“Patsy Cline: Sweet Dreams Still” highlights the popular career of Patsy Cline, an artist whose influence continues across all genres of music. At a time when country artists stayed close to the traditional roots of the music, Cline recorded songs that soared from country to pop. The program features full performances (including the last two known recordings taped in Nashville five days before her death), rare photos and personal memorabilia. Many of Cline’s hits are presented in their entirety, including: “Walkin’ After Midnight,” “Crazy,” “I Fall To Pieces,” “San Antonio Rose,” “Lovesick Blues,” “Leavin’ On Your Mind,” “Faded Love,” “Come On In,” “Strange” and “She’s Got You.”

Due to some logistical problems beyond our control, we have to cancel the Patsy Cline Sing-A-Like contest that was scheduled in Nashville during the CMA Music Fest.

Sorry for the cancellation. Vocalists that submitted applications with the entry fee will receive refunds.

Keeping A Sweet Dream Alive

Patsy Cline Fans in Winchester Struggle to Honor Once-Scorned Local Gal

By: Paul Duggan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 30, 2005; Page B01

WINCHESTER, Va. -- A lot of people in Ginny Hensley's staid and upright home town regarded her as plain hillbilly trash back when she was poor and coming of age here in the Shenandoah Valley. This was just after World War II and into the 1950s, when she'd sing in any beer dive with a stage, when she worked regional radio and the Moose lodge circuit and boasted she'd get to Nashville.

Her betters liked to gossip what a hussy that young Virginia Hensley was, going around right in front of folks with her ruby lipstick and her short pants, crawling under the covers with this one and that one. . . .

"For instance, she would go to our drive-in theater and try to perform," says Judy Sue Kempf, 60, a tour guide. "She would get up on top of the roof of the concession stand, and do you know what happened? The people would actually throw things at her."

Kempf pauses, standing in the aisle of a bus packed with women in their sixties and seventies, grandmothers in leisure polyester and cushioned shoes. They've traveled two hours from Baltimore to see where Ginny Hensley came up, where she was no lady by local standards, on her way to being the fabulous Patsy Cline. This was before "Sweet Dreams," before "So Wrong," before that pure lonesome voice on the nickel jukeboxes the grandmothers sang with ages back.

This was before "Crazy."

Grand Ole Opry Celebrates Its 80th Year

By: JOHN GEROME
Associated Press Writer

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - His Grand Ole Opry debut? Charley Pride remembers it well.

"It was 1967, January 1," Pride snaps. "Ernest Tubb brought me on, and I was more nervous than a cat on a hot tin roof."

That's how most performers feel about the Opry, the folksy live radio show that's helped define country music for eight decades. The stage with the red barn backdrop is hallowed ground in Nashville, and entertainers still consider their first performance there a milestone.

The show turns 80 this year, and while the anniversary doesn't have the bang of a 75th or a 100th, the Opry is planning a big to-do, including a rare broadcast from New York's Carnegie Hall in November.

Like a classic country song, the Grand Ole Opry has endured despite changes in technology, musical tastes, ownership and location.

It's the longest continuously running radio show in the country, and though at times it's been derided as stale and antiquated, there's a certain charm when the house band begins to play and the burgundy curtain rises.

Curb Looks At Restoring Quonset Hut Studio

By: JEANNE ANNE NAUJECK
Staff Writer

He's in talks to buy Sony HQ, broker says

Music label owner and philanthropist Mike Curb is negotiating to buy Sony's headquarters on 16th Avenue South with an eye to restoring the building, which houses the historic, 1950s-era Quonset Hut recording studio.

Realtor Ira Blonder, who's brokering the sale to Curb, took out an ad in Music Row magazine this week announcing that efforts are already under way to restore and preserve the Quonset Hut and Studio A, two recording rooms hidden away within the modern brick structure.

Curb was out of town and unavailable for comment yesterday.

The recording studios were home to country and pop music recordings by legendary artists, including Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan, over a nearly 30-year period.

Jerry Byrd, Steel Guitar Pioneer

By: Wayne Harada
Advertiser Entertainment Writer

Jerry Byrd, a legendary country music steel guitarist in Nashville of the 1960s and a fixture on the Hawaiian music scene since the 1970s when he relocated here, died yesterday in Honolulu. He was 85.

