Today's Birthdays

one click shows all of today's celebrity birthdays

Browse All Birthdays

43,625    Actors
27,931    Actresses
4,867    Composers
7,058    Directors
842    Footballers
221    Racing drivers
925    Singers
9,111    Writers

Get FamousLikeMe on your website
One line of code gets FamousLikeMe on your website. Find out more.

Subscribe to Daily updates


Add to Google

privacy policy



Famous Like Me > Singer > C > Patsy Cline

Profile of Patsy Cline on Famous Like Me

 
Name: Patsy Cline  
   
Also Know As:
   
Date of Birth: 5th March 1932
   
Place of Birth: Winchester, Virginia, United States
   
Profession: Singer
 
 
From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia
Patsy Cline

Patsy Cline, (September 8, 1932 – March 5, 1963) was an American country music singer.

Born Virginia Patterson Hensley in Winchester, Virginia, United States, she received her first contract as a country singer in 1953 and, despite her short life, would become one of the most influential singers in the history of American popular music. Cline was the last name of her first husband, Gerald Cline, a construction industry mogul, from whom she married in 1953 and divorced in 1957.

That same year, Cline married Charles Allen Dick, who worked as a linotype operator for the Winchester Star. They had a daughter, Julia Simadore Dick (1958-; now known as Julie Fudge), and a son, Allen Randolph "Randy" Dick (1961-).

Her breakthrough hit was "Walkin' After Midnight" (1957), written by Don Hecht and Alan Block. She became a mainstay on the country music showcase Grand Ole Opry in 1960. Though she began her career recording rockabilly, it became clear that Cline's voice was best suited for pop/country crossover tunes. Some signature songs are "Crazy" (written by Willie Nelson but forever linked to Cline), "She's Got You," "I Fall To Pieces", and Don Gibson's, "Sweet Dreams."

On June 14, 1961, Patsy Cline and her brother were involved in a head-on car collision. The impact of the accident threw Patsy through the windshield, nearly killing her. Suffering from a jagged cut across her forehead that required stitches, a broken wrist, and a dislocated hip, she spent a month in the hospital. When she left the hospital, her forehead was still visibly scarred.

Cline died in a plane crash at Camden, Tennessee while returning from Kansas City, Missouri at the age of 30, in 1963. On the airplane with her and also killed were three other country music figures who were fairly well-known at the time, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Randy Hughes, and Cowboy Copas. Hughes, Cline's manager, was the plane's pilot. Country singer Jack Anglin died in an automobile accident while driving to her funeral.

Were she alive today, Patsy Cline would have four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. After Cline's death, Charlie Dick married and divorced Jamey Ryan, also a singer, and had a son, Charles Allen Dick, Jr.

Cline is interred in the Shenendoah Memorial Park cemetery, in her hometown of Winchester, Virginia.

Among her many honors, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6160 Hollywood Blvd, she was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1973, in 1993 she was honored with her image on a United States postage stamp and in 1995, she was awarded posthumously a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

The 1985 movie Sweet Dreams starring Jessica Lange, is based on her adult life and is said by some familiar with her to be fairly accurate in many respects, although some have disputed its portrayal of her mercurial relationship with second husband Charlie Dick (portrayed in the film by Ed Harris). However, its depiction of the plane crash as occurring in high desert mountains totally unlike any terrain found in West Tennessee is wildly inaccurate. Another adaptation of her life is the one-woman musical, A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline which originated in Canada in the 1990s and originally starred Louise Vallance as Cline.

"I Fall to Pieces" was voted #107 on the RIAA list of the Songs of the Century.

Further reading

  • In The Country of Country: A Journey to the Roots of American Music,

Nicholas Dawidoff, Vintage Books, 1998, ISBN 0-375-70082-x

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Patsy Cline