Honky Tonk Angel (7 page)

It wasn’t long, given Patsy’s determination to be a star and Gerald’s personality, before problems developed. Fay explained, “Pat was the type of person who liked to travel and get around. She never lost sight of becoming a country singer. She knew she was good and that she was going to make it. Many times Pat would say, ‘I’m going to the top.’ I don’t think anything in the world could have stopped her.

“Pat’s working didn’t bother Gerald—at first. He’d even travel from date to date with her, drinking, dancing, having a good time. When he got tired of that, Pat didn’t seem to mind. She had Bill. He was always in the picture. Yes, it gets complicated! Some things that went on were ridiculous. There weren’t too many well-kept secrets in Frederick, Brunswick, or the road in between. People knew what others were up to and loved to talk. Pat, Bill, and Gerald were the subject of much of the gossip.”

Lois Troxell explained how distasteful and embarrassing Gerald’s mother, who was very stern, found the gossip. “It didn’t endear her to either one of them,” she said.

Roy Deyton heard that Patsy and Lettie Cline didn’t get along. “Mrs. Cline was tight with a dollar. She thought Patsy married Gerald for the family’s money and became fairly determined she wouldn’t get any. Gerald never helped Patsy with her career. It was Bill who put out the money. In spite of her marriage, Bill was still mad about Patsy and made good on his promise to get her to Nashville.”

On April 10, 1953, Bill and Jenny drove Patsy and Gerald to Music City. “We had adjoining rooms at the Colonial Motel,” Jenny recalled. “Bill got Ernest Tubb to invite us to the Opry, where Bill introduced Patsy around. We knew Mr. Tubb from appearances in our area, when Bill’s band would either play or he’d play guitar for Mr. Tubb. We went to WSM Radio, then to the Ryman for the Opry. We circulated backstage and sat in the onstage pews.”

That night they saw Ernest Tubb’s special guest, Elvis Presley, in one of his rare Opry appearances. The audience didn’t take to him—some even booed—but Patsy loved him. Gerald criticized his “colored singing,” leading Patsy to ask, “What do you know about singing, anyway?”

When Elvis came offstage in tears, Tubb took him aside, put his arm around him, and said consolingly, “Don’t worry about that now, boy. You did a fine job.
They don’t know. They just don’t know.” Elvis replied, “Thanks, Mr. Tubb. Just you wait. I’m gonna show ‘em. I’m gonna make ’em eat all those words.”

After the Opry, with Patsy still talking about Elvis, the Clines and Peers went next door to Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, the famed Opry hangout that fronted on Lower Broadway but had an entrance from the side of the auditorium to an artists’ room on the second floor. Just before midnight they crossed the street to the Ernest Tubb Record Shop.

Tubb came off a farm in Crisp, Texas. He was a fan of Jimmie Rodgers and developed honky tonk, a fusion of western swing and country, as well as popularizing the electric guitar. He was soon dubbed the Texas Troubadour. He was the first country star to play New York’s Carnegie Hall, where he made the oft-quoted remark, “My! This place sure could hold a lot of hay.”

In 1932, after two forgettable Durango Kid westerns, Tubb had a smash with “I’m Walking the Floor over You.” He relocated to Nashville and joined the Opry. During the 1950s, before record clubs, when mail-order country and gospel records were big business, Tubb virtually monopolized this product through his Opry advertisements and plugs on his own show, the “Mid-Nite Jamboree,” broadcast live from his store after the Opry. It was traditional for the stars to make periodic visits to the record store and Tubb introduced them with great fanfare—making sure to mention their latest release was “in a record bin right here before my eyes.” Tubb would receive promising newcomers for a quick number with his band.

That Saturday night, Tubb introduced Patsy as his discovery and she sang two songs. Afterward, while Patsy and Jenny stargazed, Bill and Gerald spoke with Tubb about what direction Patsy should take. As a result of the trip, Patsy and Jenny drew closer. However, after they were home a while, Mrs. Peer had a feeling funny things were going on. “Bill was always making excuses about why he wouldn’t be home,” Jenny said. “He’d tell me one thing and Patsy’d say something else. I didn’t believe him and didn’t know whether or not to believe her. It didn’t take long before I didn’t believe anything. They were lying constantly.”

Patsy had another secret she was keeping from Gerald and Bill. She’d fallen in love with a twenty-year-old sailor based at the Little Creek Amphibious Station near Norfolk. Alexander Groves’s best buddy in his barracks at Little Creek hailed from Winchester and invited him home for a long weekend that summer of 1953. “We went out to a club and I was introduced to a dark-haired, sexy girl about my own age named Pat Cline,” Groves recollected. “When I got back to base, I wrote her. She answered and asked me to come back soon. I did. Several times.

“Pat never mentioned anything about being married, nor did any of her friends. My friend said something that I thought real strange. He told me, ‘I don’t like her. Her real name’s not Pat Cline. Stay away from her. She’s crazy!’ He said that she was from Winchester but really living at the time in some small country place forty or fifty miles away.”

Groves didn’t know that Patsy was a singer until one night when Doris Fritts mentioned that Patsy was quite serious about a music career. He asked, “What do you mean?” When she told him, Groves was flabbergasted.

The facts as we know them don’t always match up, but, according to friends,
Patsy and Gerald were often separated and she would return to her mother’s house or stay with girlfriends.

“Pat introduced me to an older couple in Winchester whom she said were her parents,” said Groves. “But when I’d go to pick her up, Pat would be at the house with a woman not much older than her who had small children. I thought she was her older sister.” Groves eventually discovered she was Patsy’s mother, who was raising Sylvia Mae and Sam.

The romance between Patsy and Groves ended with the coming of fall. He and his Winchester friend from base went separate ways. “About a year later, I ran into him,” reported Groves. “He told me that Pat was traveling around the region entertaining in small clubs. But our paths never crossed.”

