Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain

by Grand Ole Opry

  Her recorded performances have stunned listeners for decade after decade. You can hear her breathe, cry, and ache on her discs. You can feel her emotions in the anguished tension-and-release of her vocal phrasing. The little heart-tugging “cry” in her delivery remains vividly affecting. Patsy’s performances include dramatic volume control, stretched-note effects, sobs, pauses, and a distinctive way of holding back, then bursting into full-throated exclamation.

  “Patsy Cline has an extraordinary voice,” says Grand Ole Opry star Emmylou Harris, who revived “Sweet Dreams” in 1976. “I mean, there’s nobody that sounds even remotely like her. I’m very drawn to her. She has a voice that is in touch with emotion. And you put that together with those great straightforward songs that country music is so known for, it is an unbeatable combination. Because, ultimately, music is supposed to touch you where you live. Basically, we want somebody to shake us up inside our hearts, and she certainly had the voice to do that.”

  “There was nobody who could ever touch Patsy Cline’s voice,” says Opry star Loretta Lynn. “She could sing it country. She could sing it pop. She could yodel. She could do anything with her voice she wanted to, and do it to perfection. I just admired this girl so much. When she walked out on that stage, she had everybody’s attention. It was like, ‘I demand respect.’ I’ve never seen nobody like that afore her or after her. The people just loved her. I’ve seen her get three standing ovations. It was really something. She demanded respect, and she got it. How she done it, don’t ask me.”

  “I was a fan of Patsy Cline long before I ever came to Nashville,” says the Opry’s Jan Howard. “Her voice just stood out all by itself, far and above any others I’d heard. . . . Her voice will live forever. Her recordings are timeless.”

  Patsy was born Virginia Patterson Hensley in the mountains of Virginia on September 8, 1932. Mother Hilda Hensley was only sixteen when she had her first daughter and throughout Patsy’s life was almost more like a sister to her than a mother. The family moved nineteen times while the little girl was growing up. As she neared puberty, her father began to sexually molest her. Shortly after the family moved to Winchester, in 1948, he left the family, which now included a younger brother and sister, and Patsy dropped out of high school.

  She was obsessed with the Grand Ole Opry radio broadcasts she heard from Nashville. Even as a kid, it was her ambition to one day join the show’s cast. In 1948, she wrote to WSM, requesting an audition, and talked her way into a singing job at her local radio station, WINC. In 1952, she joined Bill Peer’s band, a fairly well-known regional attraction. The bandleader changed her name from Virginia to Patsy, derived from her middle name, Patterson. In 1953, she married Gerald Cline, but this event had no effect on her ambition. Later that year, she traveled to Nashville to sing on Ernest Tubb’s Midnite Jamboree radio show on WSM. The following year, she signed a recording contract.

  Armed with “A Church, a Courtroom and Then Goodbye” as her debut single, she got a guest spot on the Opry in 1955. Later that year, she joined the cast of the Washington, D.C., television show Town and Country Time. She used this as a stepping stone to Arthur Godfrey’s nationally telecast Talent Scouts program, which was then one of the most popular shows on network TV. In January 1957, she triumphed on the show, singing the bluesy “Walkin’ After Midnight” and the Hank Williams standard “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”

  “Walkin’ After Midnight” became her first national hit. She divorced Gerald Cline in 1957 and married Charlie Dick seven months later. Their relationship was depicted in the 1985 film Sweet Dreams, costarring Jessica Lange and Ed Harris as the tempestuous lovers.

  Patsy finished 1957 by winning Billboard magazine’s Most Promising Female Country Artist award, Cash Box magazine’s Most Promising Female Country Vocalist award, and Country & Western Jamboree magazine’s Best New Singer honor. Daughter Julie was born in 1958, and the family moved to Nashville the following year. On January 9, 1960, Patsy Cline fulfilled her childhood dream by becoming a member of the Grand Ole Opry cast. With her saucy manner, salty language, blazing red lipstick, and tight, sexy clothes, Patsy Cline was quite a departure from the show’s demure, “country sweetheart” expectations.

