December 18, 2024 • 28 mins
How Patsy Cline shifted the country music industry--and a whole country's idea of femininity.
Interviewees: Ellis Nasser Margaret Jones Sources: Country Music USA by Bill C. Malone Creating Country Music by Richard A. Peterson Selling Tradition: Appalachia and the Construction of an American Folk by Jane E. Song Catchers, Ballad Makers, and New Social Historians: The Historiography of Appalachian Music Music: Crazy by Patsy Cline
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
I remember playing a game of hideand seek when I was five or six.
I tucked myself underneath mygrandma's kitchen sink with
the bottles of dish soap.
I curled my body forward withthe sink pipe next to me through
the tiny sliver of the cabinet.
I saw my grandma just her legs,the lower half of her body, dancing
(00:32):
to Crazy, A song by Patsy Klein.
Crazy for.
I watched her glide acrossthe kitchen floor like a slice
of butter moves on a hot pan.
(00:59):
From this moment on, I alwaysconflated my grandma with Patsy Klein.
I thought for a whilethey were the same person.
They both had these stubbornsmiles set between fat cheeks,
hair that swells up in a bouffant.
They handled words with aprecise economy and beauty.
My grandma modeled herself afterPatsy, this paragon of white, southern,
(01:24):
middle class suburban femininity,so salient in the post-war era.
They were the same age.
Born two town over.
I reached out to an expert on PatsyKlein, hoping he might gimme some
insight into the type of womanmy grandma was trying to become.
(01:45):
She seems like such acomposed, polite woman.
And then, no, you got thewrong idea about Patsy.
She was, I wouldn't say the word polite.
She certainly had manners, butyou didn't mess with Patsy.
That's Ellis Nasser.
Listen, I am perceived to be thedefinitive voice on Patsy Klein.
(02:07):
Her husband said I knew moreabout her than he did not.
Quite true.
He's devoted the past few decadesof his life to researching
and writing about Patsy Klein.
She was a riot and shewas a real fellows gal.
Uh, she was like one of the boys.
If somebody farted, Patsy wouldlift her leg and fart right back.
(02:29):
That was Patsy Klein.
Patsy was a pain to work with.
Apparently she and her producer, OwenBradley would always get in fights about
which direction to take her music in.
Owen and Bradley had to fightwith her in the studio and
they would make compromises.
He said, okay, this is whatwe're gonna do on an album.
You pick six songs you want,I'll pick six songs I want.
(02:53):
And that's how these albums cameabout and how she got to at least
record things that were country.
And only once to do a little yodelinghas, she wanted always to do hillbilly.
She wanted to yodel.
She wanted to do country becausethat's what she grew up on.
That's what she grew up on,and that's what she loved.
She didn't hate pop music, butthat's not what she wanted to record.
(03:16):
Hillbilly, that's what Appalachiancountry music was called in the fifties.
This was new to me.
That Patsy Klein was from Appalachia.
Like I said, my grandma was from thesame area of Virginia, a few counties
(03:36):
over from Patsy, so I was just hearingthat my grandma was from Appalachia too.
I realized that I didn't know muchabout the town my grandma came from.
I knew it was called Bluefield, Bluefield,Virginia, and that's pretty much it.
I decided to ask my uncle Jim.
I didn't have his number.
(03:58):
I had to ask my mom for it,but she warned me before I did.
So Jim's is very fanciful fence, you know,like he, he has a fantastical imagination.
So just take it with a grain of salt.
(04:19):
Hello, Aviva.
How are you?
I'm good.
How are you?
Good, good, good.
You know, those towns in Appalachia,um, they're, they're simple.
Um, I tell you what's interestingis that, um, her father, so
(04:42):
that's my grandma's father had afurniture distribution company.
That was headquartered in Chicago.
It was called Chicago House Furniture.
And, uh,
he had like, uh, a fleet of maybefour panel vans and they would
deliver furniture here, there, andeverywhere, you know, throughout the
(05:06):
area of that part of West Virginia.
And during the course of the twenties,for about a decade ish had lasted.
Uh, everybody was desperate for liquor.
These panel vans were perfect for makingdeliveries of moonshine and if you had
to deliver a piece of furniture anyway,it was a great cover story for delivering
(05:28):
moonshine and, and when you hear thatthey were all huge drinkers and always
carousing and getting drunk and that sortof thing, it all sort of makes sense.
It's funny for me to hear,because I think of Grandma
Alice as a very composed proper.
