I hate Madacy Records and these little '20 Best of' and 'Golden Legends' series. They are usually terrible. The sound quality is bad, sometimes to a point where it's barely listenable, and they use re-recorded versions.
But Patsy Cline's release is actually superb. It's the ONLY time I'll ever rave about a Madacy-released disc, but this is actually a great buy. You get 20 essential early years tracks that were made before she was famous, and now you can get them at a really cheap price.
And the sound quality is really good. It's not great, but it doesn't have to be in this situation. When the music is this legendary and underrated, it doesn't really matter.
Highly recommended for any Patsy Cline fan. A very enjoyable compilation. ENJOY!!!
Early in her career Patsy was trapped in a contract that limited her song selection to the output of a particular publisher's songwriting staff. I can't say there would have been even ten winners among the bunch - no fault of Patsy's - so this collection should have gathered up every worthwhile moment from those lost years. Unfortunately one of the best numbers, "Got a Lot of Rhythm in My Soul", is missing in action here. The snappy "Honky Tonk Merry Go Round" was decent; it too should have received preference for being included.
Otherwise, there are probably a half dozen good songs here. A couple she remade when she signed on with Decca, "Walking After Midnight" and "A Poor Man's Roses". "Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray" is a good country weeper. "Crazy Dreams" is enjoyable standard country of that day. "Pick Me Up On Your Way Down" was a hit for Charlie Walker, "Just Out Of Reach" charted for Solomon Burke, and of course "Lovesick Blues" is the Hank Williams classic.
The rest of the songs tend to function as a tutorial on what can go wrong when writing a country song. In some cases the lyrics criminally lack the storyteller's detail, others sound like publishing mill workouts, and still others just can't pull together a winning combination of melody and lyrics. The main flaw of the "Patsy Cline Collection" 4 CD box set was that a disk and a half was made up of this early material from Patsy's "captive years".
If you have no Patsy in your collection,
is an excellent collection of 24 songs recorded between her signing with Decca until her untimely death. No filler. If you're willing to add one more album to that,
is a strong album that includes the classic "Faded Love", has zero overlap with "The Patsy Cline Story", and its dozen songs were Patsy's last recordings. Forget all the other best of's and compilations; "The Patsy Cline Story" plus "A Portrait of Patsy Cline" will give you just about everything you'd need or want from Patsy's Decca years.
