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WKRLEM: Ted announces a new campaign theme.

The sublime Pasty Cline.

One of the top ten female vocalists I have ever heard.

KLEM FM

I was in Patsy Cline kind of mood tonight and wanted to post her version of "Crazy" along with a clip of Willie Nelson on Dave Letterman's show recalling how he "sold" that song to her back in 1962. I'd seen the clip awhile ago but the Nelson/Letterman video is now protected and unavailable. Fuck you Letterman.  I'm glad you're gone.

Plan B:

I knew that something like this must exist. So I went looking and found it. It's a video of a guitarist covering the Duane Allman solo from "In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed." There is no extant video of Allman playing that version, but that version from their Fillmore East double LP is the definitive version. The solo is longer than most pop songs and is a classic:

The Walkin' After Midnight Open Thread

50 years ago last March, Patsy Cline tragically died in a plane crash. Her songs rhymed with heartache, loneliness, longing, regret, and mismatched pairing, but their unifying theme was love. Her first hit – 1957's "Walkin' After Midnight" – made her a crossover phenomenon: a female artist who could chart both country and pop. A string of hits from 1961 to 1963 immortalized her. She, like Kitty Wells before her, opened doors in the very heart of flyover country. 50 years on, Patsy Cline thrives on the Internet.

Patsy Cline also belonged to a time when singers could still credibly sing others' songs. The Beatles and The Beach Boys helped kill that in pop music a short time later, making it uncool to record anything but one's own songs. I respect that – genius songwriting, genius playing and genius singing all rolled into one – because it's rare. But what about the beautiful voice who doesn't write songs?  Or that songwriter who really can't sing (Bob Dylan)?

The words of "Walkin' After Midnight" evoke:

I stop to see a weepin' willow

Cryin' on his pillow

Maybe he's cryin' for me

And as the skies turn gloomy

Night winds whisper to me

I'm lonesome as I can be.

Compare that to Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry"

Hear the lonesome whiperwill

He sounds too blue to fly

The midnight train is whining low

I'm so lonesome I could cry 

I've never seen a night so long

When time goes crawling by

The moon just went behind a cloud

To hide it's face and cry.

That's rural angst and not the sort of loneliness people feel in cities -- is it?

Here is the original 1957 "twangy" version of "Walkin After Midnight":

She re-recorded the hit in 1961, "doo-wopping" it up a bit: