Patsy Cline

Amazingly there is no single thread devoted to her. Let's end that.

"I Fall To Pieces" is the sort of song I end up listening to for hours at a time. That shuffle, the piano, the harmonies, the pedal steel crying; and how they all interweave with each other like a quadruple helix. It's Cline's performance that's the point, though: she pulls off sounding like she's falling to pieces, and at the same time she can carry on a performance. She loses no dignity while being more or less completely open with us, emotionally.

I never know how big a deal she is outside of Texas, though. When I lived in south Texas she was a constant; college friends would put her on during car trips, you'd hear her at restaurants or at shopping malls, and so on. Texas is funny like that: it's really its own world in ways you don't get until you live there. Actually I can see her being played elsewhere in the southwest, though not in the deep south: this may be country music but it's more western music. But Cline shouldn't just be a Texas thing.

When I saw Ben Keith playing with Neil Young in the last few years, the most exciting thing other than the obvious excitement of Neil was knowing that he'd played on that record.

I Fall To Pieces is perfect

love love love patsy cline

the perfection of her work kind of places her beyond comment I think - what can you say? there aren't too many Bach threads either, but...

ok one thing you can say is i do crack up when clueless rock dorks say they don't like contemporary country cuz it's too pop and say they like real, pure country... like patsy cline. um.

I think there's lots that can be said about Patsy Cline! My business about Texas was one thing; out here in the prairie heartland I never hear her. I'll hear Loretta Lynn's version of "She's Got You" on the radio, but never Cline's. And it's not its age, since they even play Hank & plenty of songs from the 50s.

It's definitely pop music, though, & would be nutty think otherwise. It hit #12 on the pop charts.

well but there's something non-pop about hearing a band & a singer all performing live in the same room, which is what you're hearing when you listen to any Patsy Cline record & most pre-Bakersfield country. you know? like, contemporary country is frankenstein monster stuff to the nth degree unless you're listening to No Depression stuff or some of the later Rodney Crowell albums (which rule btw). that's what makes it pop-not-country, compared to Patsy Cline, which is for the pop market for sure but is still comfortably in the "a recording is about a performance" aesthetic basket - the value of which is for sure questionable (some rock fans may imagine that the Stones share some affinity with that aesthetic, but they don't, like, at all).

some of her more straight-up pop stuff is amazing -- thinking in partic. of her version of "you belong to me" which i've listened to hundreds of times.

<3 just the best music

Just picked up a 3cd of her stuff which seems to be more the pre Decca stuff though does have a bit of taht sprinkled through it.
I wonder if that is down to it being easi9er to get rights to the earlier stuff or something.
Not sure why I haven't picked up on her much before. Do like Walking After Midnight and Crazy and a couple of other songs but don't know them inside out or anything., & wondering if i may have been put off by strings etc before.
This does have You Belong To Me on which is Decca era and didn't strike me as schmaltzy, quite classic in fact though not overly starchy.

Enjoying the pretty stripped down sound with pedal steel as strings though rhythm may not be quite as fluid as i would idealise. She touches on r'n;r/rockabilly in places as well.
But that voice is the real thing innit

I fucking love Patsy. That’s all I’ve got to say about that.