Honky Tonk Angel (45 page)

On Wednesday, February 27, Patsy dropped in to visit Trudy Stamper at WSM Radio. “She sat in my office and told me all about the last session. She was so excited about what she’d accomplished. At the time, we had a group of senior citizens on a tour of the station. They were in Studio C, and I asked Patsy if she wouldn’t like to go in and sing for them. She said, ‘Sure. I’d love to. You think they’d like “Bill Bailey”?’ I replied, ‘Yes, of course they would. That would be great.’

“Patsy went into the studio. Everyone made such a fuss over her. I’ll never forget how those folks gathered around, showering her with love and affection. It was beautiful, and for a brief moment I realized why Patsy wanted so desperately all those years to be a star. She had so much to give and loved the recognition. After she signed autographs and posed for pictures, without any rehearsal or anything, she just sang. And sang her heart out and with lots of soul.”

Teddy Wilburn recalled the next day. “Patsy had a seamstress make some drapes for Loretta and Mooney’s little Goodlettsville farmhouse. She’d also had two of those big ottomans made to resemble a pair of dice. Patsy surprised them and helped Loretta put the drapes up. The ottomans were late coming in, and she planned on delivering them another time.”

Loretta recounted the story of that evening: “Patsy called me and Mooney and asked us to come over to listen to the sessions she’d just completed a bit over a week ago. We got up out of bed and went over. She was all excited and proud. Patsy told us, ‘Now, I want y’all to listen to this and see if you think maybe I’m getting out a little too far from country.’ Patsy had been worried about that. Me and Doo sat in Patsy and Charlie’s music room and listened to the tapes as Patsy embroidered a tablecloth. Her little boy Randy was on a rocking horse.

“When the tape finished, I told her, ‘No, Patsy, it’s beautiful.’ What else could you say? That’s what it was. It was fantastic! But, of course, Patsy was fifteen to twenty years ahead of her time in her singing and her music.

“Patsy told me she’d give me fifty dollars if I’d go with her on that Kansas City benefit date Sunday, but I told her, ‘I have a date Saturday that pays seventy dollars, so I better go on and take that one.’ We made plans to go shopping when she returned from the weekend. Just before we left her house around midnight Patsy said she had something for me. Then she gave me some long dangly sparkling earrings and a whole big box filled with clothes.

“When we went out to the car through the music room, I said to Doo, ‘Oh, I forgot to say good-bye to Patsy.’ He told me, ‘Well, hurry up and go ahead and tell her. It’s midnight and we need to be going.’ I set the box down on the hood of Patsy and Charlie’s Cadillac and went back in. I hugged her and kissed her and as I went back out the door Patsy hauled off and hit me a little bit. She said, ‘We’re gonna stick together, aren’t we gal?’ That was the last time I saw Patsy.”

You didn’t say no to Harry “Hap” Peebles, the Midwest’s largest and best-known show promoter. He took care of the acts he booked, was honest and, as a founding member of the Country Music Association, respected. And this was a good cause. Since 1956, Jack Wesley “Cactus Jack” Call was Kansas City’s most popular deejay. In January 1963, he was the driving force behind station KCMK-FM switching to an all-country format. Days later he lay unconscious at St. Joseph’s Hospital after his car collided with a transport truck. On January 25, he died, leaving a wife, two young sons, and little money.

Peebles contacted Hawkshaw Hawkins and Billy Walker, devoted friends of Call’s, to ask if they’d organize a benefit. “Anything for Cactus Jack,” Hawkins told him. “He always went overboard for us.” In 1961 Peebles was Hawkins’ best man at his marriage to Jean Shepard onstage in Wichita before a performance headlining Tex Ritter.

Walker phoned Randy, for assistance. “Sure,” Randy pledged. “What can I do?”

“Get Patsy.”

“My God, how can I do that when she’s in such demand?”

The date was set for Sunday, March 3 at the Kansas City, Kansas, Memorial Auditorium. An impressive array of artists signed on: Roy Acuff; Randy’s father-in-law, Cowboy Copas; Opry favorites Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper with their Clinch Mountain Clan; George Jones; Dottie West; Opry announcer and WSM deejay Ralph Emery; Hawkins; and Walker.

