Honky Tonk Angel (28 page)

Jan Howard was part of another vital personal and career relationship with Patsy. She was born in West Plains, Missouri, seven months before Patsy. When she decided on a show business career, Jan headed for California, where she met songwriter and song plugger Harlan Howard.

He wrote songs and she did vocals for the demos that were circulated to artists and record producers. At thirty-two, he was riding high. His “Pick Me Up on Your Way Down”
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was a hit for Charlie Walker.

“Harlan and I hadn’t been married long when we decided Nashville was the place to be,” Jan commented. “I had a single on Challenge Records and was invited on the Opry. I wasn’t a fan-type person. I didn’t get too excited about many singers, but I enjoyed Patsy’s style.

“I was too shy to go up and say, ‘Hi, I’m Jan Howard.’ I was afraid she’d say, ‘Jan who? So what?’ The only time I’d hang around was when Patsy was on. I’d come early to see her or stay late. I’d watch her sing, then go change for my spot. Afterward, I gathered my things and went home. Some of the Opry folks were nice, some weren’t.

“One Saturday, I came offstage as Patsy arrived. I stood in the wings to hear her. She had on her trademark fringe cowgirl outfit, hat, and white boots. When she finished, I grabbed my things and, on my way out, went into the ladies’ room where we changed. There were a couple of small dressing rooms off the stage, but they were for the male artists and musicians. The girls rated last in those days. The restroom door swung open. In rushed Patsy with her hands on her hips. She was fit to be tied. I thought, ‘What a time to meet her!’ And then she exploded at me.”

Patsy went right up to Jan and shot, “You’re a conceited little son of a bitch!”

“What?” asked Jan, crushed.

“You heard me, stuck up! I’ve been watching you. You just go out there, do your spot, and leave without saying hello to anyone. You think you’re too good to talk to other folks around here? What do you have to be conceited about?”

Jan’s temper flared. “Now, you wait a minute there, lady. Let me tell you something! Before I ever moved here, from the time I heard your first record, I’ve been a great fan of yours. I love to hear you sing. I was only following some advice I was given.”

“Advice? What kind of goddamn advice?”

“A friend told me the best way to stay out of trouble around here is to do your spot and leave. Don’t hang around.”

“So that’s what I’ve been doing wrong,” Patsy exclaimed.

“And that’s what I should’ve done tonight! It would have been better, but I wanted to hear you sing. Back where I was raised, when a stranger comes to town it’s the job of the people there to make that person feel at home. Except for Jean Shepard, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and Ray Price, not a damn soul here’s made me feel welcome. Including you!”

“Goddamn it, now, Hoss. Hold on!”

“I’m not finished. You’re all a bunch of snobby bastards. I’m sorry I stayed.” Jan darted for the door.

“Whoa there, little dogie. Whoa!” Patsy grabbed her. “Slow down! Hoss, you’re all right. Anybody that’ll stand there and talk back to the Cline like that is all right.” Patsy laughed so hard, Jan’s red face cooled and she began laughing, too.

“Hi, Jan. I’m Patsy.”

“I know. Nice to meet you.”

“I can tell we’re gonna be friends!”

They were.

“Patsy was a fantastic person,” Jan reminisced. “That sounds so inane when I’m describing someone I absolutely thought the world of. I love honesty. I take people for what they are to me, not what they are to anybody else. Patsy was honest and blunt, and I admired that.”

Howard and his sometime writing partner, singer Hank Cochran, twenty-four, met in California. Cochran began writing in Greenville, Mississippi. “I’d done some recording on the West Coast,” he explained, “and, after we relocated to Nashville, I was trying to get it together. I wasn’t having any success. There was a place called Mom Upchurch’s on Boscobel Street, where us half-starving writers and musicians stayed.

“Roger Miller; Johnny Paycheck, who went under the name Donnie Young,
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George McCormick, who worked for Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper’s Clinch Mountain Clan; Shorty Lavender,
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Ray Price’s fiddler; and Darrell McCall, a Texan who played bass for Audrey Williams, Hank’s first wife, stayed there. All of us were going down the up staircase. I was making fifty dollars a week, sending half to California to my wife, Shirley, and the kids and trying to live on the other half. It was possible in those days. Mom’d let us board for ten dollars a week. I was twenty-five and figured I had lots of time.”

