Honky Tonk Angel (42 page)

That Monday night, Dottie’s phone rang. It was Patsy calling to say that she and Charlie had had a violent argument. “She sounded terribly frightened,” Dottie said, “so I offered to come over and spend the night. When I got there I figured, as usual, everything would be all right. It wasn’t.” When she arrived, she and Patsy hugged. “Honey, you’re shivering,” said Dottie. “What in the world’s wrong? Patsy? Patsy, what happened? Where’s Charlie?”

“He’s gone out for the evening,
and
that son of a bitch won’t ever be coming back in this house!”

“Patsy, look at me. Are the children okay?”

“Oh, yeah. He’s a damn dick but he wouldn’t dare do anything to them. He knows I’d kill him!”

Dottie calmed Patsy down. “Now, honey, what happened? Where’s Charlie?” “He was drinking heavily and started pushing me around in front of the kids. I called the police and had him arrested.”

“Oh, Patsy. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not! Speaking of drinks, Sister, let’s pour one!”

“Should you?”

“Best medicine in the world.”

“I’d love to, but Bill’ll be home any minute looking for his supper.”

“Let him look! It’s amazing what they find when they’re good and hungry. Maybe it’ll make him appreciate you a little more.”

They went to the music room. Patsy put the glasses and ice on the bar and Dottie started to pour. Patsy grabbed the bottle.

“Whoa, hon! That’s too much!”

“I want a drink, not a swallow! Here’s to those who wish us well and those who don’t can go to hell! Sister, it seems all I do is lose. It’s like I just fell off the turnip truck! Every time I try to make this marriage right, it gets worse. And I get burned!”

“Patsy, why do you always blame yourself?”

“You’re right Why can’t I find the love I sing about in my songs? Girl, our men don’t understand and don’t wanna. Men are men and, no matter how hard you try, you can’t make gods of ’em. I can never forgive Daddy or Charlie for not being gods. Yeah! We’re in this on our own. It’s really hard out there for us girls. The amount of damn work you do and still have nothing to show for it. We work, work, work, and still we’re not accepted like the goddamn men.”

“The men sure have it easier,” Dottie agreed.

“And they lord it all over us! It’s bad enough for a girl trying to make it, but it’s really difficult when the girl’s married.”

“To someone in or out of the business.”

“That’s the honest-to-God truth, Hoss. Don’t matter what we do, we ain’t nothing but sex to them.”

Patsy got up and mixed another round of drinks. She pulled down two bulging scrapbooks that she and Dottie had been constantly compiling with articles about Patsy, her chart listings, sheet music of her songs, the Decca trade ads, Trudy Stamper’s WSM newsletter, and photos of Patsy with Husky, Young, and Elvis. Patsy loved Elvis and kept “my special portrait” inside the back cover. It was a huge picture from a magazine. She told Dottie, “Here’s another great one—Danny Thomas, Ann-Margret, Jane Russell, Bob Hope,
and
Elvis at this Memphis fundraiser for St. Jude Hospital. It was one of the greatest moments in my life.”

Patsy and Dottie thumbed through the pages. Dottie had a good laugh. “I’ve never seen this clipping!”

“Which one? Oh, my goodness. That!” Patsy cracked up laughing. “‘Patsy Cline Is Back in a Big Way.’ I shoulda called that newspaper. I wasn’t even pregnant! I’d just gone back to the Opry after the car wreck.”

“It says, ‘You can’t keep a star away from those hit records.’”

“That’s the truth, which you’ll soon find out now that you’re signed to RCA. I’m so proud of you, Sister!”

“I owe you a lot. You’ve brought me a long way!”

“Naw. You done it! You’ve pushed and shoved and stayed with it”

“You showed me how.”

“Yeah, and now here I am wondering if it was worth the pushing and shoving I had to go through.”

They came to a photo of Patsy and Jimmy Dean on the “Jamboree.” “Jimmy was a taskmaster,” Patsy declared, “but we had some fun. And that’s where I got my feet wet and learned about TV.”

