PATSY CLINE ![]()
By now, the parade of early deaths of beloved musicians is long indeed. Not a few of these losses have occurred in small airplane crashes: Glenn Miller, John Denver, Jim Reeves, Otis Redding, Jim Croce, Rick Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Aaliyah, and three bandmembers in Lynyrd Skynyrd: Ronnie van Zant, Stevie Gaines, and Cassie Gaines. There is even a parallel to “The Day the Music Died” in country music, when Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins all died in a plane crash on March 5, 1963.
(June 2013/1)
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Likewise, the few women who reached the top of their field are among the biggest stars in country and western music history: Kitty Wells, Tammy Wynette, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, and Reba McEntyre, among many others. In hip hop, Salt-N-Pepa burst onto the scene in 1985 and probably helped establish the musical genre altogether, back when rap was being dismissed as a fad.
(October 2013)
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Alt-country star k.d. lang has had an angular, androgynous persona since her first public appearances in the late 1980’s; she publicly came out as a lesbian in 1992 and has been one of the more activist among popular musicians. The band that k.d. lang formed, the Reclines started out as a Patsy Cline tribute band.
(January 2014)
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