Honky Tonk Angel (25 page)

Patsy had a way with people when she wanted something badly enough. Once, she got what she wanted just by asking. Late in 1959, Opry stage manager Ott Devine was watching the show when Patsy came up behind him.

“Mr. Devine, I’ve been invited on the Opry many times,” she said, “but do you think I could become a full-fledged member? That’s one of the reasons I moved to town.”

“Patsy,” Devine declared, “if that’s all you want, you’re on.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that, but we’ll make it official with an announcement.”

Patsy’s membership was prestigious to the Opry, which, in a press release based on facts Patsy provided, made much ado about her hit record and work with Husky and Young, “Town and Country Jamboree” days with Jimmy Dean, appearances on the Ozark Jubilee, “Town Hall Party,” the Bob Crosby and Alan Freed TV shows and, especially, the Arthur Godfrey shows and appearances with Pat Boone and the McGuire Sisters. It closed with Patsy’s philosophy as a country music singer: “I don’t want to get rich, just live good!”

Patsy lent her services to many Opry-sponsored benefits. On December 21, for example, she starred with Roy Drusky and Porter Wagoner in an Elks show for the Tennessee Vocational Training School. She served ice cream, cake, and candy to over 750 underprivileged children and assisted in handing each a new dollar bill.

On January 9, 1960, Patsy was brought onstage by announcer Grant Turner and accorded regular cast membership, which meant she had to guarantee her availability two-thirds of her weekends a year. The on-air exposure would be massive, but the pay had increased only slightly, to fourteen dollars an appearance.

Marshall Louis (Grandpa) Jones, the banjo-playing comic in overalls, and Randy observed Patsy as she was accepted into Opry annals. “That gal of yours is really something,” Jones proclaimed. “I’ll tell you, she sure can sing. She may be ahead of her time! When she’s here, she causes quite a sensation. No matter where I am when she comes in, I can’t miss her.”

“What do you mean, Grandpa?”

“Well, sir, I know which way she went ’cause she’s got all the men running after her. They just follow that wiggle in her walk.”

“You think Patsy’s pretty?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Do you think Patsy’s got sex appeal?”

“She’s really got it. Just like the stink off an ole hog!”

Jones had another handle on what made Patsy tick: “She was, to say the least, one tough lady. You didn’t mess with her when she’d start carrying on. I’d up and
say, ‘Miss Patsy!’ and she’d say, ‘Grandpa, you gonna try to make a damn lady out of this girl?’ I knew better.

“Patsy wasn’t always the model of patience, but I gave her credit where credit was due. She knew how to get things moving when they bogged down. We were at WSIX-TV for an Opry special. We got there early and, at noon, we were still going nowhere. We waited till we were blue in the face. Not wanting to say anything that’d ruffle any feathers, I went to Patsy and said, ‘Well, Miss Patsy, they better hurry up ’cause I got a date in July!’ She told me, ‘Damn right, Grandpa. I’ve gotta get, too.’

“She took care of things. Patsy strutted over to whoever was in charge and raised hell. Immediately, everything fell into place and we got to work. Jimmy Dean used to preach to Patsy about the time ethic. It must have sunk in. She didn’t cotton to those hurry-up-and-wait situations. I could talk more about her, but it wouldn’t help to know her better. She was unique, fascinating. You really’d have had to be around her. Patsy was definitely one of a kind!”

Owen Bradley certainly subscribed to that notion. He knew what to expect. Patsy’s personality was strong and she had no problem bucking him even when she knew she wouldn’t get her way. In the studio, Bradley could do whatever he wanted in terms of creating music—if the artist cooperated and there was a track record of hits—but his fondness for Patsy and belief in her potential held no sway at Decca’s New York headquarters.

Randy’s battle with McCall had some effect. The material at Patsy’s January 27, 1960, session, her first in six months, was an improvement and included a non-Four-Star song.

Charlie told the Country Music Foundation’s John Rumble and Paul Kingsbury how well Patsy knew music. “When Patsy and I started going together, a record would come on the radio and she’d say who it was. Half the guys I hadn’t heard of.” She liked Kay Starr, Teresa Brewer, and Sophie Tucker and the country singers Goldie Hill, Wanda Jackson, Charline Arthur, and Kitty Wells and had their records in her collection. Patsy loved to listen to pop and rock ‘n’ roll but bragged she was nothing but a country singer.