Dottie pulled out a 1957 article from the Winchester
Evening Star
about Patsy on “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts.”

“That show was responsible for really putting the Cline on the map!” Patsy noted. She pulled clippings of
Billboard
’s chart listings. “‘I Fall to Pieces’ made it to number one on the country charts, but remember that song ‘Michael (Row Your Boat Ashore)’ by the Highwaymen? That kept me out of the top ten. But, here’s the week it got to number twelve. Enough about the Cline.”

“I enjoy it. It makes me happy to see you happy. I’d rather see you laughing than crying.”

“How’re things with you? Bill staying busy?”

“We’re keeping our heads above water.”

“You need to do some more writing.”

“I am, Patsy. I’m working up a new song now.”

“Great. Then take it right into the studio.” Patsy got up. “Hoss, excuse me a second. I’ve got to go to the ‘conversation piece (as she called the upstairs bath speckled with gold).’”

Patsy went upstairs into the dark living room to the picture window that looked onto the lawn. She pulled back the drapes and peered into the early morning darkness. A strange mood overcame her. She felt alone and helpless. During her hospitalization, she told Dottie, “If there’s only one effect nighttime can have on you, it’s to make you feel more helpless and cut off from everyone—those you love—than you really are.”

Tonight, as she stared into the void, she understood those words more than ever. What all she had sacrificed to fill those scrapbooks! She was a star with fancy furs, expensive cars, and her dream house. She had adulation, thunderous applause. But now there was nothing except her children.

Patsy went to her bedroom, got some paper, and began writing. She then folded the paper into her hand and returned downstairs, where Dottie had put one of her records, “Honky Tonk Merry-Go-Round,” on the hi-fi.

On the stairs, she paused for a moment as a slight feeling of uneasiness came over her. It was a fleeting glimpse, a vague, distant, very far-off perception that something wasn’t right.

“Patsy, are you okay?” inquired Dottie. “You look so pale.”

“It’s nothing, Hoss. I’m fine.”

“I thought I’d play something to brighten our mood.”

“We could use that!” Patsy picked up the scrapbooks. “Dottie, I want you to have these—”

“Oh, Patsy, I couldn’t. They’re your memories.”

“I’ll remember ‘em the way I wanna. I want you to have ’em and keep ’em for me.”

“I just couldn’t.”

“You gonna argue with the Cline? Anyway, they ain’t gonna do me no good, ’cause I’ll never live to see thirty—”

“My God, Patsy! Don’t talk like that”

“It’s the truth.”

“Patsy, I just put some music on to lift our spirits, and now you’re talking like this! Let’s change the subject”

“We can if you’ll take ’em.”

“Okay, Sister, I’ll keep them for you. You know where they’ll be.”

“Thanks, Hoss.”

“I’ll keep them for your grandchildren—”

“Grandchildren? Imagine the Cline a grandma! Thank God for the young’uns. They’re my hope, the only things that matter. They’re what keep me going.”

“The kids are compensation, but I wish we had more.”

“Tell me about it! When I hit the road, they know I’m gonna be gone a while. It tears my heart out when Julie starts crying and pulls on my dress. She says, ‘Please, Mommy, let me come with you. Please, Mommy, don’t leave me. Please, Mommy, I’ll miss you.’”

“And each one of those ‘Please, Mommies’ is a stab in the heart.”

“You know, it’s nearly daylight?”

“No! I’ve got to go. You’ll be okay?”

“I’ll be fine. Thanks a bunch for coming over. I needed to talk.”

“Charlie coming back in the morning?”

“Oh, yeah, he’ll be back.”

Dottie drove home, sat down at her kitchen table with the scrapbooks, and thumbed through the pages. “I started to cry—for both of us. I wondered what on earth possessed Patsy to give up her cherished scrapbooks. She was real down because of the argument and fight with Charlie. She kept trying to be a good wife and mother, but it seemed no one appreciated it.

“I admired the picture of Patsy and Jimmy Dean, then turned the page. There was this piece of paper folded up. I didn’t know what to think, so I opened it. It was a check for seventy-five dollars with a little note saying, ‘I know you’re having it hard and that you’re not working. You can use this to pay the rent. Love, Patsy.’

