Honky Tonk Angel (9 page)

Before the dance, Patsy apologized and smoothed Shroyer’s feathers, but it seemed that the fun was gone.

Patsy’s first Nashville session under the auspices of Paul Cohen and Bill McCall was scheduled for Wednesday, January 5, 1955. Cohen reviewed the tapes and was mesmerized by Patsy’s voice, but he didn’t know what to have her record. He consulted every artist on Decca from Webb Pierce to Ernest Tubb, except the Reigning Queen of Country Music, Kitty Wells, who was Patsy’s chief rival.

Tubb asked, “Has Decca signed Patsy Cline?”

“No,” Cohen replied. “We’ve got her under a Four-Star deal. E.T., do you know her?”

“Yeah, of course. From Bill Peer’s band. Sweet little gal with a great big voice.”

“E.T., that’s the problem. I’ve hit a snag. Patsy’s got the potential to have broader appeal than Kitty. I think she’s got a pop sound. It’s there. I just know it”

“Heck, Paul, if she’s got a pop sound, why don’t you get Owen Bradley to work with her?”

Bradley, who was in his late thirties, was at home in any music field. As a businessman—with ethics, yet—he became one of Music City’s wealthiest, dabbling with brother Harold in real estate and recording studios while others chose song publishing.

As a producer, he was years ahead of his rivals. Bradley wasn’t afraid to be innovative at a time when country had become static. (He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1974.)

Downtown Nashville still had the Ryman, Tootsie’s, Tubb’s record store, and assorted taverns, but farther out toward the West End, what has come to be known as Music Row was taking shape. Some of its prime movers were the Bradleys, who in 1952 built a studio on Twenty-first Avenue South behind McClure’s Department Store. In 1955, when Cohen considered moving recording operations to Dallas, where better technology was available, the Bradleys bought a house in the rundown neighborhood along Sixteenth Avenue South and installed a studio. They later added an adjacent metal Quonset hut (now part of Sony-Columbia) that was quickly dubbed Bradley’s Barn.

On the main floor was a studio for filming such syndicated TV as “The Stars of the Grand Ole Opry” and the U.S. Army’s “Country Style, U.S.A.,” which pitched military recruitment. In the basement, the Bradleys created one of the most technically advanced recording studios in the region.

At that time, Bradley had no magic formula for Patsy’s voice. As he noted later, even if he’d thought to record her pop, it wouldn’t have been accepted. Whatever everyone’s second thoughts about her voice, Patsy was being sent to Nashville to record, and that’s where they did country. Tubb and Pierce were called in to review the song choices McCall sent. Tubb recalled, “Webb and I sat down with Paul and those Four-Star folk and picked out the best four songs they had to offer. Webb didn’t think any of them approached what he could write.”

After ringing in the New Year at the Moose Lodge with their respective mates and revelers, Patsy and Bill left Sunday, January 2, for Nashville. It was their first
plane ride. Gerald claims he was also along on the trip, acting as official chaperon. Bill was terrified of flying and held on to the armrests, his face pale. He told Patsy, “I’m so nervous, I’m about to wet my pants!”

She pulled out a flask and said, “No problem. Have a couple of swigs. It’ll do the trick.”

“You know I don’t drink.”

“Hoss, there’s a first time for everything.”

“And this is it!”

It didn’t take long for Patsy and Bill to be sailing through the friendly skies. She even offered to help the crew with their duties.

Bill later told Roy Deyton that as the plane approached Nashville, the stewardess came on the speaker.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has lighted the fasten seat belt sign.”

Suddenly Patsy jumped into the aisle, straddled her legs across it and yelled, “All right, ladies, you don’t want to ignore the captain. Fasten your sanitary belts!”

At first there was shocked silence, then everyone broke out laughing.

“Madam,” the stewardess began.

“Hey, watch what you call me!”

“Please take your seat. Where are you going?”

“To help the captain fly this thing!”

Bill grabbed Patsy and pulled her back into her seat.

Bill’s hope that the previous sessions would yield a “package deal” for Patsy, himself, and the band was dashed. The tapes weren’t country enough and proved unacceptable. Cohen informed Peer they would use studio musicians, “the best money can buy.” According to Deyton, Bill didn’t understand that to mean it would be his money.

Wednesday morning, as he waited in Bradley’s studio for the session to begin, Bradley approached Bill and asked, “Hey, Bill, who’s going to make the financial arrangements for this? We have to pay the musicians.”

He replied, “According to Patsy’s contract, McCall pays.”

“Well, Four-Star has made no arrangements with us. What are we going to do?”

“Call McCall!”

Bradley took the responsibility of making the call. McCall told him he was in no position to pay session costs. “Bill says you’ll have to lay the money out,” Bradley repeated.

Frantically grabbing the phone from Bradley, Bill asked, “What the hell’s going on? If I’d known this, we could’ve stayed home. You’re trying to screw us!”

