Honky Tonk Angel (38 page)

“Hey, we found it!” Patsy raved. “We’ve found us a knockout!”

The next day Patsy and Cochran went to Bradley’s studio and did it for him. He liked it right away.

“We’ll cut it next week,” Bradley decided.

It was a rare occasion. The very first time Patsy Cline
and
Owen Bradley agreed they’d found the perfect song for her B-flat voice.

At 7:00 P.M. on Sunday, December 17, Patsy recorded Cochran’s stirringly simple masterpiece. It was the perfect merging of singer and song. If “I Fall to Pieces” accomplished nothing else, it proved that it wouldn’t be the beat that would keep Patsy eating but poignant ballads.

“She was a hurt individual,” observed Lightnin’ Chance, “a great cut-up on the outside but hurting on the inside. Some of it went back to her childhood when her father deserted the family. We got into this minutely, talking in the back of those cars, going from date to date. The secret behind Patsy was how she lived every note and word of her songs. When we cut ‘A Church, a Courtroom and Then Good-bye,’ there was a line—it’s the only one I remember—that told how she hated the sight of that courtroom where man-made laws pushed God’s laws aside.
You could feel the hate and bitterness, her own experiences. Patsy had a story to tell, and nobody ever knew what it was. If there were parallels in her music, she had a way of identifying with them.”

The session ran three and a half hours, an unbelievable amount of time for one song and one-take Patsy. She did the song again and again. Everyone was thrown off a bit Finally Bradley, over the microphone from the control room, frantically said, “Okay. Go. Go. Go!” And Patsy got it. She was having problems. This time they weren’t physical but emotional. In fact, on doctor’s orders, Patsy shouldn’t have been in the studio at all.

Personnel on the recording include the Jordanaires; Floyd Cramer, piano; Bill Pursell, organ; Harold Bradley, electric bass; Bob Moore, bass; Randy Hughes, guitar, Walter Haynes, steel guitar; and Murrey “Buddy” Harmon, drums.

As Christmas approached, it appeared the Dicks had more to celebrate that year than at any other time. Patsy had back-to-back hits. “I Fall to Pieces” may have started slowly but it finished at the top.
Billboard
ranked it number 2 for the year among the top 100 pop singles. The house was decorated. There were gifts galore under the tree for Julie and little Randy. But it was far from a joyful occasion.

P
atsy Cline knew the feeling of pain on both sides of the microphone. The disillusionment and loneliness she sang of had become part of her life. She told some friends, including Dottie and Del Wood, “Charlie’s drinking his misery away and I’m working mine away. His hug is his beer in a frosted mug. And I lie in bed wanting and waiting.” On December 16, 1961, she was at home writing Christmas cards, which heralded under a bough of decorated ivy, “From the Four of Us.” Whatever the chain of events that occurred—an argument with Charlie, little Randy’s crying, Julie simply not listening when told something—it was devastating.

A bundle of frayed nerves, Patsy began shaking and crying uncontrollably. She went to the doctor, who informed her that she was in the throes of a nervous breakdown. As he’d done earlier to no avail, he warned that she was taking on too much responsibility and work during her recuperation. He prescribed medication and a long period of concentrated rest and relaxation.

That evening Dottie came to be with Patsy, who seemed to be in a daze. “Patsy, can I get you anything?” It took a moment before Patsy realized Dottie was in the room. “Hon, why didn’t you call me sooner?” Dottie said.

“Oh, Dottie. Thanks for coming. Sister, I didn’t even know. It just hit me.”

Dottie caressed Patsy. “Honey, I can’t believe it.”

“Well, it’s true. The doctor says I’ve had a nervous breakdown. I ain’t my old
self for sure. I feel like I’ve had the hell beat outa me. He says I gotta stay home and rest. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

“What?”

“Me, leading a normal life! Dottie, I gotta work. I have to keep this family together. The kids need new clothes and I—”

“Hon, all that can wait. Tell me what happened.”

“Blackouts. They just started. Last night I laid in bed shaking with the walls coming in at me. I got on my knees and prayed that God would let it pass.”

Patsy sat at her dressing table and removed her wig, revealing the cloth pressure band she wore around her head and the still highly visible scars from the auto accident. Dottie went to assist her and started to remove the headband.

“No. Leave it. It relieves the headaches. They’ve been so bad, all that helps is laying my head against the cold bathroom tiles.” Patsy stared in the mirror. “You can count the years on my face.”

“Oh, Patsy—”

“Sister, I ain’t lookin’ for pity.”

“And you won’t be getting any from me!”

There was always music at Patsy and Charlie’s house and the radio was playing softly in the background. “Crazy” came on.

“That’s your big one,” said Dottie softly.

“You know what? I still can’t stand it.”

“It’s made you the biggest crossover star in the business.”

“That don’t help when I’m laying in bed being ignored.”

“Charlie drinking again?”

“Yeah, but when did he stop? It’s funny, ain’t it?”

“What?”

“I’ve become a captive of my own ambition.”

That night, after Dottie left and Charlie was at work, Patsy sat at the dining room table and wrote Louise Seger in Houston a Christmas card:

Two nights later Patsy was in the recording studio.

Patsy always had her “buddies,” as she fondly called Dottie, Brenda, and Loretta, who now rallied around as she had often rallied around them. Along with Pearl and Roger Miller, they would gather to entertain her. There were daily gatherings of the “henhouse brigade” on Hillhurst Drive, where the women would sing, cook, clean, discuss their career ups and downs, and gossip.

“When I think back,” said Pearl Butler, “I can’t remember seeing Patsy sad. But she was a great person for hiding things—her feelings, her problems with Charlie. Patsy could laugh, kid around, and carry on as if nothing was the matter even if something was bothering her bad. Maybe she’d be crying on the inside. You wouldn’t know it, though. She never let that part of herself show.”

