Death has a funny way of casting a somewhat supernatural pall over past events. We remember the things deceased people said or did leading up to their passing with new context that makes seemingly offhand remarks or actions turn ominous and foreboding. When Patsy Cline went into the studio to record what would become a future crossover hit on February 5, 1963, she had no way of knowing the tragedy that was to come one month later. But given some of the things she said, maybe she did.
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Cline recorded several songs for an upcoming album, Faded Love, in midwinter 1963. One of those songs was “Sweet Dreams”, which peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and No. 44 on the Hot 100. However, Cline never got to see this crossover success come to be. Decca’s release of “Sweet Dreams” on the compilation album The Patsy Cline Story was, tragically, a posthumous release for Cline.
One month after she tracked her vocals for the Faded Love cut, Cline died in a plane crash outside of Camden, Tennessee. She was only 30 years old. And while it would have been impossible for anyone to anticipate such a heartbreaking tragedy, some of the things Cline said and did around that time seem somewhat morbid in hindsight.
Patsy Cline Called “Sweet Dreams” Record “the First and Last”
In a documentary about the late Patsy Cline, country singer Jan Howard recalled listening to the Faded Love tracks in producer Owen Bradley’s office. Howard remembered Cline asking Bradley to play back the record on a particularly passionate vocal line over and over again. The famously nitpicky and self-critical singer was legitimately proud of her performance. Yet, in the context of her death one month later, the comments she made afterward seemed almost dire.
Howard recalled watching Cline go into the office of Bradley’s assistant and come back out with a pressed record. The “Crazy” singer held it up for Howard and the others and said, ‘Well, here it is. The first and the last.’” No one knew how true that really was.
Loretta Lynn Heard This Unreleased Track Before the Tragic Plane Crash
Loretta Lynn had a similarly foreboding experience with Cline that involved “Sweet Dreams”. In her memoir, Coal Miner’s Daughter, Lynn wrote about the last time she ever saw Cline alive. “She came over to my house to hang drapes,” Lynn wrote, joking about how two successful women in the country music industry were a “pretty wild bunch.”
That same day, Lynn paid a visit to Cline’s house to listen to new records, including “Sweet Dreams”. Cline embroidered a tablecloth while the women listened. “She did that to relax,” Lynn said. “That night, we made plans to go shopping when she returned from doing the benefit show in Kansas City for some disc jockey who had gotten hurt in a wreck. Just before I left her house about midnight, she said she had something for me. A great big box filled with clothes for me to take home.”
Lynn went to leave without hugging Cline goodbye, given the cumbersome box in her arms, and Cline asked her, “Aren’t you going to hug me?” Lynn wrote, “I put down the box and hugged her. Then came the last words I would hear from her. She said, ‘Little gal, no matter what people say or do, no matter what happens, you and me are gonna stick together.” Days later, Cline’s plane went down in a bad storm, killing the country star, Harold Franklin “Hawkshaw” Hawkins, Lloyd Estel “Cowboy” Copas, and pilot Ramsey Dorris “Randy” Hughes.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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