JudySue Huyett-Kempf, president of Celebrating Patsy Cline, stands in front of the house where the singer lived on South Kent Street in Winchester.
 

Fund-raising was underway to restore singer Patsy Cline's house in her hometown of Winchester, Virginia

 

By Albert C. Jones
America, The Diversity Place

WINCHESTER, Virginia — “Sweet Dreams” alone is the one Patsy Cline song that allows her to fit comfortably as the accomplished artist in a wide range of genres, including, most notably, country singer, singer of the blues and jazz, although she never went exclusively there to obtain authentic merit as a nuanced improvisational singer.

She is the artist so gifted and blessed as one who defines what everlasting pop is and soul singer of inwardly deep pouring out, demonstrating that in ballads that hurt so wonderfully good. Her voice touches the senses, in high-volume, with pity, pathos, and at the core of everything, combustible operatic tragedy.

This is Winchester, Virginia, where Patsy Cline was born and raised. It is close enough to the District of Columbia to receive strong radio and television signals but far enough away in the northwestern part of the state to remain semi-agricultural, celebrating the annual Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival, small city edged with suburbs.

Winchester is also as close to Baltimore as it is to the District of Columbia. An interlude for person, place and time needs to be inserted here. Perhaps this was country while Cline lived here all those years ago, but this is not western, as in a woman possessed here being obviously possessed with cowgirl culture and those singers who make a beeline to Nashville.

(Douglas Gomery will make sense out of that in next week’s posting. He is the author of “Patsy Cline: The Making of An Icon.” The other phase of the interlude, if full disclosure has not already been detected, there is a complete adoration for “Sweet Dreams” and the voice that so wonderfully sings it.)

Wanting to be near Patsy Cline is why people come here from all over the country and what used to be far-flung places on the earth — now compacted into a global village. Some admire the entire Patsy Cline catalogue of songs. Some consider “Sweet Dreams” enchanted and inextinguishable — so perfect as if meant to be eternal.

The major chord of the blues expression is the irony of hurting and feeling good at the same time. It is an elixir, ambrosia, really, a balm for which any price would be paid for the soothing affects of its medicinal purpose. Patsy Cline, in some of her songs, especially “Sweet Dreams,” makes you lament yet yearn for a hurt that doesn’t go away, makes it immemorial, really, with the human emotion of patronizing love in smithereens, feelings that won’t let go of the heart, soul and mind submerged in anguish.

Mind you, “Sweet Dreams” is high art in its most natural form.

Here in Winchester, on the road just outside of town, a farmer and his daughter are selling watermelons, peaches and apples from an unloaded truck, on a table set up along the side of the road. Peaches are not sweet as they normally are because of the unusual number of dry days. Honeycrisp apples, however, have come through the dry growing season juicy sweet. The watermelon, picked this morning, is sweet off the vine.

What is planted grows, for sure, but not all singers grow up to be the best of the pickings like Maria Callas, Mahalia Jackson, Édith Piaf, Aretha Franklin or Patsy Cline.

This is where Virginia Patterson Hensley, born here in Winchester on September, 8, 1932, blossomed into Patsy Cline, a singer of such exceptional talent that she is included among the rarest in a millennium. The marvelous amalgamation of sound emanating from one human being is remarkable. Her “Sweet Dreams” alone, has the power to beckon and is reason enough for anyone to come to Winchester to determine if the here of being here or living here has anything to do with her sound?

Today is Wednesday, September 8, 2010 and the place is in front of 608 South Kent Street, the home that Patsy Cline lived in with her mother and siblings from 1948 to 1957. Her birthday was celebrated on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. There was a proclamation from the mayor. Charlie Dick, Patsy Cline’s husband, and her son and daughter come each year for the block party. To be sure, only Patsy Cline songs were featured.

Those strings in “Sweet Dream” send you soaring and the bluesy piano makes for pain annunciated with each touch of the keys. How is it that we so gladly celebrate hurt? Then begins the rising of that enormous voice, emotionally charged with pure clarity, the lament brings solace that hopefully repeats in an endless cycle. She sings, “Sweet dreams of you, every night I go through. Why can’t I forget you and start my life anew, instead of having sweet dreams about you?”

