Patsy Cline in Country Music History
Patsy Cline (1932–1963) was arguably the most influential country musician of all time and certainly one of the style's greatest singers. Cline, who was born Virginia Hensley, began her career at a time when female performers were secondary to their male counterparts in terms of sales, success, and clout. Their careers and personas were relatively circumscribed.
Patsy Cline changed all of that. In a career that spanned only about a decade, she completely redefined the possibilities for women in country music and recorded a number of standards, "Crazy" and "I Fall to Pieces" being the most prominent. Cline died in 1963 in a plane crash, but her influence has been clear on subsequent generations of songwriters.