About me: Old School Fifties and country fans are all welcome. if there is anything you would like to know about Patsy Cline please email me with any questions only involving Patsy Cline.
Thanks.
Who I'd like to meet: As the 1960s and early 70s moved on, MCA (new owner of Cline’s former label, "Decca") continued to issue Patsy Cline albums, so that Cline has had several posthumous hits. Her Greatest Hit album continues to appear on the Country Music charts to this day. It held the record as being the album to stay on the Country Charts the longest, until Garth Brooks surpassed it in the 1990s. However, it still holds the record for an album by a female artist.
In 1973, Cline was elected to The Country Music Hall of Fame along with guitarist/RCA producer Chet Atkins, making her the first female solo artist in Country Music history to receive that honor. Along with the standard induction bronze plaque, the Hall houses a few of Cline's stage outfits, letters to her fan club president, and personal effects recovered from the crash site, including her "Dixie" cigarette lighter.
By the late 70s, Cline’s name occasionally appeared in magazine articles and television interviews by her friends, namely Dottie West and Loretta Lynn, who credited her with inspiration. It was encounters with MCA/Decca recording star Loretta Lynn by MCA manager of artist relations Ellis Nassour that led to a series of magazine profiles and two biographies with interviews with Patsy's mother Hilda Hensley, her husbands, intimate friends and peers such as Dottie West, Brenda Lee and Faron Young. Loretta Lynn published her biography, “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, which featured a chapter dedicated to her friendship with Cline. Lynn’s biopic of the same name followed and featured actress Beverly D'Angelo, (who used her own voice) as Cline. Public interest in Patsy Cline began to increase.
In the months leading up to her death, Cline confided in her closest friends, June Carter and in great detail, in Nassour's Cline biography, by Dottie West, that she felt a sense of impending doom and suspected that she was not going to live much longer[citation needed]. On March 3, 1963, Patsy performed for the last time at a benefit show in Kansas City, Missouri for the family of a disc jockey, Cactus Jack Call, who had recently died. Also performing on the show were George Jones, George Riddle and The Jones Boys, Billy Walker, Dottie West, Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper,and George McCormick and the Clinch Mountain Clan. Afterwards, Patsy boarded a private plane bound for Nashville, flown by her manager Randy Hughes, along with Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins. After stopping to refuel in Dyersburg, Tennessee, the plane took off at 6:07 pm. According to revelations by the airfield manager in the Nassour biography, he suggested that they stay the night after advising of high winds and inclement weather on the flight path, but Hughes responded, "I've already come this far. We'll be there before you know it." Unfortunately, they never made it to Nashville. The plane flew into severe weather and crashed at 6:20 p.m. (according to Patsy's wrist watch) in a forest just outside of Camden, Tennessee, only 90 miles from the destination. There were no survivors. Patsy Cline was 30 years old.[2]
Nashville was in shock over the losses. Thousands attended Patsy Cline's memorial service. Hours later, news that singer Jack Anglin had died on the way to her service surfaced, and the Opry mounted a special tribute show to honor the victims. (March, 1963 would prove to be the grimmest month in Opry history, ending with the death of former Opry star Texas Ruby, one of Cline's early influences, in a fire on March 29, bringing the total of Opry star deaths in one month to five.)
Three songs became hits after Cline's death: "Sweet Dreams", "Leavin' On Your Mind" and "Faded Love". She was buried in her hometown of Winchester, Virginia where a bell tower, erected in her memory, plays hymns daily at 6:00 p.m., the hour of her death. Her mother had her grave marked with a simple bronze plaque, which reads: "Death Cannot Kill What Never Dies: Love". A memorial marks the place where the plane crashed outside of Camden, Tennessee.
While Cline's life may have ended, her fan following did not. In fact, her life and career have acquired almost iconic status, so that she has become a rather greater and more widely-admired star in death than she was in life.
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