To others—often total strangers—she revealed everything. Louise Seger and Patsy had countless midnight long-distance phone “sessions,” in which, said Louise, they would discuss their most personal problems. “If I wanted to, I could crucify Mr. Charlie Dick! He didn’t always treat Patsy right.”

Did Patsy and Charlie have a sound marriage? Not by normal standards. “It was rocky solid,” said Del Wood. “Patsy was always saying, ‘I shoulda met the bastard sooner so I coulda left him sooner!’ But she could’ve never left Charlie. Fighting was a way of life and, if you dared say anything negative about either, there’d be hell to pay. If ever any two people needed each other, it was them.”

“Every time I saw Patsy and asked how things were,” reported Jimmy Dean, “she’d say, ‘I’m leaving that no-good bastard!’ But she didn’t. Maybe her name was most misleading. She wasn’t anyone’s patsy—with the exception of Charlie. They were stormy as thunderclaps and all in love. He’d slap her. She’d go crying to friends about what a brute he was. Then, in two flashes of a duck’s tail, they were back lovie-dovie as all get out till the next time.”

Faron Young recalls, “She’d explode, ‘Get the fuck outa here. You’re just in everybody’s goddamn way. I don’t need you here. You’re nothing but a tax write-off.’ He’d be waiting for her when she got home and they’d run into each other’s arms. Figure it out! Beats the shit outa me.”

Did Patsy ever say she loved Charlie? “I don’t know that she ever did. She told me she hated him. But sometimes hate can be love in an insane sorta way. She used to say, ‘Charlie’s favorite pastime is making me feel blue, but this is the last time I’ll cry over him.’ It was
always
the last time.”

“I never saw Patsy bruised, beaten or upset, or heard Charlie berate her,” said Pearl. “He may have been the strongest man in the world, but if he ever took a notion to hit Patsy, I imagine he lived to regret it. But I heard things, and got curious enough to make some serious girl talk. Patsy told me they were in love, and after that I knew better than to utter a peep!”

Teddy Wilburn reported, “She’d do something he didn’t like, and he’d take retaliation. They’d call each other names and break each other up and down the wall. They’d put each other down, then turn around and pick each other up. I used to think, ‘What are these two doing married?’ But they had something. Had to!”

“Patsy and Charlie were so in love,” said Dottie, “especially for two who could be at such odds. Sometimes Charlie forgot that above all else Patsy wanted and needed stardom. Maybe Patsy expected a little too much from him. Maybe he wanted too much from her. Their marriage was a roller coaster ride—up and down, off track and on.

“Patsy was the one who changed. Charlie was
still
good ole Charlie. She’d say, ‘I want to get rid of him’ but couldn’t live without him. It made me sad to see
Charlie drink too much. He became a different person. They’d end up hurting each other. Both had healthy tempers and it could get dangerous being around them.”

Hank Cochran laughed that Patsy and Charlie could have been a number one song—with a bullet. “They were the most amazingly in love persons I knew. But I saw Patsy knock hell out of Charlie with a damn iron and anything else she could get her hands on. They’d go a few rounds and she’d have Charlie arrested and thrown in the drunk tank. Then Patsy’d call everyone in town and tell them about it. And first thing the next day she’d go down to get him out.”

Charlie doesn’t deny he and Patsy had fights. “When we went at it and a stranger walked in, he may have thought we were going for the shotguns. But when we finished, we didn’t go around carrying chips on our shoulders. They were forgotten.”

He pointed out that Patsy only had him arrested once, that he only hit Patsy “once or twice,” and that he never hit her with enough impact to throw her to the floor (as depicted in the biographical film
Sweet Dreams
)
.

Friends claim it was heartbreak that drove Patsy to work so hard after the accident Others said she never got the type of support she needed from Charlie. He refutes this. “I don’t know what more I could’ve done! I gave up my job to be with Patsy on the road and to help with the kids.”

Young said that stardom affected Patsy and Charlie’s marriage. “Where he used to say, ‘Patsy, go get me a beer’ or ‘Fix me something to eat,’ she now turned right around and put the fire to his ass.”

Observed Pearl, “Patsy was career-minded, though. Driven. She’d say she wasn’t gonna let another baby stand in the way of her doing personal appearances, TV and so on. She said she had two and that was enough. Patsy was gonna have the operation so she wouldn’t have any more. Charlie loved her enough that he wouldn’t let her do it. He went and had it done himsetf.
²⁹
Don’t that prove something?

“Now, nothing meant more to Patsy than her kids. She was always thinking of their future. It almost killed her, leaving those young‘uns at home. On the road, Patsy’d make Carl pull over whenever she saw a phone. She’d say, ‘I’ve got to call my babies and go to the bathroom—in that order!’ ”

“Her boisterousness and you-think-I-give-a-goddamn come-on was a coverup for a heart as big as the world and as soft as jelly,” said Lightnin’ Chance. “But Patsy could be meaner than hell, and I’m not just blowing smoke. Sometimes that boy deserved a crown!”

Patsy was once a woman in search of a dream. When that dream became reality, neither she nor Charlie could handle it. Suddenly the girl he was so in love with and sharing every intimate thought with was the center of everyone’s attention. There was little private life with the phone ringing incessantly: people wanting Patsy here, there, everywhere; recording sessions; writers wanting to audition songs; personal appearances; promotions; photo shoots; interviews; and working on this deal to get to the next. Charlie no longer played a dominant role. He was no longer number one.

Stardom, whether the husband’s or the wife’s, can be devastating to a marriage.