Honky Tonk Angel (55 page)

But it wasn’t so cut and dry. Overnight, with pleas for forgiveness, things may have brightened, for Charlie remained in the picture. He also has adamantly denied a pattern of abuse. The marriage, according to him, “was not all a bed of roses.... We were hardheaded and hot-tempered.” But, he alleged, their blowups were “more verbal than physical.... We never had a slugging fight.... You’d think all hell was going to break loose when we got going good. But we had a lot of fun making up.” Of
Sweet Dreams
, in which Charlie (who along with Mrs. Hensley received a sizeable fee) is portrayed as abusive and a drinker, he quipped, “It’s good, if you like fiction.”

Friends came to accept them as a volatile couple, with Charlie drinking or cursing her and Patsy bad-mouthing and demeaning him.

In 2007, when a tourist at Winchester’s Visitor and Convention Bureau asked about Charlie, a volunteer, someone Charlie had grown up with, stated “Charlie was a nice, pleasant fellow until he discovered booze at eighteen.”

Del Wood asserted, “They were up one day, down the next. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see they were heading for disaster. But a coupla days or a couple of hours after Patsy would sob he was an s-o-b, they’d be happy and lovey-dovey and you wondered if you heard Patsy right. If Charlie did to Patsy what that movie [
Sweet
Dreams
] portrayed, there wouldn’t have been a grease spot left of him. Patsy would have really cleaned his clock.”

Dottie laughed, “Their fights were always interesting to watch because you knew Patsy would win!”

Close friend Faye Morgan, then a record promoter, shared times at Tootsies with Patsy and Charlie. “He was shameless, always drinking and flirting. She was used to him crawling in at all hours but never felt she was in danger of losing him. Patsy’s only comment was, ‘Who cares? He needs me. I don’t need him.’ She never mentioned divorce.”

In Patsy’s letter of February 26, 1962, there was no talk of domestic trouble, only her excitement on receiving a royalty check for $23,000 as she sees her struggles finally being rewarded: “I can’t get used to it yet. First I cried, then I laughed, then I prayed & thanked God, then cried & laughed some more. Boy! What a feeling!”

Patsy was enjoying huge record sales and was in demand for concert and TV appearances. For a TV show outside Los Angeles, Charlie decided to take a leadership role. Always the spiffy dresser, he showed up “very Hollywood”—dressed to the nines and wearing an ascot—and began making suggestions, even to the lighting director. Patsy was so put out she berated him in front of the crew. The only thing Charlie abhorred more than being called “Mr. Cline,” was being a laughingstock.

With success, Patsy became unrelentingly ambitious and more determined to break the stranglehold men had on the business. Charlie enjoyed the financial riches of her success but was unwilling or unable to adapt to Patsy’s stardom. When marital problems flared, Patsy attempted to get Charlie to toe the line by threatening him with divorce or cutting him off financially—knowing full well he couldn’t live the life he was enjoying on his own salary.

It’s been alleged that Charlie had numerous affairs, and Patsy hasn’t been left out of the gossip mill. There are persistent rumors about Patsy and Randy Hughes. Because they spent so much time together, it’s easy to believe that she fell in love with him. Randy was the one man she could depend upon. He may have been attracted to her, but more than anyone other than Dottie, he knew Patsy’s strengths and weaknesses, moods and demons—and didn’t want to rock his marriage.

Several friends said Randy loved Patsy, “but not that way.” Patsy’s regular bass player and one of Randy’s closest friends, Lightnin’ Chance, wasn’t sure whether they were involved but had his suspicions. “I knew Randy like a brother,” he said, “and, by that time, I’d gotten to know Patsy. I thought if they got involved it would be a train wreck.” Chance had a couple of “man-to-man talks with Randy to warn him there could be trouble ahead if he thought with his heart and not his head.”

Ree Flynt said that she became aware they were more than just manager and client during one visit with Patsy. “She felt Randy was the man she needed in her life. It may have gone further than most suppose, because at the house once when I was returning to the room, I caught them in an intimate embrace and kissing.”