One night while Cochran was mulling over song ideas and his life’s situations, a title, “I Fall to Pieces,” came to mind. He called Howard, who told him to bring it over to his house the next morning.

“Hank arrived around breakfast,” Howard said, “and we had coffee. He had this song going and sang it with his guitar, ‘I fall to pieces, Each time I see you again.’ And that was about it. I told him, ‘Hey, I like that, and we started piddling around.”

“We wrote it,” recollected Cochran, “in one of our many down periods, and it was tinged with the right amount of, I guess you could say, hurt and despair.”

There are several versions of how “I Fall to Pieces” came to the attention of Bradley and Patsy.

Jan did a demo for the writers’ publisher, a small firm called Pamper Music in Goodlettsville, twenty miles north of town. The studio was a converted garage in back of the office.

“I loved the song,” Jan noted, “and wanted to record it. Harlan said fine. Not long after, he was floating on cloud nine telling me how he’d pitched it to Owen Bradley at Decca, who wanted it for Brenda Lee.”

Cochran explained he took the song to Bradley “after it had been turned down by a whole bunch of people.”

“When Hank played it for me, I liked it right away,” said Bradley. “But no one else did. Four artists had turned it down.”

He felt it was unique. Jan found Bradley’s intuition for a song even in demo form incredible. “He could hear simple chord structure and literally have it arranged and orchestrated in his head. He heard the end result before it was ever recorded.”

Then Lee, now established in pop, rejected it, feeling it was too country. Bradley called in a handsome Atlanta crooner, Roy Drusky, with two Decca top-10 country ballads that year, to hear the demo. Drusky decided against it. “Thanks a lot, Owen,” he said, “but it’s not for me.”

“Roy, it’s perfect for your voice,” the producer answered. “We can have a big hit.”

“I really like it. It’s a beauty, and I’m sure you’re right, but a man could never sing this. It’d kill him!”

As Bradley recalls, Patsy was either nearby or within hearing distance. Drusky remembers bumping into Patsy just outside the studio. She was stretched on a couch in a plaid shirt and jeans, talking to a friend.

Bradley became quite upset with Drusky. “Well, it is a hit!” he admonished. “You don’t want a hit?”

“Yeah, but it’s a girl’s song, Owen! You don’t hear a man saying, ‘I fall to pieces.’ It’s ridiculous.”

“That’s all right, then. I’ll get somebody else to record it. And it’s going to be number one.”

Patsy piped up, “Hell, if it ain’t a man’s song I’ll record it.”

Drusky says that, as he left, Patsy remarked, “Drusky, that’s a hit song you just let go, and I’m gonna get Owen to let me have it.”

Bradley called Patsy into his office. “Come here. There’s something I want you to hear.”

Patsy loved it, or so she claimed. Bradley was excited that he had found who he now realized was the perfect artist for the song. They set a session date.

But, according to Cochran, “Darrell McCall told me Patsy was directly on Decca now and looking for material. He took me out to Patsy and Charlie’s in Madison. We had a few drinks and I played ‘I Fall to Pieces.’ She said she wanted it. I don’t know if she even knew what the song was. She might have said yes because of those lean years with Four-Star. Now she was free to pick and choose and had a songwriter coming to her.”

“She wanted it,” Bradley said, “then, funny thing, didn’t like it.”

“Didn’t like it?” exclaimed Jan. “Let’s be more definite. Patsy hated it. She told me, ‘I hate that goddamn song,’ knowing full well I was Harlan’s wife. That didn’t stop her from speaking her mind. She said, ‘I’m never gonna sing that thing.’ As the session approached, there were some words flying between her and Owen.

“She liked the other side of the demo, ‘Lovin’ in Vain’ by Freddie Hart. I told her, ‘Oh, no, Patsy, that one’s mine!’ But when I took it to Joe Johnson [Challenge Records], he wouldn’t let me record it. I told Freddie, ‘Don’t you worry. I’m going to get you a record.’ And I took it back to Patsy and told her it was hers.”

Patsy left word with Bradley that she’d changed her mind and wouldn’t record “I Fall to Pieces.” She never told Cochran or Howard why, nor did she ask them to make revisions.

