PATSY CLINE - Walkin' After Midnight

by Jim Meyer

Patsy Cline was killed in a small plane crash near Cambden, Tennessee on March 05, 1963. She was just 30 years old. Just days before, she'd told her friends, Dottie West and June Carter of a sense of impending doom and had even written out a will on a piece of Delta Airlines stationary. One always wonders what could have been...but then again, her musical legacy is sublime.

Having spent the afternoon listening to Texas music,  I went off looking for more traditional fare. This is my absolute no. 1 favorite Patsy Cline song.  Yes, I like it more than "Crazy" and "She's Got You":

I challenge you to listen all the way through without taking a shot (or several) of whiskey. Produced by the mighty Owen Bradley, founder of the "Nashville Sound."

Just about every female country singer out there has tried to imitate her -- but I've heard only two that got it right. One is k.d. lang, and the other is LeAnn Rimes. This is downright scary:

By the way, the Patsy bio-pic "Sweet Dreams" is not terribly realistic, but you do get to watch Jessica Lange for two hours, and she had the good sense to just lip-synch the originals.

The Top 20 Country Love Songs of All Time - Number 2

by Jim Poulton

Patsy Cline - Crazy

Photo courtesy of AVClub

Possibly the best known of all of Cline’s hits, Crazy was written by Willie Nelson in 1961, while he was still a young musician. Prior to that time, Nelson had written some songs for other performers, but he still hadn’t recorded a breakout hit of his own. When Cline released her version, it followed on a string of her prior hits (especially I Fall To Pieces), and its success helped to launch Nelson as both a performer and songwriter. While Crazy only made it to #2 on the Country Singles chart in 1962, it also crossed over to the US Hot 100 list (#9) and the Adult Contemporary list (#2), making it her biggest pop hit. Crazy has since been recognized as one of the great Country love songs. It was named #85 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Cline originally disliked Crazy, claiming it was too difficult to sing. Her first demo of the song was a disaster, and she deliberated for several days about whether she would even complete it. When she came back into the studio, she recorded the vocal tracks we now know with no splices or dubs. Listening to this version, it’s difficult to imagine that Cline found the song difficult. Her smooth and easy approach to the melody is best heard in the length and strength of her sustains (listen, for example, to how long she holds the last ‘you'). As we’ve said before, Cline was a genius, and this song, maybe more than any other, proves it.

Here’s Willie Nelson’s original version. Notice the photograph on the album cover in the video – we’ve come to know a different Willie Nelson, haven’t we?

The Top 20 Country Love Songs of All Time - Number 8

by Jim Poulton

Patsy Cline - Sweet Dreams

Photo courtesy of Last.fm

Well, here she is again - Patsy Cline. I told you we'd see her again in the top 10. And, not to speak out of school, but expect to run into her still one more time. She really knew what she was doing. In fact, I think (and I'm not alone) that Patsy Cline was a genius - about singing in general, but particularly about selecting songs that suited her voice and her persona. Word has it that she was pretty single-minded in making sure that the song and its production matched her vision. Today's song is no exception.

Written by Don Gibson (who, you might recall, also wrote I Can't Stop Loving You), Sweet Dreams has a rare history in Country Music. When Cline recorded it in 1963 (just before her death), her version was the third to reach the Country Hits top ten (Faron Young's 1956 version was the first, and Gibson's own 1960 version was the second). Since then, Sweet Dreams has reached the top 20 three more times, from recordings by three different artists: Tommy McLain, Reba McEntire, EmmyLou Harris (Harris' 1976 version hit number one). That is a song with staying power.

Our favorite version, though, is Cline's. As always, she treats it with such emotional expressiveness that you can almost feel it is your own story. The song's introduction is a bit cheesy (cascading violins - to represent falling into dreamland???), but the rest is pure gold.

The Top 20 Country Love Songs of All Time - Number 10

by Jim Poulton

Patsy Cline - I Fall to Pieces

If my wife had her way, every song in our top ten would be by Patsy Cline … Not that there’s anything wrong with that ... Cline was responsible for a string of Country love songs that all but single-handedly defined the genre. There’s just something about her: an innocent hayseed (she was the daughter of a blacksmith and a seamstress), always just a little bit awkward, appealing but not runway-model beautiful. But when she started to sing, the strength of her character, and maybe the realities of her own losses, came out in every tone and nuance.

Cline rose to national fame between the years 1957 and 1963, when she tragically died in a plane crash. She recorded I Fall to Pieces in 1961, and the song became her first #1 hit on the Country charts, and was her second song to cross over into the Pop charts. Written by Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard, I Fall to Pieces at first worried Cline – she thought it’s Pop style didn’t suit her own. When the recording was completed, however, she said that she had finally found her own voice.

See a biography of Patsy Cline here.