Faron Young agrees Patsy and Randy shared some “monkey business.” He went so far as to say, “Randy was going to divorce Kathy.” Others claim it’s doubtful he ever seriously contemplated that. His wife said the subject never came up.

Then there’s Porter Wagoner’s claim of a brief fling and Young’s own admissions of indiscretions.

A good ole boy with a potty mouth, Young was handsome and had the caché of having hit records and being in movies. Women were never a problem, but many scoffed at his claim of an affair with Patsy—especially since he and Charlie were close. Ree Flynt wasn’t one of them, however, since she witnessed one blatant incident in which Charlie was only a few feet away.

April 28, 1962, Patsy was headlining at Bristol, Tennessee’s Motor Speedway with Young and Ray Price. When the Flynts arrived at the Sandman Motel, Patsy was going through her elaborate makeup ritual, applying a layer of pancake makeup over her scars. A victory celebration was going on for “Fireball” Roberts (NASCAR pioneer Edward Glenn Roberts Jr.), who’d won the big race in his souped-up Pontiac Catalina.

“There was a knock at the door,” remembered Flynt. “There was the Sheriff. When he spied Patsy, he had this shit-eating grin and went right up in her face. She introduced us, but it was like I wasn’t there. I had the impression Patsy thought of him as a brother or sidekick, nothing more. He wanted to sing a new song. I was so taken by him, I hadn’t even noticed his guitar. He sat on the bed and, as Patsy rolled her hair, he entertained us.”

Flynt’s husband rushed in, excited that he’d met “Fireball,” and asked who wanted “highballs.” He and Rose Marie went for drinks. “When I returned,” she said, “the door was partially closed. I pushed it open and there was Faron all over Patsy, laying a long kiss on her. They weren’t kissing like no brother and sister I knew. I was tongue-tied. Finally, I mustered up the words, ‘I see y’all ain’t thirsty anymore—at least, for something to drink.’ Patsy raised her head and bellowed, ‘Whew, yeeeeha, doggies’ and laughed.”

A second later, Charlie stormed in, seemingly oblivious to Patsy and Young on
the bed. “He grabbed Patsy’s purse,” Flynt said, “took some money, and snapped, ‘I’m going to buy booze.’ Maybe he knew more than he was letting on because he went and grabbed Faron’s guitar and told him, ‘If you want to hear a gal sing, Sheriff, listen to Ree.’ Charlie pushed the guitar on me. ‘Here,’ he said, winking, ‘sing something.’ I told him he was full of shit and to go get his booze. Patsy and Faron roared.”

The Flynts and Young rode to the track in Patsy’s Cadillac with Charlie behind the wheel. He had no idea where the entrance to the stage area was, and Young was telling him, “Turn here! Turn right, damn it! Turn left, damn it!” Then Patsy would chime in “No! Not here, damn it!”

“We came over a ridge and there was the track,” quipped Flynt. “Faron hollered ‘Gun it, damn it! Gun it!’ And he did, and Patsy was yelling, ‘No, Charlie! No!’ but, egged on by Faron, he kept bad-assing. We raced around the track to be met by police cars, sirens blaring, and folks frantically waving their arms. An army of very upset people surrounded us. The guys from Faron’s band came running. Patsy shouted, ‘Get out, damn it! Hurry up and get out!’

“One of the cops wanted to know who’d been driving. On cue, Faron’s boys raised their hands. I stood there stupefied. Patsy took the head officer aside, sweet-talking him that they had a show to do. Could they discuss it later? Thank goodness, they didn’t smell Charlie’s breath. By the end of the show, it was forgotten.”

The partying resumed around the motel pool. “One of the drivers kept coming on to Patsy,” reported Flynt, “and she kept ignoring him while not ignoring him. He was hard to ignore—good looking, great build, in his twenties. I kidded her that the only man she cared about was Charlie. When she ignored the guy’s advances again, I razzed, ‘Just as well. You probably couldn’t get him if you wanted to.’ Patsy shot back, ‘You wanna bet?’”