This time, in the studio, she apparently won out over Bradley. There was no vacillation between country and pop. Much to New York’s chagrin, there was nothing remotely pop. She recorded the 1949 Hank Williams million-seller “Lovesick Blues,” replete with yodeling, though quite modified from the hearty way she sang it on live appearances.

The other tunes were “There He Goes,” a female version of Carl Smith’s 1959 hit, with lyrics by Eddie Miller; “How Can I Face Tomorrow?”; and “Crazy Dreams,” with its wonderful country shuffle, courtesy of Kramer, steel guitarist Jimmy Day, from Ray Price’s band, and the electric guitars of Garland and Martin (who also played fiddle). These songs were “cowritten” by W. S. Stevenson. Patsy overdubbed harmony vocals on the two latter tunes. This was to be her last session under the Four-Star contract. Considering the about-face in style, there might have been the feeling, “This is the end, so let her do whatever she wants. If it sells, it sells. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”

Rock ‘n’ roll had thrown country into turmoil. A sophisticated Nashville sound was emerging. Though these songs, in retrospect, are quite good, they did nothing
to explore Patsy’s real singing potential. Nor was this the music a new generation of country fans wanted.

On March 7th, Decca released “Lovesick Blues” with “How Can I Face Tomorrow?” There were no full-page advertisements, and McCall didn’t bother to send a letter to deejays. Again, neither they nor the public responded. This isn’t to say Patsy didn’t enjoy good record sales. In fact, an interesting phenomenon, still true, was taking shape. She had a strong following who were quite vocal in their approval of what Patsy recorded. She received huge amounts of mail; colleagues recall her going off to the side during TV specials to read and answer her mail and autograph photos with personal messages. While she appealed to die-hard country fans, she also lured an audience of urban romantics to her shows and broadcasts, such as the Ozark Jubilee, where she was frequently booked and always warmly received.

That Patsy was changing with the times was quite evident in a Jubilee ABC-TV broadcast in February: She appeared singing that most hillbilly of numbers, “Lovesick Blues,” not in her traditional cowgirl outfit but in a handsome, trailblazing pants suit.

Patsy covered the spectrum, from swinging uptempo numbers to ballads of dreams and love that might have been. She was also the first country female, other than Brenda Lee, to have a teen following, which was Decca’s rationale in releasing her on 45 rpm EPs. The younger set identified with her songs about loss, loneliness, and pain. She was immensely popular among GIs as well and was often featured on recruitment transcriptions. What attracted Patsy, other than the money, to these canned shows was the opportunity to sing what McCall wouldn’t allow her to record, including songs at the top of the country and pop charts.

Patsy guested on the June 4 Ozark Jubilee, telecast on the fifth. She dueted with Cowboy Copas on “I’m Hog-Tied over You.” The audience went wild. In a moving tribute to Hilda, Patsy sang “Mother, Mother,” joined by Copas, Eddy Arnold, and June Valli.

On June 7, Patsy did “Country Style, U.S.A.,” promoting her March single, and singing “one that’s always been one of my favorites,” “When Your House Is Not a Home” by Roger Miller. Five days later, she angered Opry executives by arriving for her Opry appearance in a clinging white western blouse accented with a kerchief around her neck, and gold lame trousers.

“Everybody was punching the other to look,” announcer Grant Turner remembered, “but you could see her coming for a country mile. I thought she looked great, but I didn’t run the place. Patsy was told she couldn’t go on dressed like that. She was fuming mad, but either went back home or sent someone for another outfit. When she went on that night, she was much more subdued and all the little kiddies could feel safe.”

Plagued since May with minor medical flare-ups she attributed to stress, Patsy saw her doctor and got an unexpected diagnosis. She was pregnant. Good news, bad news, feeling great, or feeling poorly—nothing stopped Patsy. When she informed Charlie, she barely took the time to let the consequences of the news sink in before she was upstairs packing.