"He changed his whole style of playing Nashville steel to Hawaiian steel," said singer Melveen Leed, who worked with Byrd on many albums. "He loved Hawaiian music and he traveled with me to Nashville. He was one of the greatest musicians I've ever come across; inside and out, he had a pure heart. We will miss him."

Byrd was widely respected and acknowledged as one of the pioneers of steel guitar, in both the country and Hawaiian music genres. He performed with some of the greatest country headliners of his generation, including Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Ernest Tubb, Red Foley, Marty Robbins, Hank Snow, Burl Ives and Chet Atkins. When he was head of a publishing firm, he was the first to sign on Dolly Parton, who would — years later — hire Byrd to play steel guitar for her set-in-Hawai'i TV series.

Upstate Factory's Closing One For Record Books

By: Hart Seely
Staff Writer

She started the job on a Friday, 49 years ago. She found herself pressing the music of Bill Haley and The Comets into a 78 rpm record, and she knew her world would never be the same. "I remember my mother-in-law telling me, 'Never start anything on a Friday,' " Verone Hulbert recalled. " 'If you start something on a Friday, it never ends.' "

But the end is near for Universal Music Group's record-pressing plant in Gloversville. Early next month, the plant will close, 112 union workers will lose their jobs, and another icon of the 20th century, the vinyl record, will edge one track closer to extinction. With it will go a record-making legacy that began here in 1953. That year, the Brunswick Radio Corporation of America moved to Gloversville, a city of 15,000 people in the Adirondack foothills that was once famously the "leather capital of the world."

In 1962, Brunswick joined Decca Records, whose artists - including Buddy Holly, Marty Robbins and Conway Twitty - pushed country music into the commercial mainstream. Six years later, Decca merged with MCA Records, expanding its lineup. The plant produced for MCA until the 1990s, then settled into a revolving door of corporate owners, ending with French-based Vivendi Universal.

In its glory days, more than 600 employees worked around the clock and this was one of the largest record manufacturing plants in the United States. Friday, the machines went idle; by next week, the ranks will be reduced to a handful.

On June 9-10, 2005, Celebrating Patsy Cline, Inc. is sponsoring a Sing-A-Like contest to be held on stage in the Nashville Hard Rock Café parking lot. This event will be held during the days of the CMA Music Festival with radio coverage and celebrity judges.

We are seeking folks who think they can sing like Patsy Cline.

Entry fee is $30.00 per contestant with proceeds going to Celebrating Patsy Cline, Inc. Museum Fund. There will be two categories youth (17 and under) and adult. Contestants are asked to sing one Patsy song.

Prelims will be held Thursday and Friday, June 9-10. Music will be provided by live bands during performances each day.

I want to announce that an effort has been underway in the past 2 weeks to get a Virginia Historical Highway Marker approved and installed in front of 608 South Kent Street. We have an opportunity to expedite what can often be a lengthy process and have gotten tentative approval already.

I submitted the package earlier today to the Dept of Historic Resources. The response was extremely positive and nothing should impede its approval according to the Director of the Historical Highway Marker Program. The committee will convene to vote in April and by June 1 we will have the final approval after which the order goes to the foundry. What can take 4-6 months at the foundry is also being expedited because of the Labor Day weekend festivities. I envision a well publicized media event with a formal unveiling ceremony and reception following for sponsors who contribute at least $100.

The Marker is to be installed the last week of August by VDOT. I have prepared a mailing announcement to be sent out in June to a wide audience soliciting other sponsors to include organizations, businesses, and individuals. A plaque depicting the names will be displayed in the house.

CPC President Has Sweet Dreams of Cline Museum

By: Stephanie M. Mangino
The Winchester Star

Philip Martin devoted Monday to the memory of a woman he never met.

Her voice spoke to him and his college classmates back in the early 1970s, when it felt like country wasn’t cool.

She had already been gone for a decade, but Patsy Cline’s rich, emotional vocals helped keep Martin going as a Birmingham Southern University undergraduate.

Forty-two years have passed since Cline died in a March 5, 1963, Tennessee airplane crash, and no museum in her honor stands in her hometown of Winchester.