In mid-February, with few tickets sold, Peebles was frantic. He asked Walker, “Since Patsy was such a favorite of Cactus Jack’s, won’t she do it?”

Walker pleaded with Randy. “But that weekend,” Randy explained, “we’re in New Orleans on Friday and Birmingham on Saturday. You know how important her Sundays are.”

When Randy asked Patsy, she replied, “Hoss, if you can get us there, I’ll do it.”

“Well, Miss Cline, ain’t you forgetting we got a plane? That ole Comanche will get us there with time to spare.”

Patsy’s Birmingham date was booked as “I Fall to Pieces” hit the charts, two shows for four hundred dollars. Then the promoter canceled. He rebooked when the song was number one, still offering only four hundred—“take it or leave it.” Randy took it The date was canceled again. When the promoter called a third time to rebook, Patsy had “Crazy” and “She’s Got You” on the charts. Randy asked for five thousand dollars and settled for three.

MARCH 2

Patsy, Randy, and Charlie left New Orleans in the four-seater after breakfast They arrived in Birmingham to find the two shows sold out and five hundred waiting outside. Tex Ritter, Charlie Rich, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Flatt & Scruggs were also on the bill. The promoter wanted Patsy to do a third show.

“Hell, no!” said Randy. “Not at this price.”

“I gotta have Patsy. How much?”

“Another thousand.”

“I can’t do it.”

“Hoss, what’s the problem?” Patsy wanted to know.

“He wants another show but won’t pay,” Randy replied.

“What do the others say?”

“They’ll do it,” replied the promoter.

“If everyone else’s going to,” said Patsy, “I’ll do it.”

Randy was furious but held his tongue until the promoter left “Goddamnit, Patsy. This ain’t no way to do business! He’s making big bucks, why shouldn’t we be paid?”

“Did you see the look on his face?” she asked. “He was desperate. We’ll get it back double the next time. He’s always treated us right. He’ll come through. Just you wait and see.”

Mr. and Mrs. Bill Holcombe of Alabaster, Alabama, were at the show. “I first saw Patsy on Arthur Godfrey and heard all her records,” Helen Holcombe said, “and I wanted to see her. With two babies, we were barely able to scrape together the money for tickets. My mother-in-law babysat the oldest, but we had to take our one-year-old. When we got to the auditorium, I asked Bill to buy me a Patsy Cline photograph so I could get it autographed. He said, ‘Honey, we can’t afford it.’ I didn’t push. I knew I was lucky to get the tickets.

“For me, the show began when Patsy came on. She wore a beautiful white dress with rhinestones and, at the waist, she had this huge rhinestone brooch. She sang all her hits, but when she did ‘Walkin’ After Midnight,’ the place went wild. When she finished, Patsy got a standing ovation.”

“Any of you gals have weight problems?” asked Patsy. There was a loud roar. “I been busy trying to lose weight and this is the first time in a long time I’ve been able to wear white.” She said how much weight she had lost and the audience applauded. “I’m a-telling you! Don’t it just look good? Of course, now I got another problem. I can’t look any food in the eye.”

At the end, Patsy quieted everyone. She was genuinely touched by their response. “I’ve really had a good time with you,” she said. “God love you! I’ve done a lot of things that I’m not happy about, and, in the short time God gives us on this earth, I’m doing something about changing all that. I sure do appreciate you sticking with me and buying my records. Y’all. been good to ole Patsy!” The audience applauded and jumped to their feet.

“In spite of my child squirming,” said Mrs. Holcombe, “it was an evening I’ve never forgotten. And Bill’s never forgotten he didn’t get me that photo. I kid him all the time, ‘It was only a dollar!’”

After the third show, as Patsy, Charlie, and Randy were leaving, the promoter handed Randy an envelope with a thousand dollars in it. “There,” he said, smiling, “you got what you wanted. Thanks for coming through.”

Charlie reported that Patsy gave Randy “a look that had ‘I told you so’ written all over it!”

That same night in Brunswick, Maryland, Bill Peer and his Melody Boys took an intermission at the Moose Lodge. Peer said hello to Fay Crutchley.

“Oh, God, Bill, I miss Patsy,” Fay sighed. “Don’t you?”

“Sure I do!” he replied.