  “When I came to Nashville, I wanted so much to meet her,” recalls Jan Howard. “But I was very, very shy. Seems unbelievable, but I really was. I would go to the Opry, and I would do my spot. And then I’d leave. Because I didn’t want to bug anybody. Sometimes I’d hang around backstage to hear certain ones, and always if Patsy was on. But I had never met her. We changed clothes in the ladies’ restroom [at the Ryman Auditorium]. That was our dressing room. I remember one night Patsy was on, and she had on a fringed cowgirl outfit, with the boots. I did my spot. Then I went to the side of the stage and stood until Patsy sang. And then I went in to change clothes.

  “All of a sudden the door flew open and in walked Patsy. She stood there with her hands on her hips and she said, ‘Well, you’re a conceited little thing.’ Only she didn’t say, ‘thing.’ And I said, ‘Uh, what?’ And she said, ‘Well, you just waltz in here and do your spot and leave. You don’t say hello, kiss my—foot—or anything else to anybody.’ Only she didn’t say, ‘foot.’ I said, ‘Now wait just a minute!’ That’s when my Irish and Indian temper came up. I said, ‘You know, where I’m from, it’s the people who live there that’s supposed to make the newcomer feel welcome. And there isn’t anybody who’s made me feel welcome here.’ She laughed, and she said, ‘You’re all right, honey. Anybody that’ll talk back to The Cline is all right. So we’re gonna be good friends.’ And we were. We were good friends.” Jan recorded the original demo versions of “I Fall to Pieces” and other tunes written or cowritten by her then-husband Harlan Howard so that Patsy could learn them.

  “I’m a very straightforward person,” says the Opry’s Jean Shepard. “I’ll tell you exactly what I think. Patsy was pretty much that way, yeah, she really was. I got along great with Patsy. I admire anybody who tells it like it is.”

  “Patsy was funny, too,” adds widower Charlie Dick. “We had a ball. We enjoyed life. It was Christmas every day. I partied a hell of a lot. Patsy and I, we didn’t hold anything back. If we had something to say to each other, we said it.”

  “Patsy was someone that I saw on TV,” recalls Loretta Lynn, “and I really wanted to meet her when I came to Nashville. We were together for only two years. She was just one year older than I was, but she was like my sister, my mother, my friend. I mean, she was all this to me. She meant so much to me.”

  “Did I like Patsy Cline?” asks former WSM broadcaster Ralph Emery. “Yes. Patsy and I were the same age. She did some things that annoyed me, because I tried to interview her a number of times, and I would catch her at the end of her evening when she’d been out partying. She would be with Charlie and some friends, and they’d come in and, wouldn’t be drunk, just be happy, really happy. If I asked a question, I didn’t get a straight answer, and they would punch each other with their elbows and say, ‘Ha, ha, ha.’ So that annoyed me.

  “Except one night she came up to the station, and I wish I’d had the presence of mind to roll the tape. I got to go one-on-one with her, and I remember it was great. That was the interview I had been after for a long time. But, yeah, I liked her. I found Patsy to be down to earth and very open.

  “I felt sorry for her. I remember one night we were down at the old Methodist film studio, and Faron Young was making some sort of military-recruiting show. Hubert Long had put the talent together, so Patsy, who was getting some bookings through Hubert, came in. I guess she was gonna be a guest. But she was really down. This was before ‘I Fall to Pieces.’ She’d been in Nashville I guess for about a year, and she couldn’t seem to make anything happen. I think Patsy knew she could sing. And, boy, could she. So she was frustrated.”

  She waited for the follow-up hit to “Walkin’ After Midnight” for three long years. In late 1960, Patsy recorded “I Fall to Pieces,” which became a smash in ear
ly 1961. It was around this time that producer Owen Bradley began surrounding the star with the cushioning voices of The Jordanaires quartet, adding strings to her sessions, creating zephyr-soft arrangements, recording in stereo, and pushing Patsy to sing torch songs and ballads. As a result, she became the ultimate female singer in the style that became known as the Nashville Sound.

  The follow-up to “I Fall to Pieces” was the classic “Crazy.” As a result, Patsy Cline was named Billboard’s Favorite Female Country Artist of 1961.

  Son Randy was born in early 1961, but Patsy’s personal and professional momentum were both stopped cold that spring, when she was nearly killed in a car accident in Nashville. She suffered a dislocated hip, a fractured arm, multiple contusions, and a horrible gash that began at her right eyebrow, ran across the bridge of her nose, extended across her left brow, and ended at the top of her skull. She spent a month in the hospital in traction.

