Imagine That
A new collection of Patsy Cline songs, stories, and photos is an unexpected gift to country fans.
The stories behind the making of Patsy Cline’s Imagine That: The Lost Recordings are a collection of human motivations: admiration, even adoration; respect; friendship; dogged perseverance; and the quest for technical excellence and sound purity.
But the theme that draws all these together is one voice. Patsy Cline’s. Its power endures more than 60 years after her death at age 30.
Imagine That is a collection of recordings culled from many sources. None of these has been available to the public until now. They originated in different ways: bootlegs from live concerts; professional recordings during TV and radio performances; and even some taken directly from a television set during a popular local show.
Many of the songs among the 48 tracks on the two-album compilation are ones Cline had recorded in the studio and are well-known to listeners. But 15 songs can only be heard in this collection.
Patsy Cline died in a plane crash in 1963, leaving just over 100 studio recordings. For years, her fans have been hoping that new material would be discovered.
This might be a good time to take a few minutes just to listen, whether you are new to Cline’s music or you have been a fan for decades. Pick out a few songs, let the words and the emotion sink in.
Perhaps start with “She’s Got You,” the song that caught George Hewitt’s attention at age 4 and launched a life-long pursuit of her recordings.
Or Cline’s gutsy “I’m Hungry for Love,” which an adolescent k.d. lang heard on a TV ad for a K-tel LP. The song led to lang’s devotion to Cline and the formation of The Reclines.
Try “Sweet Dreams,” and hear the control and power in the song’s first two words, before the trademark catch in Cline’s voice conveys the depth of her heartbreak. Or listen to her tearful confession in “Crazy,” and see why it has been one of the most-played songs on jukeboxes for decades.
Patsy Cline was a groundbreaker for women country musicians. She was a courageous artist willing to fight for her artistic preferences. She was a dedicated friend, loving mother, and, as someone euphemistically wrote, “She could talk like a sailor.”
But it’s the voice that grabs people. It’s the voice that brings nearly a million followers to a fan Facebook page.
It is that voice, as well as her collaboration with originator of the “Nashville Sound,” Owen Bradley, that saw her cross over to the pop charts and become the first female country star to have her own Las Vegas show.
And it was that voice that compelled a team of Hewitt, a discographer, and producer Zev Feldman to spend several years finding and obtaining rights to unheard treasures. In search of the purity of that voice, a young engineer named Dylan Utz found ways to capture the original quality under the squeaks, crackles, and eccentricities of 1950s and early ‘60s recordings.
The Patsy Cline Estate, represented by Patsy’s daughter, Julie Fudge, and Gregory Hall, were enthusiastic participants in the project. In its extensive liner notes, Fudge says, “There have been many times when someone has said ‘imagine’ in reference to unheard Patsy music… This new project is something we never imagined was possible.”
This new collection is invaluable for those who admire Cline, but also for those interested in country history. It is a rare opportunity to hear how an artist matures and develops over the years, up to her tragically premature death.
It is a chance to hear Cline sing duets with some of the greats of that era. And it lets us hear her outside the studio – away from the strings and four-part back-up choirs of her later recordings. We hear pared-down arrangements and more spontaneity.
Utz, the engineer, said, “Hearing her live is a whole different ball game than hearing her in the studio. She takes a little bit more risk.
“It’s her ability to make an emotional connection to the audience that’s really special. She is authentic… she can make you believe that she lived every lyric.”
The story of how Imagine That came together started in Hewitt’s childhood home. “My mom taught me to use the record player. ‘She’s Got You’ is about three or four songs in on side two of the LP she played for me… that’s the one that stuck in my mind.
“There was something about the way Patsy had with her voice – it just reached deep down inside me. It crushed my heart, grabbed onto me, and I’ve never been able to shake it since,” he continued.
The compilation’s liner notes describe the young boy’s dreams of finding new cuts by a singer who had died years before. This passion led to a professional career researching old recordings in a variety of genres.
But during a lull in his work for others, he fulfilled a long-time goal: creating the Patsy Cline Discography website on which he catalogued studio and live recordings.
“I was always an avid collector of her music and was fascinated by the Owen Bradley production style, not just for Patsy, for his other artists. … From there I got into collecting live material as well and researching her appearances at the Grand Ole Opry and the various radio and TV programs that [Patsy] appeared on during her short life.”