Flynt was about to put up “good money” when Young arrived. “For a change he wasn’t drinking, but he was making an ass of himself over Patsy by really hitting on her, I mean really hitting on her, and right in front of Charlie. She was saved by Ray, who asked her if she’d loan him some money. Without even wondering what he’d done with what he’d been paid, Patsy pulled a fifty out of her billfold. He was intoxicated, but argued that it was too much. Patsy told him it was the smallest bill she had and to pay her back when he could.”

A jam session erupted. Patsy yelled to Young to play something fast, and one of the musicians started doing the twist. Patsy went into her room on the pretense of freshening up her makeup. Young followed.

“Next thing you know,” Flynt stated, “this fellow came huffing and puffing and yelled, ‘Patsy, some guy’s stealing your car!’ It took her a moment to open the door. She yelled to Charlie to do something. He ignored her. Pat and another guy stopped the culprit, who was drunk and pulling a prank. I gave Charlie hell, saying ‘It’d be funny if you had to walk home.’ He smart-alecked, ‘Don’t worry, she’s got plenty damn insurance.’”

Flynt recalled another incident from that road trip, when Patsy was trying to make a call to her friend Trudy Stamper at Nashville’s WSM Radio and kept getting the wrong number. She hadn’t been up long and may have been a tad hung over. On the phone with the long-distance operator, “Patsy got louder and louder, repeating the station’s name over and over, but the operator just didn’t understand her. She
got real huffy and said, ‘No, Hoss, it’s WSM. W-S-M! That’s S! S! You know, as in s-h-i-t!” To her credit, the operator didn’t hang up, and Patsy got her number.

Patsy admitted to Flynt and other close girlfriends that she had one “real bad crush.” He was strapping South Dakota rancher Bill Lane, owner of Rapid City’s Dan’s Bar & Ballroom, where she appeared in 1961 and summer 1962. A former club employee said, “Patsy was always talking a blue streak about Big Dan.”

Lane was head over heels too, and often surprised Patsy by showing up at dates or sending orchids—after kidding her about a line she sang on “Why Can’t He Be You?”—including an orchid he brought her at Carnegie Hall. Lane says that he and Patsy had a “very deep friendship” and that he wanted more, but Patsy “wasn’t going there.”

June Carter, back on the tour circuit with Johnny Cash, pushed him to book Patsy on his summer 1962 Shower of Stars tour. He agreed, and gave her star billing. Cash was married, but in name only, to wife Vivian, whom he used to call his “Snookie Pootsie.” Now, he had a new Snookie in Carter. It wasn’t the most discreet affair. He pleaded for a divorce, but Mrs. Cash said no. Carter vowed: “Vivian, he will be mine.” It took four more years.

During the tour, Charlie visited Patsy on weekends. According to Carter, he and Patsy were often at each other’s throats, especially if Patsy found him throwing her money away drinking or playing poker with the musicians.

Cash and Patsy had a brother/sister relationship, but neither that nor his relationship with Carter stopped him from trying to hit on her. In his autobiography he told of the night he had to check her out. “[I] knocked on her door. The response came back immediately: ‘Get away from my door, Cash!’ I did that, and never hit on her again. To her credit, she was still nice to me.”

Observed Cash, “Patsy could cuss like a sailor. I’d hate to have gotten in a fight with her, but she was kind to everybody who treated her right.... She had the heart of an angel to go with her voice.”

JR, as Patsy called Cash, wasn’t fond of Charlie’s disruptions, and Patsy sent him packing. But, remembered Carter, “every night they’d spend long periods on the phone, ending up arguing, trading insults, or accusing the other of something.”

Patsy couldn’t have been happier than in July 1962. She met her idol Elvis Presley again, this time in Memphis at a fundraiser for St. Jude Hospital, then in its fifth year of operation. When Patsy told Flynt she and Elvis were friends, Flynt doubted her. Flynt recalled, “So she picked up the phone and called Elvis. My heart was beating with excitement, which proved to be short-lived. He wasn’t home, but whomever she spoke to told her he’d call her.”