Oh yeah.
Woman, you know, concerned with decorum.
(05:49):
So to hear that her family was morerambunctious is, feels ironic to me at the
wedding when, you know, when the Bluefieldcrowd showed up for the wedding, there
were maybe 10 or 15 of 'em that came down.
And, uh, they really made a scene, youknow, they, they were dancing on top of
(06:11):
the bars and they were just raising hell.
And that, uh, I, I really thinkthat, uh, it was probably an
embarrassment for my mother.
Why?
Why do you think she felt that way?
I think that she had been tryingto gain distance from Bluefield
and sort of turn the page.
(06:32):
Did she share many stories abouther childhood in Bluefield?
No, and I think one of your questions,it was whether or not she was
considered herself Appalachian.
She, she did not like that.
You know, West Virginiais considered backwards.
(06:54):
You know, up, up north, they would always,they joke about West Virginia as being
just a bunch of stupid hillbillies.
And so that was a labelthat she sought to shake.
There's a real stigma about Appalachiathat they're, that they're hillbillies,
they're inbred, they're cross-eyed.
And my mother had very, very bad eyes andI'm the one of the seven who got her eyes.
(07:20):
I came out the womb, cross-eyed, and.
You know, that's a standard jokethat, uh, that hillbillies are
inbred, so they're cross-eyed.
My mother was so embarrassed about myeyes that she, between the ages of one
(07:41):
and three, I had four eye operations.
What?
Yeah.
To try to straighten out my eyes.
Here's my mom's reaction to that story.
Is that what he said?
She corrected, my parents, correctedhis eyes with surgery because any wom,
any family wants to correct them forthe, for the goodness of their life.
(08:06):
And I'm not sure they would've eversaid, if you don't correct this,
you'll be look at like a hillbilly.
I told her about the panelvans and the moonshine story.
So how do you explain that?
We went, so we have seen pictures of.
Family furniture company andwe went as little kids to see
(08:29):
where they sold furniture.
So he did all that as a frontto a underground moonshine.
There's zero evidence.
My mom thinks Jim likes tosensationalize things that
he's too interested in history.
I mean, the fun thing is he is likeincredibly like interested in the past.
(08:51):
I, I think partly it's because the future,the har, the future's really hard for him.
Like he doesn't want to work, youknow, it, it's a whole nother story of
like, he has very little motivation.
I think he deals with depression, so hekind of dwells in the past I heard her,
but I also took this with a grain of salt.
(09:14):
My Uncle Jim, he has beenback to Bluefield more than
any of his siblings have.
My Uncle Jim has conducteddozens of oral interviews.
I think I lend more credence to hisviews than her opinions on the stories.
I was also interested in the fact that mymom seemed to be adamant about the fact
(09:41):
that that grandma was not Appalachian.
She was not from.
West Virginia and she was not fromAppalachia, she was from Virginia.
Yeah, but I'm just looking at a map here.
And Bluefield is in the CumberlandMountain Range, which is in
(10:01):
Appalachian Mountain Range.
No.
Okay.
So she's from a little towncalled Bluefield, Virginia.
But the.
It actually like spreadsacross both the, the border.
I mean, grandma wasfrom a coal mining town.
Bluefield was a coal mining town.
Well, so, um,
(10:23):
she would say, I'm not fromAppalachia, I'm from Virginia.
Because she wanted to be thought ofas, you know, like from like Virginia.
And I was like, oh my gosh,mom, I didn't know that.
A, I didn't know that GrandmaAlice was Appalachian.
(10:44):
And my mom goes, oh, no, no, no.
She wasn't like, she wouldnever consider herself Steve.
Steve.
That confirms it.
Yeah.
And I was like, but it's right there.
She, she, she never even Robin at heryoung age knows that my mother did
not want to have that association.
Patsy Klein's producer Owen Bradleyforced her to transition from.
(11:07):
The more traditional Appalachian sound toa polished pop-in Fused Nashville sound.
Her wardrobe evolved from gangof dresses and cowgirl boots to
elegant cocktail gowns and pearls.
This rebranding distance herfrom her rural working class
Appalachian roots aligned her witha broader vision of femininity
(11:32):
and success in post-war America.
This was a shift.
She was forced to take the one thatmy grandma sought out for herself.
Uh, her mother made everything shewore and her mother made her some
very skin fitting silk outfits thatthe Opry refused to let her wear.
They said, if you don't go home,you can't go on the show tonight.
