Why isn't Patsy Cline a gay icon?

And the anthem "Walkin' After Midnight"!

We all love our Virginia Dick!

Walkin' After Midnight is clearly about gay cruising.

She didn't have that certain something.

Rumor has it she also into pussy.

She’s a plain frau not a glam, funny and partying girl like Dolly for instance.

Why would she be?

Patsy looking glamorous. She was a hard drinking party gal.

....

You need a certain je ne sais quoi.

Meryl wanted to play her. Jessica did a good job. I always loved Patsy, my mum played her in our car, good memories.

R3 you just made me burst out laughing! I'll never think of "Walking After Midnight" in the same way again!

Her death was pretty horrible and even though she looked a lot older she was only 30. Often repeated untruth was the her hit "I Fall To Pieces" was climbing the charts when she crashed down to her death. The movie Sweet Dreams really got a few details wrong, including the circumstances of her death..

I love "Crazy"and" I'm Blue Again" the best.

"I go out walkin' after midnight

Out in the moonlight

Just like we used to do, I'm always walkin'

After midnight, searchin' for you"

Wow, her outfit in R9's pic is so wonderful.

r4

You mean certain somethingS

She IS a gay icon, Rose!

She is an icon, period.

She has so many fab songs I can’t choose my favs.

She assuredly is, in any gay country bar hon.

R11 - I haven't seen "Sweet Dreams". What did they get wrong about her death?

There are gay country bars?

Faded Love

Strange

I believe Patsy was the first country music artist who was a crossover success.

R20 Yes, dear.

Patsy had a bitchfight with DL icon Dorothy Kilgallen.

R19 of the top of my head it was dark out when they crashed. Movie showed daylight.

Experts posit they were unlikely to have known they were in trouble until seconds before impact. The movie shows blind panic as the engines fail then eventually restart. This wasn't the cause, it was likely pilot error and bad weather conditions.

Most glaringly, they actually crashed into a forest in the back of beyond. The plane was ruined and bodies were ruined but didn't catch fire. The movie shows them crashing straight into a mountain followed by a huge fireball. This works much better on film as it's really shocking and final but not what actually happened.

R9's pic looks like an example of the time's much desired wasp waist.

They found Patsy's scalp with her headband still attached.

She had a confederate flag cigarette holder. That’s why she’s not a gicon.

So, if you’re a southerner you can’t be gay?

Charlie Dick passed away in 2015. His sons were Randy and Chip Dick!

Also had a daughter Julie Dick Fudge!

R11 and r3, Was R1 too subtle?

Her scalp?! Oh my.

She was my dad’s favorite singer so I grew up knowing her songs and voice from an early age. I remember watching most of Sweet Dreams but don’t remember the crash at the end. I was always... haunted by the story of her death as a kid but never sought out details before. The Find A Death entry is the first I’ve read about it. Bodies in small pieces... my god! I always imagined they died from blunt force trauma like in a car crash.

That’s pretty horrifying.

I don't know how accurate it was that they were so smashed up but it definitely was a brutal ending for all four.

Apparently Patsy's family didn't like the movie as it made her look weaker than she was, Patsy was no one's victim and fought back. They said she was smarter and more driven than the movie shows.

The mother said she watched the movie once and that was enough.

Patsy's plane stopped in Tennessee to refuel, and the airport manager told them that bad weather was on the way and they shouldn't fly until the next day. He was so concerned about the weather he booked rooms at a local Holiday Inn and had a car waiting to take them. Patsy and the three other people she was traveling with refused and decided to fly anyway (stupid!). They flew right into a thunderstorm and crashed.

When they landed at that airport, they were only 90 miles away from home. If they'd decided to drive instead, they would've been home in less than two hours. Tragic.

I thought back in the 1980s - when not only the movie Sweet Dreams but the lesbian film Desert Hearts (which featured Cline songs) - she [italic]was[/italic] very popular with gay folks who like torchy ballads.

Considering how she died, it’s ironic that her biggest song was “I Fall to Pieces.”

