Michelle Branch, Norah Jones, Diana Krall, k.d. lang, Lee Ann Womack and Natalie Cole have recorded songs for Remembering Patsy, a Patsy Cline tribute album to be released later this year on MCA. The release will be roughly timed to coincide with what would have been Cline's seventieth birthday, September 8, 2002. The array of artists representing country, pop and jazz captures the impact of Cline's brief recording career, during which she brought the sounds of pop into Nashville and the sounds of Nashville onto the pop charts.

The tracks for Remembering Patsy will be the dozen songs initially selected for her 12 Greatest Hits album, which had sold more than 9 million copies and spent 766 weeks on Billboard's Country Albums chart.

Krall takes on what is decidedly Cline's most popular song, the Willie Nelson-penned "Crazy," which forty-one years ago crossed over onto the pop charts, climbing as high as Number Seven. Legendary Nashville scribe Hank Cochran had the best luck writing for Cline. Four of his songs made Cline's 12 Greatest and are being re-cut for Remembering Patsy: "She Got You" by Lee Ann Womack, "Why Can't He Be You" by Jones, "I Fall to Pieces" -- co-written with Harlan Howard -- by Cole, and "You're Stronger Than Me," by an as-yet-confirmed artist. Branch will take on "Strange," a song penned by Mel Tillis and Fred Burch, while lang sings Wayne Walker's and Webb Pierce's "Leavin' on Your Mind."

The performers for the other six songs, which include "Walkin' After Midnight," "Sweet Dreams," "Back in Baby's Arms" and others, will be confirmed in the next few weeks.

Cline died on March 5, 1963 in a plane crash in Tennessee.

ANDREW DANSBY
(July 3, 2002)