“I don’t know how Patsy knew. She had so many problems of her own, I didn’t want to bother her with ours. That night I had just enough money to put a dollar’s worth of gas in the car to get to Goodlettsville. Bill and I had been trying to get enough money together to pay the rent and hadn’t been able to.”

Patsy still hadn’t forgotten her roots. The next weekend she and Charlie took Julie and Randy to Winchester for a visit with Mrs. Hensley. On Saturday afternoon she played Berryville’s Watermelon Park. That night the couple visited the Charles Town, West Virginia, Moose Lodge where Bill Peer and the Melody Boys happened to be playing.

Band member Joe Shrewbridge said, “Patsy and Charlie were in a booth at the back of the hall. They didn’t come up and say hello to Bill, but he knew they were there. He couldn’t help it because everyone made such a fuss. But he ignored Patsy because he didn’t want to upset Dolly. I felt pretty bad for Bill and Dolly.”

During one of the breaks, some of the musicians who worked with Patsy went over to say hello. Guitarist/vocalist John Anderson brought back word that Patsy wouldn’t mind getting up to do a number. When Bill told Dolly, she said, ‘No way!’ To the folks who wouldn’t let up, Bill said, ‘She’s relaxing. We shouldn’t bother her. Let her enjoy herself.“’

That night, as she waited on pins and needles to be invited onstage, Patsy was finally able to enjoy her privacy.

T
he cover of Patsy’s third album,
Sentimentally Yours,
pictured Patsy reclining on pillows in one of her new boutique wigs, heavy makeup, and a paisley print dress. The album, released August 6, 1962, featured “She’s Got You,” “Strange,” and songs from the first three of the four February sessions.

Harlan Howard and Hank Cochran were in a heated race to write Patsy’s next number one hit. That neither succeeded was due to fate and a miscalculation of what would sell. They did compose two of the most mesmerizing tunes Patsy recorded, “That’s How a Heartache Begins” and “Why Can’t He Be You?” In fact, the September 5 and 10 sessions were crammed with superb material: Cochran’s “When You Need a Laugh,” Roy Drusky’s “Your Kinda Love” and Wayne Walker and Webb Pierce’s “Leavin’ on Your Mind.” The uptempo numbers, Marijohn Wilkin and Fred Burch’s “Tra Le La Le La Triangle” and Bob Montgomery’s “Back in Baby’s Arms,” aptly summed up, respectively, Patsy’s early life in the Brunswick Triangle and the Dicks’ marriage.

At the first “champagne playback” party, Patsy and Bradley hosted Dottie, Cochran, Drusky, and agent Hubert Long. When Bradley ran the tape of “Why Can’t He Be You?”, Cochran was so moved by Patsy’s reading of his material he cried.

Patsy’s thirtieth birthday was September 8, and Sunday, September 9, was the occasion of Patsy and Charlie’s first big party in the dream house.

“That night, as everyone celebrated,” Dottie reflected, “don’t think I wasn’t relieved that whatever kind of premonition Patsy had didn’t fulfill itself. I didn’t forget what happened, but she was continually moving on to a newer plane, and it was no more than a fragment of a memory.”

“Parties,” Billy Walker said, “have always been a prevalent thing in Nashville music society, but back then we were a close-knit community, always on the go. So they were, more or less, spirited ‘family’ reunions. That night, however, it was an occasion. Patsy was celebrating more the debut of her house than her birthday. And, let me tell you,
that
bathroom had some visitors.”

The guests included the Hugheses, the Wests, the Lynns, the Howards, the Cochrans, Wayne Walker, Del Wood, the Wilburn Brothers, singer Wilma Burgess and, among seventy-five others, Faron Young.

“Like at all parties,” Faron recounted, “we sat around and had some drinks and then someone grabbed a guitar and we’d take turns singing. There was a little to-do later when Charlie pulled out a set of forty-fives and started showing off. I looked real close and realized they were my guns from one of my movies. He’d ‘bought’ them from me, saying ‘Sheriff, I’ll pay you later.’ That son of a bitch never did. When I tried to get ‘em back, he said he lost them. I told him, ‘What you mean is you lost the money you owe me.’