But Martin, a 54-year-old Nashville native and Reston businessman, intends to change that.

Celebrating Patsy Cline Inc., the Winchester-based group devoted to creating a museum in Cline’s honor, elected Martin its board president in February.

He knows unfulfilled museum promises have disappointed Cline fans over the years, so he attended 14 half-hour meetings Monday in an effort to make dashed expectations things of the past.

We have some exciting news from CPC. We had our latest board meeting last week, and are rarin' to go! Most of you know that the CMA Fest (formerly known as the Fan Fair) takes place each year in Nashville. Well, this year it will run from June 9-12, and CPC IS having a booth there for Patsy!

CPC is under new leadership, and Phil Martin is a shot in the arm for sure! He is a wealth of energy, knowledge, and has a real passion for Patsy. He is for real, gang, and he understands the urgency of getting this museum off the ground. So, here's the deal:

We are having a booth to sell Rt. 11 Chip Tins, and Patsy books to raise more money for the musuem and preservation of the items previously obtained through the estate auctions. We also plan to sign people up to become donors and friends of CPC. I have the honor of being the Project Manager for this, since I live here in Nashville. I need your help to man this booth. Here is a chance for us to do something for Patsy that won't cost much more than our time. I am putting together a schedule of folks for the booth, and any time that anyone can give will be greatly appreciated.

Please feel free to email me at gerdbaby@yahoo.com to sign up for time, or if you have any questions. This effort is for real, and we are putting CPC out there where folks can see it, and act to help. I know firsthand that there is frustration and fatigue out there with all of this, and in the past, it may have seemed like there was a lot of talk and no action. Well, y'all those days are over. We have some real momentum, and hope to hear from any of you who can lend a hand.

Come on in, we're gonna have a ball!!!

New Airport Restaurant Honors Famous Country Singer

Tuesday, March 22, 2005
JOHN LEEPER

It is a little known fact of local history.

On March 5, 1963, the famous country singer Patsy Cline whose songs "I Fall To Pieces," "Crazy" and "Walking After Midnight" are still considered industry standards, stopped at the Dyersburg airport. She and a company of musicians had played a benefit in Kansas City and stopped for refueling on their way home. Cline made a telephone call from the phone booth in the restaurant at about 5:30 p.m., and the group decided to brave glowering skies in order to reach home.

They did not. Their light general aviation aircraft went down near Camden and everyone aboard perished.

Cline was only 30 years old.

In 1973, Cline was posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 1999, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Now, the restaurant at Dyersburg Regional Airport has been dedicated to the memory of Cline.

Local Radio Pioneer Signs Off
Innovative Engineer Also Introduced Patsy Cline to the Airwaves

By: Stephanie M. Mangino
The Winchester Star

Any radio listener has heard his or her favorite air personality broadcasting from an exciting location, like the site of breaking news, a festival, or a concert.

A man working in Winchester helped create the technology that made the first remote broadcasts possible.

Philip B. Whitney of Stephens City, a broadcasting innovator who received state and national awards for his work, died March 10 at the age of 90.

But while Whitney’s peers knew him as a top-notch engineer, music fans know he was the man who allowed a young girl named Virginia Hensley to sing on the radio for the first time.

Whitney was general manager of WINC at the time, and whenever Hensley — who became Patsy Cline — returned to the studio, she would always speak to Whitney and bring him her records, said Whitney’s widow, Jane.

Jane Whitney wasn’t in Winchester during Cline’s lifetime, but she knows of the period from her husband’s recollections.

Group Says Museum Dedicated To Singer Is In The Works

Contributed by Steve Cornwell, WINC

WINCHESTER, Va. (AP) - Efforts are being renewed to open a Patsy Cline museum in her home town of Winchester.

The newly elected president of the group Celebrating Patsy Cline says he'd like open an interim museum on Winchester's Old Town Mall next March. Philip Martin says that facility would operate for three years until the group can build a permanent museum.

Martin says Cline's childhood home in Winchester isn't the best spot for a museum but is important. He says Celebrating Patsy Cline would like to begin restoring it to the way it looked when Cline was growing up there.

Martin says there are also plans to open a nostalgic diner in downtown Winchester that would be tied to the museum.