Today, 5th March 2015, it is an unbelievable 52 YEARS since the world lost one of the ALL-TIME-GREAT American singers, Patsy Cline (real name Virginia Hensley), another victim of a terrible plane crash, at just 30 years of age. Fate really can be a cruel arbiter of one's destiny on occasion. And just like the crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper four years earlier, it was snowing heavily (1963 was the year of the worst winter in living memory in the UK too) so the plane (another light aircraft just like the one Buddy was in) should never have been allowed to take off. Patsy's strident voice was such that, although her musical roots were firmly embedded in country music, she was a trail-blazer, crossing into pop and paving the way for other country singers to follow. And what a GREAT performance Jessica Lange gave as Patsy, miming to Patsy's original recordings, in the 1985 biopic "Sweet Dreams", which is one of my favourite of Patsy's songs, along with "Heartaches", the Willie Nelson song "Crazy" (his own version is GREAT too) and I also love her interpretation of a Bob Wills song "San Antonio Rose" but, as with Buddy and Dusty, I LOVE them all. (Its also difficult to believe that film is now 30 years old, as old as Patsy was when she died, seems like only recently I saw it at the cinema for the first time when it was first released.) "Blue Moon of Kentucky" is another good one and if you haven't heard Patsy's gut-wrenching recording of the Ray Charles classic "Some Day You'll Want Me To Want You", I implore you to beg, steal or borrow to get a copy. Like Buddy, Patsy is still played regularly on radio today, ensuring she will NEVER be forgotten and I will NEVER part with my CDs and vinyl LPs neither. So put your hands together, please, ladies and gents for this great lady of song and may she R.I.P. even if her death was far from peaceful. Love you, Patsy
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