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How Patsy Cline Came to be in Sidereal Days

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Ten years ago, the family pulled into a rather famous drive-in on Route 16, halfway between our hometown of Olean,NY and Buffalo. Our children were pretty young at the time. They were disconcerted by a particular feature of the more or less “western” themed restaurant. The table legs were settled into cowboy boots. It kinda spooked the kids and I myself felt a little uneasy.

The place is gone now, the owner has passed away–gone to that blue plate special in the sky–so it’s all right to say that the food wasn’t quite the home cookin’ the road sign claimed. But a framed letter on the wall that was the decoration for our booth caught my attention.

It was a letter, circa 1962, a handwritten letter of thanks, sort of loopy and swirly, from Miss Patsy Cline to Mr. Jimmy Dale. Jimmy Dale was a disc jockey and country singer at radio station W-A-L-L in Middletown,NY. Patsy was thanking him very kindly for having her on his show as his “special guest.”

This letter resonated for three reasons. Jimmy Dale was originally from Olean. Had a C&W hit in the ‘40’s–I believe called “Cannonball.” That was #1.

We’d lived for a couple of years near Middletown. That was #2.

And #3, I was a huge fan of Miss Patsy Cline.

Only much later did I recollect the letter and have it serve a valuable, pivotal role in a novel I was working on.

The small town rock & roll band that is the subject of my novel Sidereal Days had to have some plausible occasion to emerge from the shadows of obscurity to begin their climb into the light. My band The Sparrows had great local success in Olean,NY. They parlayed that into playing small gigs in surrounding towns in an ever widening circumference. A local fan arranges a gig with his father, a club owner  in Middletown,NY, 250 miles east of Olean. The Sparrows see this as a chance to play near the golden destination at the end of every New York State highway,New York City.

The band makes the most of every appearance they put in anywhere. They send a “press release” to local newspapers. They also try to get a radio interview wherever and whenever they can. They’re savvy enough to recognize that newspapers have lots of pages to fill and radio stations have many hours of time on the air. So the benefits are mutual for the band and the media.

As guests on Middletown’s W-A-L-L (see Jimmie Dale above) they hear for the first time (my guys are rock & rollers) “Crazy,” the mystic, bluesy country lament that ruled juke box play for two generations. As they gasp their admiration of the song to their host “JD the DJ,” unbeknownst to anyone but me, the Sparrows have stepped onto the milieu of the letter framed on the wall of our diner booth. Patsy Cline will be a guest host on W-A-L-L that night…it’s the night on the radio referenced in Patsy’s letter to Jimmy Dale.

The Sparrows meet Patsy Cline, share the midnight spont on the radio with her, and spend a Beaujolais evening afterward in her hotel room. Impressed with the boys and with a song they’ve written, she invites them to open for her a few months down the road, in Kansas City,Kansas at the War Memorial Auditorium. The significance of that show will be sadly familiar to any devoted fan of Patsy Cline.

But the Sparrows have managed the tricky, crucial climb from obscure local heroes to a band on the rise, catching the first glimmering rays of national success.

The Facts Behind the Fiction: “The Sparrows” and Patsy Cline

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The fictional band, the Sparrows, in my novel Sidereal Days, get their first big break when they meet Patsy Cline by chance at a radio station in Middletown, NY in December 1962.  There is a tiny hodgepodge of fact in this particular bit of fiction. Years ago, in a now closed restaurant called Earl’s along Route 16 near Yorkshire Corners, there was a framed letter from Miss Patsy Cline. She had written to a DJ and country & western player named Jimmy Dale. Patsy was writing to Dale to thank him for having her on his show at radio station WALL in Middletown, NY.  The letter caught my attention because 1) I love Patsy Cline, 2) Jimmy Dale and I are both from Olean, NY, and 3) I’d lived for a few years next door to Middletown. That was the trifecta of associations that I took advantage of to have the Sparrows meet Patsy Cline. I needed some plausible lucky break to bounce the Sparrows out of their routine of standing local engagements and small-time circle of venues.  In the book therefore, by chance, the Sparrows are promoting a gig in Middletown at that radio station and meet Patsy Cline.

The boys make a nice impression on her and their presence in the studio at her late night radio interview makes the whole affair much easier and much more pleasant for Patsy. The Sparrows interest her in recording a song they’re working on called All The Way To Back Here. This in turn inspires Patsy Cline to ask the Sparrows to possibly open for her sometime in the future.

That opportunity comes when the boys join Patsy Cline on stage at a benefit concert in Kansas City, KS. This concert actually occurred and is pretty accurately described in the book with the obvious exception of the Sparrow’s appearance. It was Patsy Cline’s last public appearance. Patsy and her small party attempted to fly in a small plane in squally weather back home to Nashville and crashed into a Tennessee hilltop. The depiction of Patsy Cline in the book is entirely intuitive yet I can’t help feeling that it’s also pretty accurate and heartfelt.

The scenes in the novel that make up this section – the radio station reception area and Milly, the late night broadcast, the Howard Johnson’s motel room and the portrayal of Patsy Cline – are some of my favorite chapters of the book.

And of course Patsy’s songs, Crazy, Walking After Midnight, I Fall To Pieces and her other classics, masterfully produced by Owen Bradley, are perfume and saw dust, diamonds and stones.  A uniquely American musical concoction.

Crazy was for years, and may still be, the most popular juke box song in America. And it was written for Patsy by a brisk, crisp, gray flannelled, nattily suited up business man named Willie Nelson.