Charlie has stated, “The fact that it had been turned down by a lot of artists didn’t particularly tickle Patsy. She told me, ‘These people were already on major labels and had good records, and if they turned it down, why would I want it?”’

When they next met, Owen was blunt with Patsy. “New York says this is the sound the public wants. It’s the type of material that brings out your best. Sidney Goldberg says you’re only selling ten to fifteen thousand on each single.”

“What’s wrong with that? For a country female singer that’s great!”

“They feel you can do better. And if this doesn’t work, we can always go back.”

“What the hell do they think I am, a machine? I just got rid of one Hitler, and if they think that by advancing me a little money they can make me record what they want, well, they’ve got another thought coming. Owen, I won’t do it! I hate this song!”

“You said you liked it.”

“I didn’t want anything slipping by me.”

“Oh, so that’s your game. The song’s perfect.”

“Then you record it.”

They went one on one until November 16 at 2:30, “when, much against her will,” confirmed Cochran, Patsy, seven months pregnant, recorded “I Fall to Pieces.” “She and Owen argued quite a bit, but struck a deal. Patsy’d gone wild
over Freddie’s song. Owen said, ‘Okay, you cut ”I Fall to Pieces” and I’ll let you do “Lovin’ in Vain.’”

“Owen had ideas of his own that differed from the way we wrote the song. He knew what he was going for and kept at it until Patsy and everybody found it. The way he used the Jordanaires was wonderful. The end result is nothing like the demo we cut.”

Bradley’s concept wasn’t necessarily Patsy’s concept. “Patsy could drive me nuts,” claimed the producer. “No matter what I’d do, I couldn’t please her. She’d start in on me and then have Charlie bug me. She’d say, ‘Owen, I want to do it this way,’ or she’d send Charlie over if she was mad and not speaking, and he’d say, ‘Owen, Patsy thinks it ought to be done like this.’ I stuck to my guns.”

The session was done the old-fashioned way, with singer and musicians together live. Patsy sat in the middle of the studio on a stool with a microphone and music stand, with the Jordanaires on her left. The group was one of the most in-demand properties in town, often doing up to three sessions a day.

In the warmup, after Bradley worked with her repeatedly, Patsy drifted into doing “I Fall to Pieces” as she felt it. But the song wasn’t rockabilly or uptempo western swing. It was a poignant ballad requiring Patsy Cline the spellbinder and weaver of magic, not Patsy Cline the belter.

The Jordanaires’ Ray Walker asserted that “when Patsy got to the ending, she came up on the tag an octave and started doing it faster. Right in the middle of our ‘oooohs’ and ‘aaaahs,’ we stopped. Patsy wanted to know what was wrong. I asked, ‘Is that the way you’re ending it?’ She told me she felt safer belting the end instead of doing it as she and Owen worked it out. I said, ‘Patsy, you almost had me in tears, then you just let the clowns walk in.’”

They talked it over, and on the second try a very gutsy Patsy went for the poignancy inherent in the lyrics by singing in a lower register. When the time came to roll the tape, Bradley lowered the studio lights to set a mood.

Paul Kingsbury of the Country Music Foundation analyzed the proceedings: “‘I Fall to Pieces’ evolved as Bradley reworked the structure, starting with the rhythm section. From the plaintive chimes of Hank Garland’s [electric] guitar on the opening, the track sets a distinct mood—Garland’s echo-treated guitar cascading on the chorus, the Jordanaires hovering in the background like spirits of regret, Ben Keith’s steel [guitar] wafting in, Hargus “Pig” Robbins’s piano showering notes like so many teardrops, all propelled by an undeniably catchy shuffle rhythm. Above it all, Patsy’s voice floats, forlorn and inconsolable. It was a bravura performance by all.”

Personnel included Randy playing acoustic guitar; Owen’s brother Harold on six-string electric bass; Bob Moore, acoustic bass; and Doug Kirham, drums. Though Randy’s playing was adequate, it wasn’t considered good enough for recordings, and his mike was turned off.

The session also yielded “Shoes,” cowritten by Cochran, based on an idea of Velma Smith, wife of Pamper Music’s president, and “Lovin’ in Vain,” which gave Patsy the opportunity to cut loose “with the type of beat that’s kept me eating.”