bobby explained. “We played by ear. Unlike today, there weren’t a whole slew of new songs coming out every week. A handful of established artists put out records. When a new one came along that the public liked, we were right on it, thanks mainly to the jukebox at the Rainbow. And Virginia was right in touch with the latest hits, sometimes maybe a step ahead. She’d snap out the tempos and guide us if we hit a snag.”

In the summer of 1952, the Fryes built an outdoor stage adjacent to the Rainbow Inn for Sunday afternoon family concerts. People brought picnic food and drink and relaxed on the grass. The shows, many of which featured Virginia, attracted crowds of one to two hundred. Often before she performed, Virginia would ride the Fryes’ horses.

Interestingly, Bobby said, the band knew Virginia “simply as a local girl who wanted to entertain and who could sing her heart out. She never said anything to give us a clue she wanted to go to Nashville.”

That was before Virginia met Clarence William Peer.

Peer, virtually uncredited for what he did for Patsy, was a guitarist, well known by Nashville artists whom he’d sometime play for. At thirteen he joined WFMD Radio’s Log Cabin Boys in Frederick, Maryland. He relocated to Charles Town, West Virginia, where after ten years with other groups, he formed the Melody Boys and Girls in 1941. His was one of the first country bands to use female musicians. The band was a regular at the Charles Town Racetrack, Washington’s Joe Turner Arena, the Mount Vernon Showboat which cruised the Potomac, and the tri-state Moose Lodge and American Legion circuit.

Bill Peer’s full-time avocation was country music, but it didn’t earn him enough to support his family and his career. He worked two day jobs in order to be free weekends to accept band dates. He was employed by Goode Motor Company in Charles Town, where he ran the parts department and was a part-time Buick salesman. Evenings would find him at McGaha’s Appliance Store selling washers, dryers, kitchen ranges, and refrigerators. On weekends he was a West Virginia deejay on Martinsburg’s WEPM Radio, where he and the band appeared live on Saturday mornings.

Band members recall Bill “as an excellent salesman, one of the best” they knew. They also found him a talented musician and leader.

“He was intelligent with street smarts,” said Roy Deyton, a member of the band with his brother Ray. “He knew how to survive. Bill was a good organizer. When it came to music, he was always trying to teach us something, especially about how to make sure you get the music across to the listener. He’d say, ‘If they
look like they’re enjoying it and get up and dance, you’re doing it right. If they don’t, then you got to weed out the bad material.’”

The first Mrs. Peer, Jenny, remembered Bill saying he first met Virginia Hensley when she approached him for an audition at work at Goode Motors. The second Mrs. Peer, Dolly, recalled Bill saying they met at WEPM Radio in the summer of 1952.

“She wanted to sing with the band and told Bill of her goal to get to Nashville,” Dolly said. “He suggested if she was serious to get some material ready.”

Rinker claims that in late summer 1952 he introduced Virginia to Bobby Carper, Peer’s steel guitarist, who ran a Winchester body repair shop. “She kept after me to get Bobby to arrange an audition,” Rinker explained. “One day we pulled in and Virginia told me to put some pressure on Bobby. So I told him, ‘Hey, she’s driving me nuts! When you gonna set her up with Bill?’ He spoke to Bill, who said, ‘If she’s ready, bring her over.’”

Whatever her route, on September 27, a half hour before the band began to play, Virginia Hensley arrived at the Brunswick, Maryland, Moose Lodge on Potomac Street at Fourth Avenue, across from the Baltimore & Ohio railyard.

She walked up to Peer, who, like Jumbo Rinker, was eleven years her senior. “Hey, there, you remember me?”

“I sure do.”

“I’m ready.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Virginia sang as Bill played the guitar. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Like many before him, Bill was smitten.

“You impressed the hell outa me.”

“Me? Or my singing?”

“Both. And you’ve driven Bobby and me nuts for two months, so I better hire you and get it over with! But the first thing we gotta do is change your name. Got any ideas?”

“I kinda like what I’m stuck with—”

“Virginia just ain’t right for a singer.”

“Let me think about it.”

“Did you say your middle name’s Patricia?”

“No, Patterson after my mother’s.”

“Oh . . . Wait a minute!”

“What?”

“It’ll still work. Patsy. Patsy Hensley! Like it?”

“Yeah. I do. Patsy it is!”

“Now, it’s only ten dollars a show.”

“I accept!”

At the Moose Lodge, Patsy was an instant hit. Bill told everyone what a bundle of talent his discovery was. “She’s got a voice that’s gonna take her places.” The first place it took her was into his arms.