Released: 1961
In a changing world, through Patsy Cline many people had found something to rely on. In possession of a rich, sugared voice capable of unpicking most every lock, the singer was born in rural Virginia and her career ebbed and flowed until signing to the Decca label in 1960. Confident in her instantly recognisable style, the switch also led finally to working with a creative team that matched her ambitions.
Like most self assured talents, she was acutely aware of which material best showcased her strengths and coerced into recording songs which were less suitable in the past, initially there were reservations about I Fall To Pieces. For the most part these stemmed from working again with former Elvis backing singers The Jordanaires, of whom she held the unfounded belief that they’d diminish her nascent star status.
Despite the arrangement’s familiar torch and twang qualities the union proved complimentary, with Cline teasing heartache and regret from every syllable. The result was a tune doused in nostalgia and proper to an America in part looking towards it’s past, but that jumped country’s rails and crossed over into the pop charts in an era of highly separate radio audiences.
This breakthrough however would be framed by tragedy. Not long after Cline was hospitalised following a near fatal auto collision; having recovered she then died less than two years later in an aviation accident. An icon in the making in both the old world and the new, she was now preserved in time forever.
The Voice Of Unreason 