Patsy Cline was one of the greatest female country singer-songwriters of all time. Cline and greatness go hand in hand. Just think of her as the female Hank Williams. She really was the queen of what I would call country-pop in the 1950′s.
This song has a very creepy sound to it, as does a lot of her haunting music. Why does this song always remind me of creepy David Lynch movie?
Two years after she wrote this song, fate played its hand. For months prior to the incident, Cline had been plagued with premonitions of doom. She started to give away her possessions to her friends. On March 3, 1963, Patsy performed three shows in Kansas City for a memorial tribute for a man who recently died. Her final song for the 8 PM third and final show was I’ll Sail My Ship Alone. She wore a white chiffon dress and walked off to a thundering ovation. She stayed the night in a motel. Her friends urged her to go back to her home in Nashville (‘natch) with them in their car. She turned them down, saying, “When it’s my time to go, it’s my time.”
Two days later, she flew out of Fairfax Airport in a Piper A-24 Comanche private plane, after first phoning her mother and telling her of her plans. Around dinnertime, the plane landed at the Dyersburg, Tennessee airport. The airport owner advised them not to fly after telling them of wind and rain ahead, even offering them free room and board to spend the night. The pilot turned him down, saying, “We’ve already come this far. We’ll be there before you know it.” 13 minutes later, amid driving rain and howling winds, the plane crashed into a still-remote forested hillshide in Camden, Tennessee.
This time, Patty literally fell to pieces. All aboard were killed instantly. The bodies were quickly removed and then mobs of looters cleaned out the site, making off with many of her personal belongings.
Now here she is in this video, a haunted, tinny, remote voice amid the buried debris in the crowded trees, singing to us from beyond the grave.
Forever and for all of time.
Patsy Cline.