On August 1, Decca released the last of the Four-Star product, “Crazy Dreams” with “There He Goes” on the flip side.

Jo Ann and Gus Thomas visited the Dicks that weekend. She was a regional
singer
¹⁷
who first met Patsy in 1958, before she married, backstage at the county fair in Rhinehold, Pennsylvania; he used to back Patsy on the “Town and Country Jamboree.” In 1960, when they were living in Georgia, Charlie called and wanted to know when they were coming to visit at the Madison house. They took him up on his invitation a few weeks before Thomas was scheduled to ship out for Korea.

“Patsy and Charlie insisted we stay with them or we wouldn’t be friends anymore,” Jo Ann recollected. “They had friends visiting from Texas, too, so the house was full. It was really hectic. And Charlie was in a wheelchair. He’d broken his pelvic bone in an auto accident. Patsy was on the Opry Saturday night. Gus pushed Charlie into the Ryman and backstage. We were laughing like a bunch of kids.

“I went to the backstage ladies’ room—also the women’s dressing room—with Patsy and helped fix her hair. That night, after Patsy sang, Hank Williams, Jr., made his first appearance on the Opry.”

On Sunday, Patsy was in the kitchen preparing a special dinner. She made one of her famous “everything but the kitchen sink” casseroles. “When she took the dish out of the oven,” Jo Ann reported, “it fell to the floor and broke into a million pieces. Patsy stood there and cried. She said she didn’t have any more food, so Gus and I went and bought a bag of groceries. They were having real financial problems. Monday, we checked into a motel, and Patsy was really hurt. We explained Gus was going overseas and we needed some time to be alone, but Patsy had a hard time believing us.”

The Elvis and rockabilly trends didn’t escape the notice of Bradley or RCA’s Chet Atkins. They were ahead of their time and at the forefront of the new sound. Brenda Lee, still produced by Bradley, was emerging as a major pop and rock star. RCA Nashville was having a lot of success in the pop arena with the world popularity of Elvis and the smooth stylings of Eddy Arnold and Jim Reeves.

There was no shortage of creative talent. The same sidemen who played for Bradley and Atkins when they recorded Kitty Wells, Ernest Tubb, Webb Pierce, Hank Snow, and Porter Wagoner played for the producers when they recorded Patsy, Lee, Arnold, and Reeves.

An example of their versatility can be heard on the recruiting transcriptions. On September 6, five months pregnant and two days away from her twenty-eighth birthday, Patsy stunned the musicians in the studio for “Country Style, U.S.A.” when she handed them sheet music for “Stupid Cupid,” a teen throb hit in 1958 for Connie Francis, but they immediately rose to the occasion.

She was assisted by swinging Hank Garland, whom Patsy introduced for his own slot. “When it comes to picking a guitar, well, this fella just can’t be beat.” A much-subdued Garland performed an instrumental called “Josephine.” Patsy performed “Crazy Dreams,” accompanied by a mellow country fiddle, then ripped into Carl Smith’s “Loose Talk,” his 1955 country chart-topper, assisted by Garland’s innovative guitar echo effects and Marvin Hughes’s blues piano.

“Don’t forget now,” she said in closing, “we’d like to hear from you.” The Governor’s Island, New York, APO was inundated with letters and photo requests.

Though Bradley and New York sales director Sidney Goldberg seriously considered signing Patsy, no decision was made. Bradley feared Patsy might switch to another label. Indeed, Patsy and Randy were shopping around. There was outside interest. Charlie recalled that at a benefit at the Carousel nightclub in Printer’s Alley, Patsy asked guitarist Chet Atkins for his autograph. He wrote, “When are you coming over to RCA?”

Now “the prize” could be Decca’s. The questions Bradley must have asked himself when he mulled over signing Patsy were, “Can we work together? Can I maintain control? And will she listen?” In spite of their disagreements, Patsy knew she had a producer who brought out the best in her. Either that or she listened to Randy, who respected Bradley and his instincts. Randy felt pop was the direction in which to push Patsy. With Bradley, it could happen. Right after Hughes informed him Patsy was officially free of obligation to McCall and Four-Star, Patsy herself called Bradley.