(11:54):
And that is how the accident happened.
That's how the car crash happened in 1961.
Tell me that story.
Well, she had to go home tochange outfits and she came back.
It was a Wednesday, June 14th.
Patsy and her brother were on theirway to the shopping center to buy a
(12:16):
dress that would be more appropriatefor the Grand Ole Opry dress code.
Another woman tried to pass another carin front of my brother and I and hit his
head on It broke my hip, dislocated it.
And broke my right arm and cutmy face, uh, face up a little
bit and in three months I'll goback for more plastic surgery.
(12:40):
And then, uh, they say they'regonna gimme a facelift and
it's gonna make me like new.
Very few people realize that after Patsy'scar accident in 1961, when she basically
it was to be left for dead, she recoveredwithin three weeks, which was a miracle.
With all the broken bones andalmost losing her eyesight and
(13:00):
scarred all over the place.
I mean, her face was literally,uh, you know, all patched up.
Correct me if I'm wrong,she recorded crazy.
Pretty soon after the carcrash, she recorded crazy.
Hold on a second.
Where's the magnifying glass?
When I need it?
August?
Yeah.
August.
Kill everybody that I'mold and almost blind.
(13:21):
Okay.
Okay.
1961.
August 21st, 1961.
So she was in the car crash, the caraccident, or just before Christmas.
Patsy recorded crazy.
Her biggest hit without a doubt, and thenumber one jukebox hit in all history.
(13:43):
With broken ribs on crutches.
People say that this is why she wasable to get so much emotional depth
in the song because she was in pain.
This is very symbolic to me.
The industry had this grip on her.
They forced her to pioneer thistransition from Appalachian
(14:04):
hillbilly music to the pop, morecommercial sound against her will.
Both my grandma and Patsy Klein,they were both under control.
A tight control buttoned up, forced tofit this idea of the ideal woman for
(14:26):
that time and that region of America.
The effects of this control, avery narrow version of themselves.
There was this one saying.
My uncle kept repeatingthroughout the phone call.
Yeah.
The old saying is, uh uh, be carefulwhen you shake the family tree.
(14:47):
You never know what'll fall out.
What falls out?
A portrait of a very Appalachian,a rural, poor family history.
For context, demon copperhead, theBarbara King Silver novel that set in.
(15:08):
A town only a few towns overfrom where my grandma grew up.
I mean, this is a culture that holdstension with the type of woman my grandma
was trying to become, and it's hard toreconcile with the lifestyle my mom lives.
I remember playing a game of hideand seek when I was five or six.
I tucked myself underneath mygrandma's kitchen sink with
the bottles of dish soap.
I curled my body forward withthe sink pipe next to me through
the tiny sliver of the cabinet.
I saw my grandma just her legs,the lower half of her body, dancing
(00:32):
to Crazy, A song by Patsy Klein.
Crazy for.
I watched her glide acrossthe kitchen floor like a slice
of butter moves on a hot pan.
(00:59):
From this moment on, I alwaysconflated my grandma with Patsy Klein.
I thought for a whilethey were the same person.
They both had these stubbornsmiles set between fat cheeks,
hair that swells up in a bouffant.
They handled words with aprecise economy and beauty.
My grandma modeled herself afterPatsy, this paragon of white, southern,
(01:24):
middle class suburban femininity,so salient in the post-war era.
They were the same age.
Born two town over.
I reached out to an expert on PatsyKlein, hoping he might gimme some
insight into the type of womanmy grandma was trying to become.
(01:45):
She seems like such acomposed, polite woman.
And then, no, you got thewrong idea about Patsy.
She was, I wouldn't say the word polite.
She certainly had manners, butyou didn't mess with Patsy.
That's Ellis Nasser.
Listen, I am perceived to be thedefinitive voice on Patsy Klein.
(02:07):
Her husband said I knew moreabout her than he did not.
Quite true.
He's devoted the past few decadesof his life to researching
and writing about Patsy Klein.
She was a riot and shewas a real fellows gal.
Uh, she was like one of the boys.
If somebody farted, Patsy wouldlift her leg and fart right back.
(02:29):
That was Patsy Klein.
Patsy was a pain to work with.
Apparently she and her producer, OwenBradley would always get in fights about
which direction to take her music in.
Owen and Bradley had to fightwith her in the studio and
they would make compromises.
He said, okay, this is whatwe're gonna do on an album.
You pick six songs you want,I'll pick six songs I want.