  Wearing the heavy, scar-hiding pancake makeup that she used for the rest of her life, Patsy returned to the Opry stage in a wheelchair, and then on crutches. By July, she was back out on the road, notably at a Cimarron Ballroom show in Tulsa that became a posthumous live CD.

  “She was beat up pretty bad,” recalls the Cimarron’s then-manager Peck Allen, “and she was on crutches, and she couldn’t stand up to sing. So I got her a stool to sit on. Of course she still had large scars on her face, but she could sing. . . . She just put on a great show. I’ve never had a show in there that was any better. She shut the house down. It was a great night.”

  In November 1961, she costarred at an Opry show staged at New York’s prestigious Carnegie Hall. The following summer, she was cobilled with Johnny Cash at the Hollywood Bowl. Next, she conquered Las Vegas with a monthlong engagement at The Mint casino. She was going where no woman in country music had ever gone before.

  In the wake of the aching “She’s Got You,” “When I Get Through with You,” “Imagine That,” and “So Wrong,” Patsy won Billboard’s Favorite Country Female Artist of 1962, plus Music Reporter’s 1962 Star of the Year award. “Leavin’ on Your Mind” was in the can and poised to become her next top-ten hit in the new year.

  She bought her suburban dream home and proudly showed it off to such girlfriends as Loretta Lynn, Brenda Lee, and Dottie West. She loaned money to Dottie and Loretta and shared her deepest emotions with them, as well as with Jan Howard, Del Wood, and June Carter. She doted on child stars Brenda Lee and Barbara Mandrell. Several of these close friends reported that the superstar had premonitions of her death. Patsy gave her career scrapbook to Dottie, saying that she’d never live to see thirty. She dictated her funeral wishes to June when the two were traveling between shows in California.

  “She said, ‘I’m gonna go out, and I’m gonna go out really fast,’” June recalled. “She’d said that to me before, and every time she did, I’d say, ‘Just shut up. Don’t be that way.’ But for some reason, I wrote it down.” There was one other such premonition. After she finished what turned out to be her final recording session, she uncharacteristically called Jan and Dottie to her side.

  “I never would attend a recording session unless I was invited, because I always felt that that was business,” says Jan. “I know that when I recorded, it bugged me when a lot of people were there. But Patsy called me and said, ‘Are you coming to the session tonight?’ I said, ‘Well, I hadn’t planned to.’ She said, ‘Well, I’d like for you to be there.’ Several people were there. Dottie West was there. When Patsy sang, she literally lived a song. We went up to Owen Bradley’s office after the session, and all of us were sitting around listening to the playbacks. She was so happy. She was so proud.

  “‘Sweet Dreams’—Who can listen to that without getting cold chills? ‘Faded Love’ is another. . . . I was in awe of Patsy. You know, afterward you’re supposed to say something nice. I couldn’t talk. I was dumbfounded.

  “Suddenly, she got up and went into the adjoining office and brought out a record of ‘A Church, a Courtroom and Then Goodbye.’ That was her first record. And she said, ‘Well, here it is, the first and the last.’ I said, ‘Don’t say that!’ She said, ‘Don’t get in an uproar. I just meant the first recording and the most recent recording.’ But it was the last. I think that was the last time I saw her.” It was February 7, 1963, the conclusion of four days of recording that included such breathtaking performances as “Always” and “He Called Me Baby” as well as “Faded Love” and “Sweet Dreams.”

  During the next few weeks, Patsy performed concerts in Ohio, Louisiana, and Alabama. Following her Saturday, March 2, show in Birmingham, she flew back to Nashville with Randy, dropped husband Charlie off, and picked up Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins to head for the Sunday benefit show in Kansas City.

  “We were together all day on Thursday, and she made curtains for my house,” Loretta remembers. “I didn’t have any furniture for my livin’ room, and she was gonna buy me somethin’ for my livin’ room. I was so excited. She was givin’ me $50, and she knew I needed it. She said, ‘Oh gal, me ’n’ you will always stick together.’ I was goin’ to go with her [to Kansas City], and in the meantime, there was a place in Memphis that offered me $75 to come and work four shows. Patsy told me to go and get the $75. We were going to go shopping together after she got back home.”

  The Kansas City show included a number of other Grand Ole Opry greats. But Patsy Cline, thirty, was indisputably the biggest star.

