Honky Tonk Angel (60 page)

As a child, Bill Peer had been kicked in the chest by a horse. Through the years doctors attributed the pain he experienced to that accident. But those closest to him knew better.

In later years, in a blunt father/son talk, Peer told his son that he had made a lot of mistakes and maybe Patsy was the biggest. “Dad never got over what Patsy did to him,” said Larry. “He reconciled himself to the fact that she didn’t love him, but what he could never forgive was her lack of recognition of what he strived to do for her. That was a worse pain than any kick in the chest.”

Equally upsetting was scuttlebutt Bill and Jenny heard about how he used Patsy to advance his career. “That was ridiculous,” snapped Jenny. “We’d been so close, great friends. We used to have Patsy and Gerald to our home. We loved Patsy, but I was no fool. Even a blind person could see how much Bill loved Patsy. Bill would have gone to the ends of this earth for her, and a couple of times he pretty well did. Look at the appreciation he got. She never ever mentioned his name. However, bitterness aside, Patsy’s death devastated all of us.”

As a result of his childhood accident, in the early 1960s Peer developed blood clots in his lungs. For relief, he’d “eat Rolaids like candy,” rub his chest, and, sometimes scaring folks, suddenly throw his arms in the air.

Patsy Peer was a three-time winner of the National Championship Country Music competition. When her father took her to Nashville in 1967 for demo recordings, they visited Charlie and his family.

“It seemed strange he’d go there,” maintained Larry, “because of so much that happened. But Charlie was working in the music business and maybe Dad thought he would help.”

On September 4, 1968, Bill Peer was admitted to Charles Town General Hospital for a hernia operation. Everything that could go wrong did. When the doctor was stitching the wound, he used methylate, some of which flowed into Peer’s privates. It was sponged and the wound rinsed, but the methylate caused swelling and incapacitated
him. Then Peer developed a clot in his leg. Larry visited his dad the morning of September 19. A few hours later, Peer was dead. The blood clot had passed into his lungs.

Peer was forty-eight. At his viewing, more than one thousand people signed the funeral home register. In his obituaries there was one sentence about his famous protégé: “It was while his band was playing in the Washington [Capitol] arena, that Miss Patsy Cline, who was a member of the Melody Boys and Girls band, began her climb up the ladder of success by being signed by the Jimmy Dean show for Saturday night appearances. ”

The bandleader and his daughter were set to make demo records in Nashville in October. “Once more, Dad was close to his dream, but came up short.”

Patsy Peer, saying it wasn’t the same without her father, abandoned her career dreams, married a minister, and sings in church.

With writing partner Lorene Allen, Loretta Lynn again mourned the loss of her “buddy” in 1972 with the poignant “I Miss You More Today (Than Yesterday).”

In her 1976 best-selling autobiography,
Coal Miner’s Daughter
, Lynn devoted a chapter to Patsy, recalling their last visit (February 21, 1963), when Patsy came over to hang new drapes. That night, Loretta and Mooney were summoned to Patsy and Charlie’s home, a visit she elaborated on in her book: “Patsy embroidered a tablecloth. . . . Randy was on a rocking horse, rocking very hard. I was worried that he’d fall off and get hurt, but Patsy said not to worry.” In the box of clothing Patsy gave Loretta “was a little red, sexy shorty nightgown. She told me, ‘This is the sexiest thing I’ve ever had. Red is the color men like.’”

She described the nightie as one “made out of two small Band-Aids, and one a little bigger”; but revealed she could never bring herself to wear it.

Loretta released
I Remember Patsy
in 1977, produced by Bradley, also her long-time producer; it included a seven-minute-plus track on which she reminisced about Patsy. The sessions weren’t easy for Loretta. “Memories of Patsy grew stronger within me,” she said. “I began crying . . . and the strangest feeling came over me. It was like Patsy herself was telling me how ashamed she was. . . . I felt she was talking to me—telling me to ‘go to it, girl’—and I sailed through without a hitch.’”

That year, old friends clashed when Loretta took umbrage to an interview in which Dottie called Patsy “a boozer and a cusser.” Defending Patsy, Loretta shot back, “She wasn’t like that.... Patsy came up rough, sort of jerked up by the hair ... but she never done anything any worse than anybody else, or as bad as most. . . . Patsy took a lot of my problems with her. I’m gonna go to mine with a lot of hers.”

Dottie was stunned. “Patsy was my idol, one my best friends. She loved life and was so full of love and a good-hearted person. She was a beer drinker and a cusser, which she got from coming up in a hard life, and didn’t care who knew it.”

Charlie and Dottie maintained a close friendship, and he even wrote three songs with her and Bill: “In It’s Own Little Way,” which Dottie recorded, “My Heart’s Daily Reminder,” and “What’s the World Coming To.” It’s been claimed she and Charlie had a fling (which she declined discussing).