With Groves off in the navy, Patsy went back to her old juggling routine with Gerald and Bill without skipping a beat. “It was really something, the way they carried on,” Jenny related. “Gerald would drop Patsy off at Fay’s and Bill would pick her up and they’d go off to ‘rehearse.’ Bill would bring Patsy back to Fay’s and come home to me and she’d go home to Gerald. None of this seemed to make Patsy uncomfortable when she was around me. That September she even invited me to her twenty-first birthday party.”

Nevin Cline commented, “Whatever happened between Patsy and Bill, Gerald allowed. Patsy’d ask him to take her places where she and Bill were working and stay with her through the show. Dad spoke to him and asked, ‘Son, why don’t you take your wife where she needs to go when she’s working? Don’t use coming to the office on time as an excuse ’cause you ain’t doing a damn thing around here.’”

Gerald wanted Patsy home with his supper and slippers waiting when he got there. That wasn’t Patsy! Their arguments were legend with the downstairs neighbors. They recalled one particular bout, early on a Thursday morning. Bill brought Patsy home. She went up the stairs and opened the door quietly, but Gerald was waiting.

“Home at last! It’s two in the morning.”

“Gee, Gerald, you can tell time.”

“Where the hell you been?”

“None of your damn business!” Patsy would yell back. “You’re not my father—”

“No, I’m your husband! I want to know what you been doing and who you been doing it with.”

“Gerald, I’ve been rehearsing, if you must know. Ain’t no way of getting around it. You knew I was lead vocalist in Bill’s band when you married me.”

“It’s time you start being a wife! You’re spending more time with Bill, a married man with kids, than your own husband. Don’t forget you’re Mrs. Gerald Cline.”

“I’m Patsy Cline and don’t you forget it.”

“I want a wife.”

“I can’t quit now. I’ve got to have my music.”

“I’m not asking you to give it up. Just stay at home and be with me sometimes. Baby, I need you! I want to take care of you.”

“Take care of me? You’re so tight with a buck you make Jack Benny seem like Rockefeller.”

“No more gallivanting. You’re staying home.”

“I ain’t gonna.”

“But, Patsy, honey.”

“Not that ‘honey’ stuff, Gerald. I can’t be a singer and have supper on the table at five-thirty.”

“Tell me what you need.”

“I don’t need you to get in my way. Don’t you understand? I’d just die if I couldn’t sing. It’s my life.”

But Gerald didn’t understand. He told everyone Patsy was driving him insane.

“There wasn’t any one problem with the marriage,” Fay said. “Pat simply had her goals, and Gerald wanted a wife. As far as any romance between Pat and Bill, they fooled me at first. When we’d go out, Pat and Gerald were one big happy family. After the dances, when Bill had everything packed away, Pat, Gerald, Bill, Jenny, Harry, sometimes our son Harry Lee, and me would go to Hagerstown, Maryland, to a Chinese restaurant that stayed open all night. We’d get chow mein to take out or sit there for hours and have a great time.

“At the dances, Pat and Gerald would occasionally dance together. I don’t think it was something she really enjoyed, but they seemed to have a marriage like just about anyone else’s, except Pat was in show business. They didn’t have children and I don’t know if they wanted any. Pat was concerned with one thing: becoming a star. I don’t remember Pat ever saying that she and Gerald fought.”

One day, speaking to Lee Burrows of how mixed-up she was, Patsy explained, “Things have been rough between us and I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to hurt or leave Gerald. I haven’t fallen out of love. He’s been a good husband. He wants me to be happy, but he doesn’t want me in show business. He’s real thoughtful. Oh, he’s not the type to buy you surprises all the time, but anything I ask for or want, he’ll try to get for me.”

Patsy hated Gerald’s bragging and showing off. She described to Fay the night she and Bill were returning with Gerald from a gig.

“Gerald, you better slow down,” she urged. “Hey, babe, you’re speeding.”

“The cops patrol this area all the time,” Bill pointed out.

“Cops! Screw them. I ain’t scared of any cops. They know who I am and how important my family is.”

“Just the same, Gerald,” replied Bill.

“Ain’t no cop going to give me a ticket!”

From out of nowhere, a siren started blaring. Everyone was quiet as Gerald pulled over. The officer came to the car and asked for his driver’s license.

“Mr. Cline, do you know how fast you were going?” he asked.

“I wasn’t speeding, was I, officer?” Gerald sat, scared to death.

The officer recognized Bill, who leaned over and did the talking. The patrolman let Gerald off with a warning.

Starting the car, Gerald snapped loudly, “You see, it was just like I said. I guess I showed him!”

Patsy yelled, “Quick, Gerald, pull over. I think I’m going to puke!”

On a Saturday in June 1954, Fay was at the Lodge for the rehearsal when Patsy complained of not feeling well. She rushed to the ladies’ room. Fay followed.

“My God, I feel like I’m going to die!”

“Pat, let me take you home so you can get some rest.”

“Naw, Hoss, it ain’t that bad. I can’t miss a night’s work and let my public down.”

“Your public can do without you one night. Bill can always get another singer, but I’ll never find a friend like you. What you need is to get off your feet and take it easy.”

“Oh, quit worrying. It’s only some little kind of virus.”

Patsy was hardheaded, said Fay. “She went on with the band at nine o’clock but I could tell she wasn’t her normal self. Whenever she was onstage, Pat would move all over the place. But not that night. She stood at the mike all pale and drawn.”

During her first two breaks, Patsy had stomach cramps and spent a good deal of time in the restroom. When the pain became so bad she couldn’t bear it, she asked Fay to get Elias Blanchfield, her former fiancé, to take her home. When Fay got to the apartment, Patsy had had a miscarriage.