“That night Charlie, Mooney Lynn, and all of us did some drinking but ole Charlie really put away some stuff. He mooned us. It was downright funny, but Patsy was embarrassed. Everybody laughed up a storm. There was no way you could stay angry with Charlie.”

A few nights later, Patsy asked Dottie to sit with her again.

“Well, Hoss, we’ve shared a lot of secrets, haven’t we?”

“I guess,” said Dottie, understating the case.

“I got another one for you tonight.”

“Okay. What is it?”

“Naw.”

“Come on, let’s hear it!”

“You sure you can keep a secret?”

“Cross my heart!”

“Well, I been putting aside something for a rainy day. Something that’s just mine. I don’t want even Charlie to know about it.”

“Not even Charlie?”

“Nope. This is between me and you.”

“Patsy, what the heck are you talking about?”

“My stash.”

“What do you mean?”

“I got me a stash.”

“A what?”

“A stash.”

“Oh, my God, I don’t believe this.”

“Believe it. ’Cause it’s the honest truth. If found me this hiding place behind one of the bricks in the fireplace in the music room. I’ve been putting money in there every week. Don’t you dare tell a soul. You’re the only other person that knows. I just want you to know about it in case anything happens to me.”

“There you go again! Patsy, why do you feel you have to hide money?”

“It’s my business, Hoss. It’s for that rainy day Grandpa [Jones] is always telling me about. Remember, now, mum’s the word.”

An EP containing “So Wrong,” “You’re Stronger Than Me,” “Heartaches” and “Your Cheatin’ Heart” came out September 24. “Heartaches” and “Why Can’t He Be You” were issued as a back-to-back single October 8.

The 11th Annual WSM Country Music Festival got under way on November 7, and the visiting disc jockeys were set loose on the stars for interviews to air on their stations. At the taping sessions in WSM’s Studio B were Flatt & Scruggs, Roy Drusky, George Hamilton IV, the Butlers, Skeeter Davis, Jim Reeves, Faron Young, Jimmy Dean, and Patsy.

Nashville’s new country darling did at least a hundred interviews. She was asked how it felt being hospitalized for thirty-five days. Her in-depth answer: “Awful!” Asked why she went back to work in a wheelchair, she replied “‘Cause 1 couldn’t walk!” What about on crutches? “’Cause I just couldn’t stay home.”

At ceremonies in the Maxwell House Hotel, Patsy came away the big female winner. She took home ten honors, including
Billboard
’s Favorite Female Artist;
Cash-box
’s Most Programmed Album of the Year,
Patsy Cline Showcase,
and Most Programmed C&W Female Vocalist;
Music Reporter’s
Female Vocalist of the Year and Star of the Year, and
Music Vendor
’s Female Vocalist of the Year for “Crazy” and “She’s Got You.” For the second year in a row, Patsy unseated Kitty Wells.

“It’s so unbelievable,” cried Patsy, attired in a gold brocade evening suit, her silver fox, and spike heels. “My new house is gonna have wall-to-wall awards! It’s wonderful. You’re wonderful!
But
—what am I gonna do next year?”

She was finally receiving the recognition she had sought so eagerly—and the money that went along with it—but was more pleased that, once again, Loretta, with
Cashbox’s
Most Promising Female award, was moving up.

Faron Young noted, “Patsy was attracting so much attention and was in as much demand on the pop music circuit as she was in country. She finally realized she could be hotter copy without a hayseed image. She became a real city slicker in her high-fashion gowns and fancy dresses. And, oh, my God, she started wearing hats. Not Stetsons! Church hats, social-gathering hats. I wondered, ‘What next, hillbillies playing golf?’

“She was also getting the big head. Patsy and I worked a lot of concerts together. When you’re hot, you’re hot, and Patsy was hot. And loved every minute of it! We were driving along to some date and we’d take turns running up and down on the car radio, trying to see if we could find our songs.”

