Patsy Cline

Cline's current iconicity (which for all I know could signal a heroic surge that will leave her as fixed a star as Aretha Franklin or Edith Piaf) is bound up in the vogue for pre/nonrock pop (which for all I know could prove permanent). Her Virginia twang mere seasoning in an unusually robust pop voice, she's Patti Page with guts. But the main reason she's remembered as the most credible of the countrypolitans is that countrypolitan was invented for her, by producer Owen Bradley. Entertaining the Southern folks who were her bread-and-butter--at maybe $500 a show, pickup backup provided--she was and remains something else. And this 1961 Tulsa gig with Leon McAuliffe's Cimarron Boys establish that the spare physicality and exquisite timing of her Grand Old Opry transcriptions are only a starting point. She could have used more rehearsal here. But the Western swing maestro led a band that was ready for anything, and Cline rose to their challenge as they did to hers: hard, high plains dance music, with her amazing trademark yowl at the end of "Lovesick Blues" a promise of the "Shake Rattle and Roll" she has all set to follow. (Grade: A-)