Patsy Cline rightly has earned immortality as one of the greatest country music performers of all time. Her career, however, was cut sadly short in 1963, when she was killed when the light plane she was traveling in crashed in heavy weather. Patsy was only 30 years old when she died.
While a lot of us who appreciate her talent have been listening to her work for decades, now we can hear something new: 48 songs from live performances that have never been released before are now available in a two-album set.
More than 60 years after her tragic death, country music legend Patsy Cline still has more to share with the world after never-before-released recordings of the iconic star were discovered in a basement.
A limited-edition, two-LP set, “Imagine That: The Lost Recordings (1954-1963),” which includes 48 songs from live concerts and radio and TV appearances, was released on Saturday for Record Store Day by Elemental Music/Deep Digs. A two-CD set will also be available on April 18.
Two of the oldest recordings, discovered in a basement where they’d been stored for 30 years, were found on their original acetate disc recorded at the old WARL radio station in Arlington, NBC Washington reported. Many of the tracks were recorded in D.C. or Virginia.
Most of these, bear in mind, are not new songs as such, just live performances that have not been released for distribution – until now.
“It’s just like she’s alive again,” her daughter, Julie Fudge, told NBC Washington. “It is really very personal. And I’m just so impressed with the work that these people did and so glad that we trusted them to do this.”
The compilation spans Cline’s career from the start of her professional work in the early 1950s to the peak of her popularity before her death in 1963, according to Elemental Music.
Some of the performances were from nearer the start of Patsy Cline’s career:
Fudge said the never-before-released recordings of her mother’s performances evoke a different listening experience than her previous albums.
“She’s in her early 20s and she’s singing in front of people live,” Fudge told NBC Washington. “It really does have a personal feel when you listen to it. It’s like sitting in a room and talking to somebody.”
There’s something very different about a live performance. Granted, being there in the audience at a live show is even better, but a lot of studio recordings lack the slight imperfections, the little unique things that can take a pretty good song and make it great. And Patsy Cline’s rich, melodic voice was great in live performances. This was, after all, back in the day when performers had to have some actual talent; there was no autotune, no remixing, no other computerized audio technology to make a mediocre singer presentable, if somewhat robotic.
No, Patsy Cline was the real deal, and this is an exciting development for those of us who are, after all this time, fans of her work. And we have to give a nod to the techs who remixed and updated these old recordings for a modern release.
