Country legend was classically in-Clined
by Wayne Lee Gay
Ft. Worth Star-Telegram Classical Music Critic
March 5, 2003

She would have been a great Carmen.

Patsy Cline died 40 years ago today at age 30, when the small plane she was flying in from Kansas City to Nashville crashed through fog and storm clouds into a woodland near Camden, Tenn.

Born to a 16-year-old mother into small-town, Depression-era Appalachian poverty, Cline grew up in a family situation that included sexual abuse by her father. Had she received any formal musical training, she probably would have ended up playing the piano or violin in Carnegie Hall -- or, even more likely, singing at the Metropolitan Opera, instead of the Grand Ole Opry.

Her premature death -- as tragically untimely as Schubert's at 31 and Mozart's at 35 -- deprived the world of musical intelligence, spiritual instinct and ravishing native vocal quality of a sort heard -- at best -- in only a half-dozen or so members of any human generation.

The natural beauty of her voice is evident to anyone who's heard her float through Crazy or I Fall to Pieces -- or any of the other 100-plus songs she recorded (or "put on a REE-chord," as she would have said in her abiding Appalachian accent).

Signs of extraordinary, inborn musical talent are not so readily noticeable to the listener; for example, Cline probably had perfect pitch.

She taught herself to play piano by ear the minute she found a keyboard, and recorded snippets of conversations with her band reveal she had extreme sensitivity to pitch variation and key.

Beyond that, she brought a sense of intelligence, sincerity and insight to that least intelligent, most shallow and commercial of musical genres, the country-western song.

In keeping with the custom of the time, virtually every song she recorded is between two and three minutes long. Within this limit, she explored love in all its forms: lost, fulfilled and, most of all, hopeless.

Even more amazingly, in a genre fueled by exploitation and self-satire, she never stooped to either. Her exploration of emotion is clean and reeks of honesty. She used the standard country-western twang, but sparingly -- no more frequently than an operatic mezzo-soprano with good sense uses a sob.

She turned even mediocre material to gold. But when Cline got hold of a good song, such as Neil Sedaka's Stupid Cupid or Cole Porter's True Love, she approached divinity. The Wayward Wind, at three minutes and 20 seconds, becomes practically an oratorio for a singer used to squeezing a world into two minutes.

Had she found the operatic pathway, Cline would definitely have been a Carmen (mezzo-soprano) and not a Tosca (soprano). Her lower range is always smooth and fluid. When she reaches upward, she's brilliant. And she revels in both ends of the range.

Her sexual tension would have been perfect for the Spanish gypsy Carmen, but she would have been equally at home as Rossini's ingenue Rosina in the Barber of Seville -- perhaps even, given the easy flexibility of her voice, in the title role of Rossini's Cenerentola (Cinderella).

This listener came to his appreciation of Patsy Cline way too late and well into middle age, as part of a vague curiosity about country-western music and a lifelong habit of maintaining open ears.

Seven years old at the time of Cline's death (eight months before John F. Kennedy's and seven months after Marilyn Monroe's) I confess I didn't even notice her passing. I remember the arrival of the Beatles in America 11 months later. Elvis Presley and Van Cliburn (two and three years older than Cline, respectively) were both known and mentioned in the house in which I grew up.

But not Patsy Cline, which was our loss.

Yes, she would have been an astounding Carmen.

In the end, though, we can be glad she didn't go that way. Carmen never invites you, across the decades, to Come on In and Make Yourself at Home. She never intimates, breaking every possible rule of grammar, that Never No More Will I Be All Alone.

Cline sang at the Opry, not the opera. The longest song she ever sang was 3 1/2 minutes long. But sometimes, in those three-minute miracles, she came close to what she herself called, "The sweetest music this side of heaven."

Patsy Cline on disc

The best bargain in the long run, since you're going to fall in love with Patsy Cline anyway, is The Patsy Cline Collection on the MCA label. It's almost all-inclusive, with 104 tracks on four discs. The remastered quality is, on the whole, very good. With an attractive and colorful companion booklet, it's a good buy at $56.99, less than $15 a disc.

If you're not ready to spring for four discs, MCA offers The Patsy Cline Story, including most of her biggest hits (e.g., Crazy, Back in Baby's Arms, A Poor Man's Roses) and 21 other tracks for $18.99.

A similar value at $18.99, Patsy Cline's Greatest Recordings offers 25 tracks, with a heavy emphasis on lost love, if that's the side of Cline you're into, on the Varese Sarabande label.

For an excellent, bargain-priced disc that includes some otherwise unavailable material and tracks of Cline talking, try Patsy Cline Live at the Cimarron Ballroom, from a live performance in Tulsa in 1961; it's $7.98 on MCA.

Patsy Cline's 10 best songs

Walkin' After Midnight encapsulates sorrow, loss and defiance with a jazzy beat in just under two minutes.

Crazy, written by Willie Nelson, provides Cline with the opportunity to surrender to love.

You Made Me Love You shows Cline in a non-Western setting, putting a pungent twist and twang on a Hollywood ballad.

Your Cheatin' Heart displays Cline as the siren of old-fashioned cheatin' songs, complete with country accent and sob.

A Poor Man's Roses (Or a Rich Man's Gold) sets up a confrontation as old as love, delivered with an aura of disarming resignation.

It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels, another country classic, includes the country punch line, "too many times, married men think they're still single."

I Fall to Pieces embodies sorrow for lost love in a deep contralto; the subtly softer delivery of the second verse is Cline at her best.

Stupid Cupid puts Cline in a light-hearted, joking rock 'n' roll mood.

Shake, Rattle and Roll -- a rarity not included in most collections -- gives Cline a chance to cross over into Elvis' territory, with stunning results.

San Antonio Rose, another Western classic, becomes a cheerful showcase for gorgeous singing a la Cline; listen for delicious stretched consonants and gentle glissandos.

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