In 1978 Loretta spoke of Patsy’s hold on her: “Some people will think I sound crazy, but I’ve had ESP all my life.” She added that while performing in Las Vegas
and experiencing dry throat, “I felt Patsy’s hand on my arm. . . . I could feel her saying, ‘Don’t you worry, Loretta, it’s gonna be fine.’ And it was.”

In 1963 Patsy’s first husband, Gerald Cline, married Sarah Louise Bayer, who gave birth to a daughter, Gina, in 1967. Gina now lives in the family home in Martinsburg, West Virginia. While Cline’s three earlier marriages seemed sealed with invisible glue, this one stuck. He settled down because Sarah, who knew his reputation, laid down rules; and because, finally, he’d found a woman he loved and who loved him. Well into the 1970s, Gerald was a driver of sixteen-wheel rigs, but he retired when diagnosed with heart ailments.

“He was a good father,” Gina remarked. “He wasn’t a hobby-oriented or lets-go-fishing person. We didn’t do a lot of things together. He just enjoyed doing stuff around the house. One thing he never did was carve, as his character is seen doing, making a boat, in
Sweet Dreams
. They interviewed him, but I don’t know where they got that from. I guess they had to have him doing something!”

Except for a photo of Gerald and Patsy on their wedding, Cline had no other souvenir of his most famous wife; and he never spoke of Patsy to his daughter. “He never shared any memories of that time,” Gina stated. “It was not a discussion we ever had. ”

Gerald died following a 1994 heart attack. He was sixty-nine. Though he and his son Ronnie had never been close, Ronnie did attend the funeral.

Dottie recorded several songs in the early 1960s that had been hits for Patsy, who always had high praise for Dottie’s vocal and songwriting talents.

Mrs. Hensley considered Dottie probably Patsy’s closest Nashville friend, and she was disappointed when she couldn’t make Patsy’s funeral and sing in her honor. “She always told me she wanted to visit Patsy’s grave,” explained Mrs. Hensley. “Finally in 1976, Dottie called and asked if I’d accompany her to the cemetery so she could lay some flowers. She said, ‘Be sure and look real nice.’ I asked if she was going to have pictures taken. She replied yes. I explained the only way I’d agree to go was if there were no pictures. She said she’d call me back, but I never heard another word. ”

Years later, Dottie confirmed the call. “I should have known better,” she admitted. “I wasn’t thinking. ”

In 1964 Dottie became the first country female to win a Grammy Award and went on to another thirteen nominations.

On January 6, 1969, a fire destroyed Dottie’s home. She came within a hair’s breath of being killed. Three things survived: her first engagement ring, a watch, and Patsy Cline’s scrapbook.

Dottie underwent a makeover in an effort to shake her country image. She had plastic surgery, wore tight-fitting and revealing costumes (some by Bob Mackie), and posed for a men’s magazine, which resulted in backlash from conservative fans.

She recovered to enjoy a second career with a number of top-selling duets with Kenny Rogers. She had numerous charted singles and albums and a massive
crossover 1973 hit with Billy Davis’s “Country Sunshine” (originally recorded for Coca-Cola commercials). That year, she and husband Bill West divorced. Dottie made TV appearances, was a frequent club headliner, and toured in the Broadway musical
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Dottie married twice more, with both marriages ending in divorce. Following lawsuits by two managers and a series of bad investments, Dottie borrowed heavily. At the time her bank was forclosing on her home, the IRS came after her for $1 million in back taxes. All but destitute, she filed for bankruptcy protection.

More trouble ensued when Dottie was found hiding belongings. The FBI entered, criminal charges followed, and an auction was held. Several friends donated purchased items back to her. Rogers gave her one of his cars. Charlie and Julie, worried that Patsy’s scrapbook would be sold, were given permission to rescue it.

Between 1990 and 1991, Dottie toured with her daughter Shelly, a rising country star. Dottie’s career was one of country music’s longest lasting. Her last record was in July 1991. That August she was badly injured when, en route to the Opry, her car stalled. An eighty-one-year-old neighbor offered her a lift. Approaching the exit at excessive speed, he lost control and the car soared eighty feet across the highway and into an enbankment.

Though badly injured, Dottie pulled the driver out and, as Patsy had done after her 1961 accident, insisted that he be taken to the hospital first. She suffered a ruptured spleen and lacerated liver. On September 4, 1991, during a third surgery attempt to stop the bleeding, she died.

President George H. W. Bush, a longtime fan for whom West had performed at the White House, expressed condolences during an appearance at that year’s CMA Awards. Her hometown, McMinnville, Tennessee, renamed Highway 56 the Dottie West Memorial Highway. She’s yet to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.