Cyndi Lauper on Patsy Cline’s Influence: The Ram Report
Cyndi Lauper covers two Patsy Cline songs on her upcoming Detour album, “Walkin’ After Midnight” and “I Fall to Pieces.” She first fell in love with the late country legend as a child, listening to AM radio and watching talent shows with her family.
“I saw Patsy Cline on the Arthur Godfrey talent show [Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts] with my nana. She would watch all the shows about people getting a chance,” Lauper recalls.
The music icon revisited Cline’s catalog during the height of her pop music superstardom.
“There was a time in the Eighties when I was famous, very famous. . . I couldn’t go outside and I couldn’t go anywhere. So I stayed in a lot,” she says. “My friend worked at MCA [Records], and she sent me all the Patsy Cline catalog, so I just spent hours in the apartment playing Patsy Cline and singing with her.”
Lauper insists her Cline covers — along with her versions of hits by Willie Nelson, Wanda Jackson and Harlan Howard, among other country greats — were all done “respectfully,” sung in her own voice but without any kind of pop spin. Detour hits stores May 2nd.