  “She did close the show,” said Dottie West. “She was the star. I walked out and watched. . . . And I will never forget that white chiffon dress. As I watched her, I thought, ‘My God. She sings like an angel, and she looks like one.’ She was in this draped chiffon dress, and she was just beautiful.” Backstage, country fan Mildred Keith took the last known photo of Patsy Cline, wearing that white dress that Dottie recalled so clearly.

  On Monday, March 4, the weather was so bad that no planes could take off. Dottie tried to talk Patsy into driving back to Nashville with her.

  “The last thing I said to her was, ‘I’m really going to be worried about you flying in this weather.’ She said, ‘Don’t worry ’bout me, hoss, when it’s my time to go, it’s my time.’” After waiting a day in Kansas City, Randy Hughes decided to fly on March 5.

  “The night that she died, all durin’ the night the wind blew,” remembers Loretta Lynn. “I would wake up, and it would be soundin’ like Patsy singin’ ‘Sweet Dreams’ in the wind.

  “The next morning, when I got up, my husband went off to work. I laid my hand on the telephone. I was gonna call Patsy up, and I was gonna say, ‘Patsy, you get your lazy butt up and let’s go shoppin’. It was weird that it happened like this, but just as I touched the phone, it rang. The people that were bookin’ me said, ‘Uh, Loretta, are you listenin’ to the radio?’ I said, ‘No. Me and Patsy’s goin’ shoppin’. Who wants to listen to the radio right now?’ She said, ‘Loretta, turn your radio on. Patsy died in a crash last night.’ My husband came walkin’ through the door about that time. He’d heard it, and he’d started back to the house. And nobody could make me believe this. It was like a dream for a while, you know?”

  As she’d specified to June Carter, Patsy Cline’s remains were brought to her dream home for the visitation. June arranged for heaps of food to be brought and took the children to her house while mourners gathered.

  “I was sittin’ in the front room where her coffin was,” Loretta recalls. “Her picture was sittin’ on the floor, right by the coffin. I was by myself. Everybody else was in the kitchen. I looked over at Patsy and said, ‘Gee. I’m cold,’ mentally, in my mind. Patsy says, ‘Well get up and turn the damn heat on,’ just like that. I got up and turned the heat up and sat back down. All of a sudden, I thought, ‘How could that have been Patsy? She’s not here.’ But I heard it.”

  A prayer service was held in Nashville for Patsy on Thursday afternoon, March 7. As it was concluding, there was a commotion as word spread among the mourners that Jack Angli
n of the Opry duo Johnny & Jack had been killed in a car wreck while en route to the service. Singing partner Johnny Wright and Johnny’s wife Kitty Wells were given the news at the funeral home.

  JOHNNY, BORN ON MAY 13, 1914, and Jack, born on May 13, 1916, were native Tennesseans who shared a birthday. The men teamed up in 1938, the same year that Jack married Johnny’s sister Louise. The duo failed three Opry auditions before their temporary breakup, while Jack served in the army during World War II. Johnny & Jack finally became members of the Grand Ole Opry in 1947. Kitty was the “girl singer” in their show, who planned to retire until “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” catapulted her to stardom in 1952.

  Meanwhile, Johnny & Jack scored plenty of hits of their own, including “Poison Love” (1951), “Cryin’ Heart Blues” (1951), “Three Ways of Knowing” (1952), “(Oh Baby Mine) I Get So Lonely” (1954), and “Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight” (1954). Johnny & Jack also originated the country chestnut “Ashes of Love” (1951), which later became a big hit for Dickey Lee (1972) and The Desert Rose Band (1987). The duo’s hit streak extended with such later successes as “Stop the World (And Let Me Off)” (1958) and “Slow Poison” (1962).

  After Jack’s tragic death at age forty-six, Johnny Wright continued to tour with Kitty and their children. In 1965, he scored a number-one solo hit with the topical “Hello Vietnam.”

  Now numb with grief, the Opry community soldiered onward in that grim month of March, 1963. While Patsy’s body headed home to Virginia for burial, a joint funeral service was held on Friday morning, March 8, for Cowboy Copas and his son-in-law, Randy Hughes. A service for Hawkshaw Hawkins was held on Friday afternoon. Jack Anglin’s funeral was on Saturday, March 9.