"Walking After Midnight" / Patsy Cline

Working late, I often take my dog for a walk in the wee hours. So this gorgeously haunting track, written by Donn Hecht and Alan Black, often pops into my late-night soundtrack. I'll walk around the Upper West Side of NYC crooning this 1957 hit that catapulted my girl Patsy into country-music stardom.

Like a lot of Patsy's stuff, this is all about the heartache of lost love.  The loping country arrangement, the plangent narrative -- as she strolls around town lamenting a failed relationship -- it's doomed but oh so yearning. "I go out walkin' after midnight / Out in the moonlight / Just like we used to do, I'm always walkin' / After midnight, searchin' for you." There's a surprisingly sophisticated melodic thing going on here, the cresting sound on "walkin'" and "moonlight," and "midnight."

As the song rambles on, details set the restless scene -- the weeping willow, the gloomy skies, the whispering night winds. In the last chorus, she tries to convince herself that this guy may also be strolling around searching for her, but I'm betting even she knows that's just not gonna happen. 

No, it's just Patsy with her supple yearning contralto, working through her lonesome grief. Doesn't matter who the guy is, it's just the being alone that hurts. The beat plods along like her numb footsteps, but the melody skips upwards, twirling on those top notes. And there we are in the night with Patsy, walking aimlessly, brooding, putting that broken heart back together.

Teddy Thompson & Kelly Jones 

"Don't Remind Me"

Okay; I myself would never have known about this album (Little Windows, 2016) if it hadn't been for songwriter Bill DeMain -- who co-wrote every track -- plugging the thing on Facebook. But knowing Bill's talent, I took a chance -- and wow, was I gobsmacked by this record. So I'm urging you to check it out; you won't be disappointed, In the fractured music biz of these dark dark days, a Facebook post is sometimes the only way you'll find out about these gems. 

Teddy, as it happens, has musical DNA up the wazoo, being the son of the gifted British musicians Richard and Linda Thompson (erst of Fairport Convention, and on and on from there). On the other hand, Kelly is just a gal from Virginia with pipes to die for. Note: this isn't the Welsh Kelly Jones, the guy from Stereophonics. No disrespect to him, but I think if he were involved in this project it would be something entirely different.

From the outset, the purpose of this album was to riff on the 1950s "countrypolitan" style that snuck pop influences into Nashville C&W. Strings, lush legatos, movie-music emotions -- the whole nine yards. That's the sound that my girl Patsy Cline was moving toward before she died in that awful plane crash in 1963, and Ray Charles did his own part in bringing R&B into the same camp. ("Georgia"? "Cryin' Time"? There's got to be some reason why these are my favorite Ray Charles tracks.)

But the track this most reminds me of is "Since I Don't Have You," a doo-wop hit in 1958 for the Skyliners, which Guns and Roses also (bizarrely) covered in 1994. The version I'm most familiar with, though, is Ricky Nelson's, from his 1965 album Best Always. It's drop-dead lovely -- and you can't tell me that Teddy and Kelly aren't channeling that ripe emotion here.  

Oh, yeah, it's a mood piece. He's thumbing through his memories, and coming up with mostly broken dreams. That shuffling tempo is drenched with regret and lassitude, and Teddy and Kelly's harmonies are plangent as hell, sliding in and out of crunching dissonance.

I adore how the chorus modulates into that winsome plea -- "Don't remind me." Stevie Elliot's electric guitar draws out the tremulous emotion, spinning the web of regret.

Oh, please don't rub salt in the wound. Or, if you must --

"Crazy" / Patsy Cline

Confession time: I didn’t even know who Patsy Cline was until I saw the movie Sweet Dreams, that excellent biopic starring Jessica Lange. I know, buying her records after that was kinda like buying a Dalmatian puppy after seeing 101 Dalmatians. But in the long run, it doesn’t matter how you find the music, so long as you love it when you do.

I will add, in my defense, that Patsy Cline’s songs had entered my consciousness by osmosis way back when I was a little kid. There were a bunch of similar powerhouse female singers in the early 60s -- Teresa Brewer, Brenda Lee, the divine Skeeter Davis (her “End of the World” was one of my favorite tracks even before Herman’s Hermits covered it) – and I knew their songs even if I couldn’t tell you who sang which one.

Sitting through Sweet Dreams, I kept saying, to myself, “Wow, she sang that one too?” When you stop to think that Patsy only had six years to make her mark – she put out only three albums before that plane crash took her in 1963 – the quality of the output is incredible. It's no wonder that Patsy Cline gravitated into mainstream pop; country music alone wasn't big enough to hold her talent.

The compilation 12 Greatest Hits By Patsy Cline has been in constant rotation on my music player ever since. The confidence of her voice simply astounds me – the way she could fiddle with the beat, top a high note with perfect pitch, zoom in and out on volume (often on a single word), curl her voice around a phrase just so. Phrasing? Patsy had a instinct for phrasing nearly as good as Sinatra’s. Putting a song across? She was a born storyteller – an essential for any country music performer – who knew exactly when to quaver with emotion and when to bite off a lyric sarcastically. But here's the thing that, to me, really set Patsy Cline apart: Despite those incredible pipes, she never came across as a diva. Maybe that was a conscious decision, maybe it was just the kind of down-to-earth Kentucky gal she really was. Her delivery is so natural, relaxed, and unaffected, I find myself believing every word she sings.

We all know the song “Crazy”, of course – funnily enough, written by Willie Nelson, his first songwriting hit. Flavored more by jazz and pop than by country (that cocktail lounge piano twiddling around), it was a big crossover number for her in 1961. Willie didn’t write this song for Patsy, but it sure ended up in the right hands: who else could have done that swooping thing on the word “crazy”? And who else would have been smart enough to keep this song so light-hearted? Because if you listen to the lyrics, it’s a martyr’s song – she’s feeling blue, he’s left her for somebody new, she’s wondering what she did to lose him, she’s embarrassed that she ever thought she could keep him. “I’m crazy for trying / And crazy for crying / And I’m crazy for loving you.” A lesser singer would whine and moan; Patsy just sounds rueful and bemused, with a warm little chuckle in her voice. Even she knows he’s not worth it. And yet -- she can’t help it. That’s just how love is. I dunno why, I find this profound.

This is the same gal who goes out “Walkin’After Midnight,” obsessively visiting the spots where she used to hang with her ex-boyfriend; who finds it “Strange” that she’s still dreaming of the man who suddenly dumped her for another woman; who’s found a much better new boyfriend and still moons around wondering “Why Can’t He Be You?” Patsy Cline is the high priestess of hard-luck girls wearing their hearts on their sleeves, a girlfriend all of us can relate to when men let us down (as they inevitably do). But her genius is to keep the rhythms upbeat, her voice confidential and light, just an occasional note betraying a yodel of anguish.

Unlike Skeeter Davis, Patsy doesn’t think the world’s going to end because her feller left her. She’s bruised but brave, and she knows perfectly well that nothing she does will bring that louse back. Still, might as well sing about it . . . at least 'til the next heartache comes along.