Patsy Cline’s legacy extends around the world, but here, in Winchester, the caretaker of her legacy is JudySue Huyett-Kempf, president of Celebrating Patsy Cline, a nonprofit that is raising funds to renovate the Kent Street house and then repurpose its mission to build the Patsy Cline Museum. Cline died, at age 30, in a plane crash on March 5, 1963 in a forest near Camden, Tennessee, 90 miles from Nashville to which it was headed, carrying her and others home.

Huyett-Kempf is a nice woman, responsible for the past 15 years, if one person can claim such a responsibility, for preserving who Patsy Cline is here in Winchester. Buses come to town and Huyett-Kempf is more than likely to be the tour guide when people come looking for Patsy Cline.

“The 888 line is in my kitchen,” she says on the front porch of the Patsy Cline house. “I live, eat and sleep Patsy. This project to restore her home and build the Patsy Cline Museum is my baby.”

Celebrating Patsy Cline Inc. is working to “restore and interpret the 608 South Kent Street home as a Historic House to focus on Patsy Cline and her family during the years 1948 to 1957. At the core of a phased-in Patsy Cline presence in Winchester, Virginia, the Historic House will play witness to the story of Patsy’s Winchester years, the lives of others associated with her and events that were pivotal to her career.”

Celebrating Patsy Cline has owned the home for about five years. Two years ago, the house was still a rental property. Cline’s mother, Hilda Hensley, 82, who died in 1998, owned the house but hadn’t lived here since the late 1960s. It will cost $198,000 to restore this house; which, after wall covering was removed, it was learned that the house is actually a log cabin.

“1898 is the earliest record we have,” Huyett-Kempf says about the age of the house. “We think it may have been built in the middle 1700s.

“With the economy what it is, it’s harder to raise funds now,” she says. “Out of necessity, we decided to open her house first. We had to change gears. We have 150 of Patsy’s personal possessions that will go into the museum, but we didn’t think it was a good time to fund-raise for a building. Our big plan all along is to have a museum that will tell the entire story.”

The Patsy Cline story is the music. “Faded Love,” which was released in the early 1960s, is Huyett-Kempf’s favorite Patsy Cline song.

“I love it. I love it,” she says.

Is there a story that goes with “Faded Love?”

“Yes, but it’s personal. I can’t tell the story behind it.”

Around the city, there is already a good start to remembering Patsy Cline. Gaunts Drug Store, where she worked as a soda jerk, honors her service and memory with a lone remaining booth, a cluster of photographs on the wall and playing her music. It is within walking distance of the South Kent Street house.

WINC, from which her singing and speaking voice was broadcast live over what was then an AM radio station, has a framed, black and white photograph of Patsy Cline on the wall. Wearing a cowgirl outfit, she is standing in front of a piano, one knee bent on the seat. There is a Cardioids microphone on a stand with the station call letters, an ABC network affiliate.

In 2009, the Handley High School Auditorium, after a multi-million dollar renovation, was dedicated as “The Patsy Cline Theatre.” Willie Nelson, who wrote “Crazy,” the most recognized Patsy Cline recording, gave a concert for the dedication. Ellen K. Wheeler, assistant principal, leads a visitor to the theater and stands for photos with Donald Finley Sr., student support specialist.

Celebrating Patsy Cline T-shirts may be purchased at the Winchester-Frederick County Convention & Visitors Bureau, 1400 S. Pleasant Valley Road.

Patsy Cline Boulevard, an east-west city street, intersects with South Pleasant Valley Road.

Route 522 South, also known as Patsy Cline Memorial Highway, leads to Shenandoah Memorial Park, where Patsy Cline is interned. The dedication plaque here says, “This bell tower erected in memory of Patsy Cline by her many friends and fans.” Another plaque says, “In memory of Patsy, Marilyn Moon.”

“Our big plan all along is to have a museum that will tell the entire story,” says Huyett-Kempf. “We have all the architectural plans for the museum. Once we get the home open, our next step is the museum. It’s going to be huge.”

New York-based Ralph Appelbaum Associates, notable for design of the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, of course, and the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., “has completed the first phase of its development, a visualized concept study,” according to the Celebrating Patsy Cline Web site.

Huyett-Kempf says the Patsy Cline Museum will spread out over 21,000 square feet.

“People come here for Patsy,” she says. “We have done some studies. Visitors are in the mid-30,000s, even with the bad economy. Patsy is a destination for many tour groups. They are coming from all over the country.”

The inside of the house on South Kent Street where Patsy Cline lived with her family holds memorabilia from a singing career known throughout the world.