K. D. Lang started her career channeling Cline in performance art shows.

R38 It's coincidental not ironic.

So glad that Meryl didn’t play her. Bitch can’t be in every movie.

She's not flamboyant enough to be a gay icon.

Of course it’s irinic r40 that she’d use that idiom to express being extremely upset when she was literally turn to pieces in a plane crash.

“ironic”

Why does my phone correct things that are not wrong, but not correct the obviously-wrong “irinic?”

That’s so ironic.

[quote]So, if you’re a southerner you can’t be gay?

Ah ... so does having a confederate flag cigarette holder just mean you’re “a southerner?”

Did Martin Luther King Jr have a confederate flag cigarette holder?

R23 Patsy was not the first crossover success in country music. Others like Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers had crossover hits.

My preferred version of "Walkin' after Midnight":

Preferred Langes portrayal over Beverly DAngelos, but she died so soon into her career despite having a large body of recording she didn't have the time to earn any longstanding reputation aside from being a scrappy southern woman who liked liquor.

Other country music artist may have had crossover songs, but Patsy Cline was the first country music artist, male or female, who had a big following in the mainstream.

She's iconic enough for me, gay or otherwise.

As for the "ironic"/"irinic" tension, TURN OFF AUTOCORRECT, BITCH.

[quote]she didn't have the time to earn any longstanding reputation

She has a longstanding reputation as a great singer.

FAT.

Patsy recorded "Crazy" in ONE take, bitches!

In the early 1980s, I occasionally would go to a local navy bar, for a drink. Other townies, like myself, never went there. A lot of “squids” and their fraus from the South, frequented this New England dive-bar, near the shipyard. The music on the jukebox was all a decade or more old, including lots of Patsy.

I like the piano in “Why Can’t He Be You?” To me, the piano sounds like ice cubes clinking in a rock’s glass full of vodka. Most of her sad-sack lyrics go best with too much alcohol.

Oops, for R55.

Listening to Patsy on you tube took me here, the sound of the Ninth Circle, mid-'70s.

SO Ninth Circle.

[quote] Someday, You’ll Want Me, to Want You.

I love the way this song unfolds, with the twist in the last two lines of lyrics. Patsy has the best songs for heartache at an overserved pity party. Such as:

The Tennessee Waltz

And Lonely Street.

Three Cigarettes In An Ashtray

Where's this place called Lonely Street?

I've got a sad, sad tale to tell.

A place where there's just loneliness

Where dim lights bring forgetfulness

Where broken dreams and mem'ries meet

Where's this place called Lonely Street?

I wonder if Patsy knew any gay guys.

More heartache!

I love all the classic Patsy songs...but two of my favorites are "Tra Le La Le La Triangle" and "Seven Lonely Days." The Jordanaires do some great background vocals on SLD, "A boo hoo hoo hoo!" The guitar work is also a highlight, and this one has a great beat and you can dance to it!

When I saw "Sweet Dreams" in the theater, (we stayed behind till the theater emptied cause my friend walks with crutches,) I said something about her dying as the people were coming in for the next show, and some guy turned and snarled at me, "You bitch!" We just laughed. If ya didn't know PC was dead going into the movie, oh fucking well. Also, as I recall the plane crash starts at the beginning of the movie, so it isn't like I spoiled the end.

Once when I was teaching 3 year olds, I had PC on the boom box and I was singing along and one of the dopey lil' kids asked if it was me on the CD. I gave him an A+ and passed him on to the next class when it was time.

You’ve got to watch this one. It’s the Tennessee Waltz with video of a formal southern ball where the dancers are doing the Waltz.

You really only need to know two dance steps with Patsy. The Waltz, and a two-step. The two-step is the same step for most of her songs, and also works with other Lounge Music such as most of Sinatra’s songs.