“Calm down, Bill,” McCall told him. “Lay the money out and I’ll reimburse you within two weeks.”

Bill conferred with Patsy, who said, “If you’ve got the money and he says he’ll pay you back, let’s do it, as long as we’re here.”

As a result of his mother’s death, Bill had come into a sizable inheritance, which he was using to bankroll Patsy’s career. It’s said he pulled out a roll of hundred-dollar bills and paid Bradley fifteen hundred, adding, “Don’t forget my receipt!”

Deyton said, “I knew someone would take a shellacking, and it was Bill. Patsy
didn’t have it at the time, but he told me she never made an attempt to pay him back. There’s no fool like a fool in love!”

Bradley wasn’t looking forward to meeting Patsy. Cohen told him Patsy had a mind of her own, which no producer likes to hear. And McCall warned that Patsy “was mean as hell and hard to get along with.”

“I expected the worst,” Bradley said. “I figured Patsy would tongue-lash me, then beat me to death. She was exactly the opposite. In fact, she didn’t open her mouth. If I told her to do something, she did it.”

Patsy recorded “I Don’t Wanta,” written by D. Haddock, W. S. Stevenson, and Eddie Miller, who had the 1954 hit “Release Me” and a long association with Patsy; Miller’s “I Love You, Honey,” a funny, bouncy standout, which he claimed to have written at fourteen; and Tubb’s favorite, “I Cried All the Way to the Altar,” a weeper that told a marvelously concise story, showcased Patsy’s natural voice and her hiccup growl, or yodel, as she called it, on the high notes; and “Come On In,” in its original length a gospel song and later Patsy’s opening number for live engagements.

Even with Bradley producing, Cohen was unhappy with the cuts and shelved them. “I Love You, Honey” and “Come On In” came out in February 1956 as a back-to-back single.

W. S., for William Shakespeare, Stevenson (after Robert Louis Stevenson) was none other than Bill McCall. It was the pseudonym he affixed to hundreds of songs in Four-Star’s massive catalog. McCall, who couldn’t read music, usually found a way to make some type of lyrical contribution on material from writers who had no power base.

Patsy, Bill, and Gerald left for home immediately after the session. Now it was a matter of waiting. Patsy walked on air. She told everyone, “I’m beginning to realize my dreams! I’ve been taking it one step at a time and it’s finally going to happen.”

Winchester’s big event, held the last weekend of April or the first weekend of May, is the Apple Blossom Festival, which is kicked off by two huge parades of dignitaries, celebrities, bands, cavalry, and floats. Patsy and Bill and the Melody Boys, popular throughout the area, were invited to participate in the Grand Feature Parade (as opposed to the Fireman’s Parade).

Bill secured a handsome 1955 black Cadillac convertible that was decorated with crepe paper streamers, music notes, and a horseshoe for the front of the hood. Patsy and the musicians, in their finest western costume, sat on the rear of the car and its seats, waving. The crowd, well-dressed adults and children holding balloons three and four abreast on the sidewalks of the parade route, didn’t seem that impressed. As Mrs. Hensley has pointed out, everyone in Winchester was used to seeing Patsy Cline.

Paul Cohen, increasingly frustrated at not finding the right material for his singer, scheduled another session with Owen Bradley for June 1.

Bob Gaines of Winchester’s G&H Music Store related that, to prepare for the second session, Patsy came to the shop several times a week to practice. She would
ask questions about recording techniques and go into a booth to make a record, listen to the playback, and record the song again until she got it the way she wanted.

The June 1 Nashville session was made up of songs Patsy first did in the Fredericksburg, Virginia, radio station demo. McCall sent a Four-Star pitch letter to disc jockeys. It read: “We think Patsy Cline sings better than any female vocalist we have heard. Her diction, sense of timing, and phrasings are exceptionally good. We hope that you will agree with us and will give her first record a chance to be heard.”

On July 20 a single of “A Church, a Courtroom and Then Goodbye” and “Honky Tonk Merry-Go-Round” and her first Extended Play 45,
Songs by Patsy Cline,
with “Turn the Cards Slowly” and “Hidin’ Out” added, were released.

“Patsy was exceptional,” Owen Bradley said. “Paul Cohen would say again and again, ‘Owen, she’s got it. She’s special. We’re going to hit it. It may take some time, but we’ll do it. All we need is the right combination.’ That was the hardest thing. We were limited in what Patsy could record.”

It’s ironic that the songs Patsy recorded usually reflected what was happening in her life at that very moment.

Patsy and Bill were missing from the Moose Lodge the weekend of June 24. They returned to Nashville, taking advance copies of her record to as many music people as possible—Ferlin Husky, Faron Young, Porter Wagoner, and Eddy Arnold. On June 26, in Nashville’s Centennial Park, Patsy was a special guest star of Ernest Tubb and his Texas Troubadours, featuring Tommy Jackson on fiddle. She performed for a crowd estimated at better than fifteen thousand.
Billboard
listed her as Patsy Kline.