Patsy Cline

• Genre: Nashville Sound
• Hometown: Winchester

About

Patsy Cline was one of the greatest country singers of all time. She helped inspire and influence women musicians everywhere to stand up and be counted in the country and western music world above and beyond Nashville. Although her deeply romantic recordings and haunting voice can induce a chill up the spine, it was Cline's untimely death on March 5th, 1963 that helped create the kind of myth that can immortalize any country singer (see Hank Williams or Gram Parsons). Between 1955 and 1960, Cline recorded almost twenty singles. Out of these songs, only "Walkin' After Midnight" became a hit. After 1960 she stopped experimenting with Rockabilly and stiff ballads that better suited Kitty Wells and Brenda Lee. The fact that this time also marked a break with a binding publishing contract seemed to affect her singing greatly. Free of legal and artistic strife, Cline's vocals seemed to loosen up with confidence on songs she had longed to sing, such as "Crazy" and "I Fall to Pieces." The latter peaked at number one on the country charts and crossed over to fall in at number twelve on the pop charts. Cline was in line to continue recording Country Pop chart crossovers, until her untimely death in a plane crash at thirty-years-old: two years into the birth of her superstardom. The emotional playing and singing on her recordings has been emulated by and inspirational to everyone from Loretta Lynn and Willie Nelson to the Screaming Sirens and k.d. lang.

- Eric Shea