Searching for Patsy Cline
“I go out walkin' after midnight, Out in the starlight, just hoping you may be Somewhere a-walkin' after midnight, Searchin' for me.”
It has been said that the loneliest time of the day is the hours between midnight and dawn. In 1957 Patsy Cline performed “Walkin After Midnight” on the Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts show, the American Idol of its day. Cline wowed audiences with her performance of "Walkin' After Midnight," winning the program's competition and $10,000. Although she was not the writer, she molded the song into a heart-wrenching ballad that is palpable in its pathos. She burst onto the national stage at that point and people have sought to honor her legend and learn her backstory since that time. Fortunately you can now follow her trail in the light of day and Winchester, Virginia is the ideal place to do it. www.visitwinchesterva.com
Virginia “Ginny” Patterson Hensley was born in Winchester in 1932. Her father worked at Washington and Lee University and while living on campus she was exposed to big band music and later stated that that was where her love of pop music began. Her parents, Samuel and Hilda, later parted and her mother, a seamstress, moved with her three children to Winchester.
Ginny was a self-taught pianist by the age of nine and soon added singing to her repertoire. She dropped out of school at age sixteen and performed in local establishments but her professional career began in 1952 when she performed with Bill Peer and his band. He convinced her to change her stage name to Patsy but her friends and family always referred to her as Ginny. In 1953 she wed Gerald Cline and it was as Patsy Cline that she made her first, unsuccessful, recordings the following year.
After her 1957 breakthrough performance she divorced Cline and married Charles Dick the same year and they relocated to Nashville. Charles and Patsy were the parents of two children, Julie and Randy. In the 1960s she became a cast member of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, TN, toured with Johnny Cash and repeatedly released songs that topped the country music charts.
On March 5, 1963 Patsy was killed in a plane crash along with Hawkshaw Hawkins and Cowboy Copas while flying from Kansas City, MO. Her manager, Randy Hughes, a relatively new pilot, flew the Piper Comanche. He was flying by sight not instrumentation and, caught in a rainstorm, became disoriented. They crashed 2-miles outside Camden, TN, 90-miles from their destination. Visitors to the Crash Site Memorial will see an interpretive collage in a gazebo and further along an etched boulder placed there in 1996.
The first stops on your quest should be the exhibition on Patsy Cline in the Winchester-Frederick County Convention and Visitors Bureau and the 2004 Patsy Cline Murals painted by high school students at Indian Alley & Cork St. The exhibition, Becoming Patsy Cline, is free and was returned to the site by popular demand.
By the time Patsy was sixteen she had moved nineteen times. The tin-roofed Patsy Cline Historic House was her 19th move and the home she lived in the longest, from 1948 to 1953. The house is located at 608 Kent Street in Old Town Winchester. The house consists of two rooms and a kitchen on the first floor and one large L-shaped room on the second. A tiny bathroom was added beneath the stairs off the parlor and it is hard to imagine her preparing for performances in the miniscule space.
The parlor is filled with photographs and memorabilia as well as a white piano, record player and early television set. The dining area has an exhibit of her salt and peppershaker collection, her costumes, her mother’s sewing machine and facsimiles of her hand drawn stage outfit designs. The outfits displayed are western ensembles. After her appearance on the talent show she was advised by a female producer to alter her style. She adopted a more sophisticated style and began wearing her signature red lipstick.
The room on the second floor served as bedrooms for Patsy, her mother, sister and brother. Curtains hung from a clothesline provided privacy. The house is listed on National Register of Historic Places. Nearby, at 720 S. Kent Street, Patsy married Charlie Dick in 1957. www.celebratingpatsycline.org
Money was always an issue for the family so she left school to work. She had many jobs including housecleaning and slaughtering chickens. She worked the longest at Gaunt’s Drugstore as a popular waitress and soda jerk. Replicas of some items she used at Gaunt’s are on display in the Cline House.
Patsy was industrious and even while working at a series of jobs she made the time to perform. One of her favorite venues, and the site of her debut, was WINC Radio Station. She walked into the station at 14 and expressed her desire to sing on the station’s 30-minute country music program.
Patsy Cline died as a result of the plane crash and more than 25,000 people attended her funeral. Her gravesite is in Shenandoah Memorial Park near the North Gate and a 55-ft. bell tower in the southeast section of the cemetery serves as a memorial to the singer. Visitors should take along a penny to place on her grave. It is said to bring good luck.
Patsy forged her own path and went against convention by wearing pants, much to the consternation of the music community, and being a divorcée. She was also known for being supportive of other female artists and offering help and advice when needed.
In her brief lifetime she recorded 102 songs and a trio of albums. Patsy Cline’s legacy is widespread, lasting and extends beyond her music. She is credited with helping to create the Nashville Sound and in 1973 she posthumously became the first female solo artist inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. She was the recipient of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, is depicted on a U.S. postage stamp, has a star on Hollywood Boulevard and is in the Guinness Book of Records.
You need not search far to find Patsy Cline in Winchester, Virginia.
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