Like many artists with her legendary status, Patsy Cline's career ended too soon.
According to Biography.com, Patsy was born in 1932 in Winchester, Virginia. Just over 30 years later, Patsy tragically perished in a plane crash in Camden, Tennessee.
Her hits "Walking After Midnight," "Crazy," and "She's Got You" are still listened to by Patsy's many fans all over the world over 50 years since her passing.
Patsy's current fan base is a testament to how decorated her career was, despite it being short-lived. In fact, she is widely known for being one of the first women to dominate the country charts and to break the glass ceiling in the country genre.
Of course, Patsy's status as a beloved figure only makes her early death even more of a tragedy. However, there is some evidence suggesting that Patsy would not have been too surprised by her passing.
Eerily, it seems as though Patsy predicted her own demise long before it happened.
Thumbnail Photo: Wikimedia Commons
[H/T: Country Living]
Patsy Cline began performing at a young age, quickly gaining attention for her smooth and expressive voice.
She was one of three children, but her parents' marriage didn't last. Patsy dropped out of high school to help support her mother and siblings, which of course included making some money playing music.
Her early life was a tough scramble to make ends meet, but someone upstairs was looking out for this future country music star.
Patsy started performing in a variety shows just to make a little bit of money, though she developed a following in no time.
Soon, radio DJs were booking her on their shows, and she gained an even bigger fan base.
Barbara Hall, the maker of a documentary on Cline's life, told PBS NewsHour: "This woman who barely had an eighth grade education, came from a single-parent home, worked to make ends meet to help feed the family, and still figured out how to work the music business."
By 1961, Cline was performing on stage in the Grand Ole Opry, and had earned her place at the table in Music City with her male peers.
Country Living alleges that Patsy's friends, Loretta Lynn and June Carter Cash, have said that Cline "had an eerie sense of her own impending death."
In a 1993 documentary called Remembering Patsy, she wrote a friend saying, "It's wonderful — but what so I do for '63? It's getting so even Patsy can't follow Patsy!"
It is also reported that Patsy had told fellow singer Ray Walker, "Honey, I've had two bad ones [car accidents]. The third one will either be a charm or it will kill me."
The day she died, Patsy was performing at a concert to benefit the family of her friend, Cactus Jack Hall, who had died in a car crash, according to CityPages.
That day, she also performed alongside her longtime friend Dottie West, who had once rushed to her side after a near-fatal car accident.
Dottie knew that Patsy had an ominous sense of doom, and begged her not to fly home, but to drive instead. Fatefully, Patsy chose to fly anyway.
On March 5, 1963, Patsy was on a plane being piloted by her manager, Randy Hughes.
They were on their way back to Nashville from a concert in Kansas City, Missouri, when the small plane got caught in an intense rainstorm.
The plane crashed, taking with it the lives of everyone on board. The site in Camden, Tennessee, is still a site of pilgrimage for Patsy's fans.
Luckily (and a bit spookily), Patsy had just finalized her will months before she was killed. It instructed that her young children be left to the care of her friends.
In the months before she died, she had also begun to distribute prized possessions to friends and family.
Patsy is remembered today for her pioneering role as a woman in country music and for being taken from us too soon.
Do you think she had a sixth sense about her own mortality?
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