(02:53):
And that's how these albums cameabout and how she got to at least
record things that were country.
And only once to do a little yodelinghas, she wanted always to do hillbilly.
She wanted to yodel.
She wanted to do country becausethat's what she grew up on.
That's what she grew up on,and that's what she loved.
She didn't hate pop music, butthat's not what she wanted to record.
(03:16):
Hillbilly, that's what Appalachiancountry music was called in the fifties.
This was new to me.
That Patsy Klein was from Appalachia.
Like I said, my grandma was from thesame area of Virginia, a few counties
(03:36):
over from Patsy, so I was just hearingthat my grandma was from Appalachia too.
I realized that I didn't know muchabout the town my grandma came from.
I knew it was called Bluefield, Bluefield,Virginia, and that's pretty much it.
I decided to ask my uncle Jim.
I didn't have his number.
(03:58):
I had to ask my mom for it,but she warned me before I did.
So Jim's is very fanciful fence, you know,like he, he has a fantastical imagination.
So just take it with a grain of salt.
(04:19):
Hello, Aviva.
How are you?
I'm good.
How are you?
Good, good, good.
You know, those towns in Appalachia,um, they're, they're simple.
Um, I tell you what's interestingis that, um, her father, so
(04:42):
that's my grandma's father had afurniture distribution company.
That was headquartered in Chicago.
It was called Chicago House Furniture.
And, uh,
he had like, uh, a fleet of maybefour panel vans and they would
deliver furniture here, there, andeverywhere, you know, throughout the
(05:06):
area of that part of West Virginia.
And during the course of the twenties,for about a decade ish had lasted.
Uh, everybody was desperate for liquor.
These panel vans were perfect for makingdeliveries of moonshine and if you had
to deliver a piece of furniture anyway,it was a great cover story for delivering
(05:28):
moonshine and, and when you hear thatthey were all huge drinkers and always
carousing and getting drunk and that sortof thing, it all sort of makes sense.
It's funny for me to hear,because I think of Grandma
Alice as a very composed proper.
Oh yeah.
Woman, you know, concerned with decorum.
(05:49):
So to hear that her family was morerambunctious is, feels ironic to me at the
wedding when, you know, when the Bluefieldcrowd showed up for the wedding, there
were maybe 10 or 15 of 'em that came down.
And, uh, they really made a scene, youknow, they, they were dancing on top of
(06:11):
the bars and they were just raising hell.
And that, uh, I, I really thinkthat, uh, it was probably an
embarrassment for my mother.
Why?
Why do you think she felt that way?
I think that she had been tryingto gain distance from Bluefield
and sort of turn the page.
(06:32):
Did she share many stories abouther childhood in Bluefield?
No, and I think one of your questions,it was whether or not she was
considered herself Appalachian.
She, she did not like that.
You know, West Virginiais considered backwards.
(06:54):
You know, up, up north, they would always,they joke about West Virginia as being
just a bunch of stupid hillbillies.
And so that was a labelthat she sought to shake.
There's a real stigma about Appalachiathat they're, that they're hillbillies,
they're inbred, they're cross-eyed.
And my mother had very, very bad eyes andI'm the one of the seven who got her eyes.
(07:20):
I came out the womb, cross-eyed, and.
You know, that's a standard jokethat, uh, that hillbillies are
inbred, so they're cross-eyed.
My mother was so embarrassed about myeyes that she, between the ages of one
(07:41):
and three, I had four eye operations.
What?
Yeah.
To try to straighten out my eyes.
Here's my mom's reaction to that story.
Is that what he said?
She corrected, my parents, correctedhis eyes with surgery because any wom,
any family wants to correct them forthe, for the goodness of their life.
(08:06):
And I'm not sure they would've eversaid, if you don't correct this,
you'll be look at like a hillbilly.
I told her about the panelvans and the moonshine story.
So how do you explain that?
We went, so we have seen pictures of.
Family furniture company andwe went as little kids to see
(08:29):
where they sold furniture.
So he did all that as a frontto a underground moonshine.
There's zero evidence.
My mom thinks Jim likes tosensationalize things that
he's too interested in history.
I mean, the fun thing is he is likeincredibly like interested in the past.
(08:51):
I, I think partly it's because the future,the har, the future's really hard for him.
Like he doesn't want to work, youknow, it, it's a whole nother story of
like, he has very little motivation.
I think he deals with depression, so hekind of dwells in the past I heard her,
but I also took this with a grain of salt.
