Search - Patsy Cline :: Live 2

A middling collection

Greg Brady | Capital City | 09/05/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"First things first: It's not a concert. These live cuts are taken from radio transcription discs for "Country Hoedown","Country Style U.S.A." and "Country Music Time" for air between 1956 and 1962. Secondly, it's only "live" in the sense that these numbers were recorded in front of the studio musicians, who occasionally clap or shout to give it a concert ambience. The programs themselves were 15 minute programs put together for recruiting purposes by the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force (the Marines apparently only used POP artists).



HIGHLIGHTS:

One of the better discoveries here is a cover of Roger Miller's tune "When Your House is not a Home". (Patsy had heard it first when Little Jimmy Dickens recorded it.) The portrait of a disintegrating marriage is made all the more poignant by lines like "I look around and see things marked with 'his' and 'hers'/Little things like this just make it that much worse/That's how it is since I live my life alone/That's how it is since my house is not a home...". It was a song Patsy would never record commercially. A cover of Gogi Grant's "Wayward Wind" is done extremely stripped back: not much more than Patsy and a strummed acoustic (at least until the steel guitar solo for the bridge). It makes it sound almost like a long-lost Western ballad. (a la "El Paso") She also turns in a spirited "Stop, Look and Listen" that playfully ends abruptly with Patsy noting "That's what I said,boys, stop.." to the musicians backing her. (It still doesn't compare to the near rockabilly studio version on the box set, however.)



LOWS:

"Stupid Cupid" has never been a good fit for Patsy: the song is much too slight and coy for an interpreter like her. Probably the single biggest drawback is the run time: not quite 26 minutes. At least MCA did have the decency to release it on their "budget" label.



BOTTOM LINE:

It's alright and singable enough but certainly not where any newcomer should begin. I wouldn't necessarily say you want to make it your first live Patsy purchase either, since it's cobbled together from numerous sources and only marginally "live" to begin with. (I'd get LIVE AT THE CIMARRON BALLROOM, ASIN, for that.) Diehards only need apply."