The website was the catalyst for Imagine That, named after a song Cline recorded with Bradley in 1962.
Marc Zitelman inherited a box of records that his father had stored in his popular D.C.-area restaurant. Many years later, Zitelman opened the box he kept in his basement and he found a two-sided record with Patsy Cline’s name on it. It had been recorded at an Arlington, Virginia radio station in 1954. It probably had been given to Zitelman’s father as a gift or a trade.
The disc triggered Zitelman’s curiosity and he found Hewitt through the same discography website. In the liner notes, Hewitt said, “He sent photos of the labels and I nearly jumped out of my skin. My inbox displayed two songs previously unheard and just begging for release.”
The record Zitelman found was originally recorded on tape, then transferred to an aluminum disc coated with lacquer. Hewitt knew that unique expertise was needed to extract good sound from that medium, so a contact introduced him to an engineer named Dylan Utz.
Hewitt and Utz then set out to find some nearly mythical recordings a man named Leon Kagarise made of Cline on the Don Owens TV show. (Kagarise was an appliance repairman who recorded countless country shows in person. He figured out how to connect his reel-to-reel recorder to the workings of his TV, bypassing the weak speakers on old television sets and getting much better quality sound.)
Joe’s Record Paradise, an iconic record store in Silver Spring, Maryland, metropolitan D.C., had obtained part of Kagarise’s collection, and the owner had introduced Kagarise to Zev Feldman 25 years earlier. When contacted by Hewitt about the tapes, Joe’s son connected Hewitt to Feldman, knowing of his interest in old recordings.
Feldman, founder of the Deep Digs label, is an independent record producer known as the “Jazz Detective” for his much-lauded work with the estates of jazz greats like Bill Evans and Wes Montgomery. He took on the role of Imagine That’s executive producer.
So, the team was assembled. The three principals have all been associated professionally with various aspects of jazz, but all share a profound devotion to Patsy Cline and her work.
It wasn’t easy. Feldman said, “I do a lot of archival work and I’m used to working with musicians and families and the lead artist and maybe a label. But this project probably had more clearances and individuals to deal with, more paperwork and tentacles, than any other project I’ve been involved with – and I’ve done quite a few.”
Then there were the recordings themselves – each of which required special treatment. For example, Larry Odham, a wizard of tape transfer, helped Utz convert three reels from the Grand Ole Opry television show. Utz said, “He had to bake them for more than 10 days just to get them in playable condition.”
The first two tracks on the project are from the lacquer disc found in Zitelman’s basement. Utz said, “It had extreme damage from being played on a record changer.”
And the recording speed wasn’t consistent. “’A Long, Long Ride’ slowed down over the course of the entire recording. And ‘The Wrong Side of Town’ sped up until the middle, and then it slowed down.”
Even after all the work on all the tracks, Utz said the listener may still hear some interference. “If I were to take away the damage that remains, I would lose high frequencies. I would lose the music. I would lose the performance. You’ve got to know where to draw the line.”
It was all worth it. The final labor of love will be valued by both casual fans and music scholars.
The liner notes are comprehensive, with information and anecdotes about each of the recordings. They offer details about the engineering process, interviews with k.d. lang, Ray Benson, Marty Stuart, and others, plus photos that remind us how magnetic Patsy Cline was in appearance, as well as voice.
Above all, what we’re left with is why she meant so much to people.
Feldman said, “It’s decades and decades and decades since she’s been gone from this earth. This is a testament to the strength and endurance of her legacy and her importance and what her music means.”
Above all, Hewitt said, Cline wanted to connect. “She would often tell her friends ‘if you find a great song, it’s a great song based on your audience reaction. If it gets folks up and dancing on their feet or it gets them tearing up, you know it’s a great song. You hang on to that song. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not a good song.”
In her interaction with fans, Fudge said, “I hear a lot of things about how she has comforted them. She has taken them through a tough time. She seemed to speak to them.”
Hewitt summed it up this way: “Patsy being such a headstrong and determined performer and possessing such an innate sense of personal and artistic integrity went a long way in making magic on record and on tape.
“I think there’s a residue of her soul in every track that she made. I think she’s left us with a part of herself. It’s comforting. It’s timeless.”
Photos courtesy of Shore Fire Media.
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