Just a side note: Kitty Wells was the first female country music artist to hit #1 on Billboard's Country Music Charts with "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" (1952), which crossed over to the Pop Charts, peaking at #27. She was the first bona fide female country superstar, supplanted by Patsy Cline in popularity, reach, and legacy in ensuing years. In the movie, "Sweet Dreams," Randy Hughes questions Patsy Cline's earnestness: "You want to be Kitty Wells, don't you?" "Hell no!" Cline shoots back. "I want to be Hank Williams!"

Do you think she and Loretty ever bumped pussies?

Her biggest hit was "Crazy" not "I fall to pieces".

I still think “I Fall To Pieces” is the better of the two. “Crazy” is really good, though.

And “She’s Got You” is a great retread of the former. (Not sure which came first, sorry.)

The Wayward Wind is another favorite of mine.

"Crazy" was written by Willie Nelson & is a masterpiece, but Patsy Cline's rendition of it is a work of art that stands on its own.

R45 Therrs all kinds of Southerners, Dorothy. And some of us tacky ass fuckers who had that crap were military. It doesn’t make us not gay because prissy ass Northern Transgenderrd Lesbians on Unicycles decree it so.

[quote]Her biggest hit was "Crazy" not "I fall to pieces".

Don’t fight the hypo, Rose.

[quote]I wonder if Patsy knew any gay guys.

Let’s venture to guess what this uneducated Deep South woman with the confederate flag on her cigarette lighter thought about homosexuality.

I grew up in a place where Country music ruled supreme - and I bloody hated it. Yet somehow, when I became an adult and my tastes and thinking expanded a bit, I fell (hard) for both Patsy and Hank Williams. Two of the twangiest, C/W singers you could find.

I found Patsy because of k.d. lang -- so I think there may be others that discovered her that way too.

It was like R59 said - "Patsy has the best songs for heartache at an overserved pity party." She sang with a lot of emotion and just kind of pulled you into her songs. I just love her.

r74 Patsy was a good-time gal who liked to party. She may not have been terribly uptight about gay guys. Of course back then in that environment if there were gay guys around they were deeply closeted.

Very brief career is my guess. Huge tragedy to lose such a great talent. She was in Aretha and Streisand vocal territory. She probably would have moved to other genres of popular music.

R76 I always think that Patsy was the kind of person who would say " what the hell-come have a drink" if she met a gay man.

Patsy definitely would've crossed over into other genres of music and done a lot of torch and pop songs. If she had lived, I bet she would've been a huge international star by the end of the Sixties.

R74 is HUGELY invested in vilifying a woman who's been dead for over five decades and whose views on homosexuality are completely unknown, but R74 is just looking for people to hate, anyway.

She seemed an open and humble person from what I can gather. And having a confederate flat in the early 60s doesn't mean nearly the same as what it means today.

Love her voice and her guts to put herself out there.

I’m addicted to the debutant ball at R65. It must have taken a lifetime of practice for these kids. I just wish it was a better quality video. I love men that age, especially when they’re all dressed up like adults as in the video.

She's a huge lesbian icon.

My Great Uncle was a gay guy in NYC at the turn of the 20th century. His nieces and nephews knew he frequented “fairy balls” in Manhattan, so I guess he was “out”. He served in WWI and married late, to a woman who, the story goes, had missed her chance and was at risk of becoming an old maid. No children.

My point about this is that there have always been Gay guys, even in Brooklyn, or in Bumbfuck, Tennessee. I would guess that the entertainment industry was always top-heavy with gays, so she was probably exposed to many out guys. How she handled that, is unknown.

Isn't she a tad bit white trash to be a gay icon ?

bump

This is my favorite Patsy Cline song

She was a gay icon, OP. And she was and is an even bigger lesbian icon.

She's over-rated, sorry, it had to be said. Yes, she sing in tune, can emote but mostly she's boring.

I think she actually is, but mostly to C&W queens. I used to live in Texas, and she definitely had icon status.

R89 You have no fucking idea what you're talking about.

Who do you think is a good singer, Beyonce?!

Nope, Beyonce is overrated too. I don't like Barbra or Judy either.