Today In Pop Culture: America, Meet Patsy Cline

By Jeffery X Martin

Country music has always been a male-dominated genre, from Hank Williams to Hank Junior to whatever the hell you want to call Florida-Georgia Line and Locash. You can hear a strong female voice every once in a while, but in a ratio comparison to men, those ladies are few and far between. But it is far to say that there was a female revolution in country, starting in the late 1950s when one of the most distinct female voices the world has ever known got her start on a national television show.

The year is 1957, and a man named Arthur Godfrey is the king of television. He does the morning news for CBS television. He hosts a talk show for CBS Radio. If there’s anything that needs to be hosted, the first person producers look for is Arthur Godfrey. He is a combination of Tom Bergeron, Simon Cowell, and Carson Daly, even if he looks slightly like Brendan Gleeson.

His biggest hit is a show called Talent Scouts, which is broadcast on both radio and television. The concept is simple: bring in unknown or lesser-known talents, have them perform for a live audience, and let the amount of applause each act receives decides who wins. The applause is measured on a device called an “applause-o-meter.” Surely, this is science at its finest.

January 21, 1957, and Arthur Godfrey introduces a singer named Patsy Cline. Cline has a deal with Four Star Records, but her appearance on Talent Scouts is the most exposure her singing has gotten. She sings “Walkin’ After Midnight,” which is set to be released as a single.

The crowd is wowed, and their raucous applause buries the needle of the applause-o-meter. Radio stations get calls requesting Cline’s new song. After ten years of hard work, Patsy Cline is finally an overnight sensation.

And then, Patsy Cline disappears.

Her deal with Four Star only allowed Cline to record songs written by the label’s stable of songwriters. None of them were that good, and they failed to hit the charts. When Cline’s contract expired, she signed with Decca Records, who steered her towards making country/pop crossover songs. Her first Decca release was “I Fall to Pieces.” It was her first number one country hit, and it also landed at number six on the Adult Contemporary chart, and number 12 on the Pop charts.

After that, Cline was an established household name. She used her fame, behind the scenes, to boost the careers of other women in country music. This was a surprisingly feminist move for the early 1960s, but Patsy Cline did whatever the hell she wanted.

You can thank Patsy Cline for making Loretta Lynn, Dottie West, Brenda Lee and Barbara Mandrell famous. Some of the stories about Cline and Lynn were part of the film, Coal Miner’s Daughter, with Sissy Spacek playing Loretta and Beverly D’Angelo as Patsy. Tommy Lee Jones is in that movie, too, shockingly young and with a full head of blonde hair.

There’s also Sweet Dreams, a bio-pic starring Jessica Lange as Cline. The film was a decent hit, and Lange got an Academy Award nomination for her performance. Cline’s family, however, were less than pleased. They pointed out factual inaccuracies in the movie.

Unlike other female country artists, Patsy Cline was not afraid to be seen as a badass bitch. Nobody pushed Patsy Cline around. She refused to play a concert unless she was paid up front. Her favorite nickname for everyone was “Hoss” and she referred to herself as “The Cline.” She was the first female country singer to headline a tour and received top billing above the men she was touring with. By the gods, she was the Queen of it all.

Cline perished in a plane crash in 1963. It was a rainy, foggy night, and the pilot of the plane was not instrument-rated. He was squinting, trying to see through the mess. He missed the landing strip by about 90 miles, crashing nose down in a forest in Camden, Tennessee.

Patsy Cline’s voice is her legacy, and it is still considered the gold standard, the high bar to reach for female country singers. And it was on this night that the Queen of Country Music started her ascent towards the throne, thanks to Arthur Godfrey.