(09:14):
My Uncle Jim, he has beenback to Bluefield more than
any of his siblings have.
My Uncle Jim has conducteddozens of oral interviews.
I think I lend more credence to hisviews than her opinions on the stories.
I was also interested in the fact that mymom seemed to be adamant about the fact
(09:41):
that that grandma was not Appalachian.
She was not from.
West Virginia and she was not fromAppalachia, she was from Virginia.
Yeah, but I'm just looking at a map here.
And Bluefield is in the CumberlandMountain Range, which is in
(10:01):
Appalachian Mountain Range.
No.
Okay.
So she's from a little towncalled Bluefield, Virginia.
But the.
It actually like spreadsacross both the, the border.
I mean, grandma wasfrom a coal mining town.
Bluefield was a coal mining town.
Well, so, um,
(10:23):
she would say, I'm not fromAppalachia, I'm from Virginia.
Because she wanted to be thought ofas, you know, like from like Virginia.
And I was like, oh my gosh,mom, I didn't know that.
A, I didn't know that GrandmaAlice was Appalachian.
(10:44):
And my mom goes, oh, no, no, no.
She wasn't like, she wouldnever consider herself Steve.
Steve.
That confirms it.
Yeah.
And I was like, but it's right there.
She, she, she never even Robin at heryoung age knows that my mother did
not want to have that association.
Patsy Klein's producer Owen Bradleyforced her to transition from.
(11:07):
The more traditional Appalachian sound toa polished pop-in Fused Nashville sound.
Her wardrobe evolved from gangof dresses and cowgirl boots to
elegant cocktail gowns and pearls.
This rebranding distance herfrom her rural working class
Appalachian roots aligned her witha broader vision of femininity
(11:32):
and success in post-war America.
This was a shift.
She was forced to take the one thatmy grandma sought out for herself.
Uh, her mother made everything shewore and her mother made her some
very skin fitting silk outfits thatthe Opry refused to let her wear.
They said, if you don't go home,you can't go on the show tonight.
(11:54):
And that is how the accident happened.
That's how the car crash happened in 1961.
Tell me that story.
Well, she had to go home tochange outfits and she came back.
It was a Wednesday, June 14th.
Patsy and her brother were on theirway to the shopping center to buy a
(12:16):
dress that would be more appropriatefor the Grand Ole Opry dress code.
Another woman tried to pass another carin front of my brother and I and hit his
head on It broke my hip, dislocated it.
And broke my right arm and cutmy face, uh, face up a little
bit and in three months I'll goback for more plastic surgery.
(12:40):
And then, uh, they say they'regonna gimme a facelift and
it's gonna make me like new.
Very few people realize that after Patsy'scar accident in 1961, when she basically
it was to be left for dead, she recoveredwithin three weeks, which was a miracle.
With all the broken bones andalmost losing her eyesight and
(13:00):
scarred all over the place.
I mean, her face was literally,uh, you know, all patched up.
Correct me if I'm wrong,she recorded crazy.
Pretty soon after the carcrash, she recorded crazy.
Hold on a second.
Where's the magnifying glass?
When I need it?
August?
Yeah.
August.
Kill everybody that I'mold and almost blind.
(13:21):
Okay.
Okay.
1961.
August 21st, 1961.
So she was in the car crash, the caraccident, or just before Christmas.
Patsy recorded crazy.
Her biggest hit without a doubt, and thenumber one jukebox hit in all history.
(13:43):
With broken ribs on crutches.
People say that this is why she wasable to get so much emotional depth
in the song because she was in pain.
This is very symbolic to me.
The industry had this grip on her.
They forced her to pioneer thistransition from Appalachian
(14:04):
hillbilly music to the pop, morecommercial sound against her will.
Both my grandma and Patsy Klein,they were both under control.
A tight control buttoned up, forced tofit this idea of the ideal woman for
(14:26):
that time and that region of America.
The effects of this control, avery narrow version of themselves.
There was this one saying.
My uncle kept repeatingthroughout the phone call.
Yeah.
The old saying is, uh uh, be carefulwhen you shake the family tree.
(14:47):
You never know what'll fall out.
What falls out?
A portrait of a very Appalachian,a rural, poor family history.
For context, demon copperhead, theBarbara King Silver novel that set in.
(15:08):
A town only a few towns overfrom where my grandma grew up.
I mean, this is a culture that holdstension with the type of woman my grandma
was trying to become, and it's hard toreconcile with the lifestyle my mom lives.
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