Saturday Morning Country: Patsy Cline

Dolly Parton is a lady and Emmylou Harris is a dame, but Patsy Cline was a broad. A rootin’ tootin’ bar-room broad as fond of cussin’ as she was of a beer and a good time. You gotta have her in this series sooner, rather than later. Unusually for a singer, she’d hang out with the songwriters – including Harlan Howard, Willie Nelson and Roger Miller – at Tootsies Orchid Lounge in Nashville; equally unusually she’d thank them for writing the songs that made her famous. Nelson, of course, wrote Crazy, the song that became Cline’s signature.

Her style evolved from cowboy hats and country dresses to cashmere and pearls. Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray, for instamce, was a song for surburban betrayal, not down-home country disappointment. But for all the country-pop crossover, the Cline was a country singer at heart. And what mattered, more than anything else, was the Voice.