“Have you heard from her?”

“Are you serious? As far as I’m concerned, Miss Patsy Cline can fall to pieces!”

MARCH 3

The lights went on early that Sunday morning at 4413 GraMar Lane in the Inglewood section of east Nashville. Kathy Hughes received a call from Randy late Saturday to let her know the plane would arrive around 8:00 A.M. at Cornelia Fort Air Park. Walker took a commercial flight to Kansas City Saturday after the Opry. Hawkins, who hated flying, would take his place in the Comanche but come back on his return ticket. Hawkins and Jean Shepard lived a few blocks away, so he came to the Hughes’s house to meet Cowboy Copas.

“While Mother and I prepared fried chicken for everyone to eat on the plane,” said Kathy, “Hawk and Dad sat in the middle of the kitchen floor, having the time of their lives with our son Larry’s gyroscope.”

Kathy and her mother got Larry ready for services at Grace Baptist Church, then drove to the airfield. Soon they spotted Randy’s plane.

“While Randy refueled,” Kathy explained, “Patsy and Charlie told us how well Birmingham had gone and gave Dad regards from Tex Ritter. I gave Patsy a bag with the chicken and a loaf of white bread. She took a piece and joked, ‘Can’t think of the last time I had fried chicken for breakfast!’ Charlie had the weekend receipts and stayed to take care of business. Dad and Hawk got on the plane.”

Patsy had stayed in touch all weekend with her maid. Little Randy was running a fever when she left for New Orleans and she was still worried. She asked Charlie to head straight home. Good-byes were exchanged and Randy taxied off a little after nine. He flew northwest, crossed the Mississippi River, and landed at approximately 12:30 P.M. at Fisher Flying Service, Kansas City, Missouri.

There were shows at 2:00, 5:15, and 8:15. Now Patsy had a cold and was exhausted, but there was time enough only to check in at the Town House Hotel, change, and get to the auditorium, which was three blocks away. As they arrived, Anne Call was thanking the artists for their loyalty and introducing them to her children. She asked to meet Acuff and Peebles told her he had missed his flight.

“He told me his wife, Mildred, got this funny feeling about his making the trip, so she didn’t wake him.” Emery, too, canceled at the last minute because of prior commitments.

Peebles began the show with a tribute to Call: “Cactus Jack earned a reputation as one of country and western music’s great Midwestern voices. The entertainers of this Grand Ole Opry show are here because of the respect and affection they
felt for him. It doesn’t seem right doing a country show without Cactus Jack in his western shirt and string tie interviewing and bringing on the stars. Rest assured, Jack is with us in spirit as we celebrate his memory and dedication to country music.”

A festive mood filled the hall. Avid fan Marie Kerby was there: “As they waited to go on, I visited with Billy, whom I’d known three years, Patsy, Hawkshaw, Cowboy, Dottie, and everyone. Fans weren’t allowed backstage, so when we’d spot one of the artists we’d run down the hall that led to the stage to say hello. I rushed over to Patsy. In spite of her success, she was [still] the sweet person I’d met two years ago.

“Although she’d flown from Birmingham and Nashville and had been up since early morning, Patsy didn’t seem tired. She posed for pictures, talked about her next album, which she told us was her best one yet. When she spoke about Las Vegas, she insisted, ‘I definitely don’t like Vegas. I never worked so hard in my life. I dread the thought of going back, but it’s one of the necessary evils of being in show business.’”

Marie noted that Copas was the most introverted of the stars. “But when he and the others weren’t on, they stood on the sidelines and applauded, cheered, and whistled like the rest of us. During the intermission, Hawkshaw even took his guitar and played for some of us. When it came time for him to do his new record ‘Lonesome 7-7203,’ he didn’t know all of it. At the second show he apologized and said, ‘I found a copy of the lyrics in my wallet.’ The audience went wild. He had George McCormick of the Clinch Mountain Clan stand next to him and hold the paper as he sang.

“Hawk’s main topic of conversation was about Jean and their baby, Don Robin, whom they’d named after Don Gibson and Marty Robbins. He described his trick horses and how he’d just built a darkroom in his basement to develop pictures. Then he took pictures of us. Hawk said Jeanie was expecting another baby ‘any minute.’”