Patsy Cline

At 13 she was hospitalized with rheumatic fever and a throat infection, and she came out of the oxygen tent convinced it had remade her. The fever had got into her throat, she said, and left her with a booming voice like Kate Smith's. Her father was a blacksmith of 43 who had married her 16-year-old mother six days before the birth. The family moved 19 times in 16 years, and he deserted them in 1947. She said, years afterward, that he had sexually abused her. She quit school at 16, plucked chickens in a poultry plant, worked a bus depot and a Winchester drugstore soda fountain, and sang at night. A bandleader named Bill Peer gave her the name Patsy in 1952.

She recorded 102 sides in eight years and her fame fits inside the last two. Four singles for 4 Star failed. Then a talent show, Arthur Godfrey's, on January 21, 1957, and Walkin' After Midnight went to number two country and 12 pop, then nothing for three years. The Opry took her in January 1960, Decca signed her that autumn, and between August 1961 and early 1962 I Fall to Pieces and She's Got You each topped the country chart while Crazy crossed over to number nine pop. Three albums, Carnegie Hall, a Las Vegas headline. That was all.

Her 1954 contract with 4 Star paid her under three percent in royalties and let the label's president pick her songs. She told Owen Bradley she felt like a prisoner. When Decca took her in 1960 she made him pay a 1,000 dollar advance before she would start, after a year of 50 dollar dates. She fought him in the studio, over the Jordanaires behind her and over Crazy, which she did not want to record. A head-on collision in June 1961 threw her through a windshield and she was onstage again in six weeks. Her money went out again: clothes and curtains for Loretta Lynn, who could not afford them, and a 75 dollar check for Dottie West. She greeted Jan Howard by calling her a conceited little son of a bitch, and then decided they were friends.

The plane went down on March 5, 1963, in woods outside Camden, Tennessee, and killed her, Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins and the pilot, her manager Randy Hughes. She was 30. What followed was an argument that has not ended. Bradley's strings and backing voices carried country music onto the pop charts, and purists have called the Nashville Sound a dilution of country music ever since. Both judgments are about the same records. The sales were never in doubt: Greatest Hits, issued in 1967, went diamond and became the longest-charting album by any woman in any genre. In 1973 she was the first solo woman elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Patsy Cline's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Walkin' After Midnight song
  She did not want to sing it. Number two country and 12 pop 1957
• I Fall to Pieces song
  Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard — her first number one on the country chart 1961
• Crazy song
  Written by Willie Nelson. Her vocal was cut in one take a week after the band 1961
• Patsy Cline Showcase album
  The second of three studio albums released in her lifetime 1961
• She's Got You song
  Cochran again — her second country number one and her first UK chart entry 1962
• Sentimentally Yours album
  The last album released before she died 1962

• 1946 aged ~14 Hospitalized at 13 with rheumatic fever and a throat infection She said afterward that the fever changed her throat and left her the voice.
• September 30, 1954 aged 22 Signs with 4 Star Records Under three percent in royalties, with the label president choosing her material.
• January 21, 1957 aged 24 Wins Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts She had wanted to sing A Poor Man's Roses in the cowgirl outfit her mother sewed. The producer overruled both and sent her out in a cocktail dress with Walkin' After Midnight.
• January 9, 1960 aged 27 Becomes a member of the Grand Ole Opry She had asked the general manager for it outright.
• June 14, 1961 aged 28 Thrown through a windshield in a head-on collision Broken wrist, dislocated hip, a cut across the forehead. Two people in the other car died, and she told the first responders to treat them first.
• August 7, 1961 aged 28 I Fall to Pieces reaches number one on the country chart Released in January, it had taken seven months to climb.
• August 17, 1961 aged 28 Sent home from the Crazy session because the high notes hurt her ribs The musicians laid the track down without her. She came back a week later and sang it in a single take.
• March 5, 1963 aged 30 Killed in a plane crash outside Camden, Tennessee With Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and the pilot, her manager Randy Hughes. She was flying home from a benefit in Kansas City.
• 1973 aged ~41 First solo woman elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame

• Willie Nelson b. 1933
  Songwriter and performer central to outlaw country and to Farm Aid. recorded his song
• Johnny Cash 1932–2003
  Singer-songwriter whose work connected country, gospel, folk, prison reform, and American myth. toured with
• Dolly Parton b. 1946
  Country music legend whose Imagination Library has donated over 200 million books to children. influenced
• Hank Williams 1923–1953
  Country songwriter whose brief career set the template for the genre's later stars. recorded his signature song
• Jimmie Rodgers 1897–1933
  The Singing Brakeman, whose six recorded years made country music a commercial form. inherited the form of