Patsy tuned in “Crazy,” then “She’s Got You.” Young yelled, “Goddamn it! Ain’t they playing my record of ‘Sweet Dreams’?” Patsy tuned in “So Wrong” and “Heartaches,” laughing with great glee each time she heard one of her tunes.

“Where’s ‘Hello, Walls’?” Young exclaimed. “They haven’t forgotten me, have they?”

“You’re old hat, Sheriff! They don’t wanna play you no more.”

“You better watch it, or you can get out and walk.”

“I won’t have no problem getting a ride,” she replied, playfully hiking her skirt.

“Patsy, you ain’t conceited. You’re convinced. Don’t wallow in hog heaven just yet. ‘The Yellow Bandana’ is bigger than anything you ever had!”

“I don’t hear ’em playing it!”

Young frantically tuned the radio.

“I betcha I’ll find ‘Have I Waited Too Long?’”

“Get real, Sheriff! They don’t play oldies.”

“Five dollars!”

“You’re on!”

Young turned the dial again.

“Oh, is that it?”

“Hell, no! It’s ‘I Fall to Pieces.’ Hell and goddamn!”

“Everybody’s playing my records! Now, how much was the bet?”

For someone who seemed so sure of herself, Lightnin’ Chance found Patsy to be the opposite. “Before we went onstage, Patsy was nervous. She’d have knots in her stomach and would keep a handkerchief in her hand because her palms would be moist from sweating. Offstage, she smoked. After the accident, things got worse. She had frequent headaches. Patsy was always so fidgety. Maybe that’s why she moved around so much. When she was having those scars worked on, she’d keep some type of band around her hairline to apply pressure and to keep her stitches in place.

“Onstage, no one could come close to Patsy. She was amazing, a star. That’s such an overused word, but Patsy was the epitome of what it used to mean. I worked with her when she wore those cowgirl outfits and when she wore fancy dresses. And, you know what? It didn’t make a damn bit of difference what Patsy wore or didn’t wear, because when she opened her mouth at that mike not only did she get attention, she demanded it.

“When Patsy finished a show, she was wrung out like a washrag. She could be testy, but it was a joy and a privilege to have known and worked with her. She didn’t go in for a lot of audience rap. The funny things that happened involved her snide remarks to the guys in the band—her ‘dogies.’ I developed this applause-milking gimmick with my bass by making it squeak—some say I made the damn thing cry. I used it for musical comment and, sometimes, to pick at an artist. Patsy got a kick out of it. She’d act real scared and say, ‘Little dogie, you trying to scare the boss lady?’

“I saw artists stand on their heads, gobble peanut butter from a ceiling fan, pee in a vest pocket and all kinds of stuff, anything to be different. Patsy didn’t have to go for that. She was unique. She had showmanship.”

Patsy often called the dream house “the house that Vegas built.” Since Patsy’s Decca earnings were coming in slim royalty payments because of hefty advances, she needed financial security to keep the house. True to both their dreams, Randy booked her into the Merri-Mint Theatre of the Mint Casino, which was owned by the Sahara Hotel on the strip. It was to be for thirty-five days.

Teddy Wilburn received a call at the end of the D.J. Convention. “She was beside herself about playing Vegas. Elvis and Johnny Cash had gone there and conquered it. Patsy had spent five thousand dollars on arrangements and was learning dance steps from a choreographer. She was set to work with the Glaser Brothers—Chuck, Jim, and Tompall, who’d also won the Godfrey show. They were a
Decca act. Patsy was upset that they wouldn’t rehearse. They told her it wasn’t in their contract.

“Doyle, Loretta, and I played there and knew the hotel where she’d be staying, Ferguson’s, had a couple of big rooms where she could rehearse. ‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ I said. ‘Throw away those arrangements and forget about the choreography. Just get everybody there a couple of days early and plan what you want to do. That way, it’ll be fresh in everybody’s mind. And, if all else fails, just get up on that damn stage and sing and you’ll knock ’em dead like you always do—even the high rollers.’”