Way To Go, Patsy

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) announced yesterday that Patsy Cline's Greatest Hits album has just been given their prestigious Diamond Award.  Just to give you an idea of how prestigious their Diamond Award is, here's a quick lesson: Gold status represents 500,000 copies of an album sold; Platinum represents one million copies sold; Diamond status represents ten million copies have been sold.  Folks, I'd say it's pretty darned good for an album released 32 years ago to still be consistently selling thousands of copies each year.  That translates into approximately 312,500 copies sold each year since the album was released in 1973.  This is especially impressive since the RIAA has reported declines in actual album sales for the past few years due to illegal online downloading of music.  Soooooo, according to these statistics,  it means that people today will illegally download the latest songs, but yet they will fork over cash to physically buy a copy of Pasty Cline's Greatest Hits.

I'm the same way, except that I no longer download songs illegally.  In January, I paid for an annual membership to Limewire, for an unlimited amount of downloads. But before that, I had no qualms about downloading a song here or there, but I would never download an entire album; I would go out and buy it, even if there were only a couple of songs on it I liked.  I did it out of respect to the songwriters.  But today, maybe it's out of respect for Patsy Cline that music lovers are still buying her album instead of going online and downloading it for free. I think it's awesome.  And I think Patsy would say "You're all right, hoss.  Thanks for buying my records" if she were alive.

To me, I think Patsy Cline still has the best female voice ever in the history of recorded music.  Yes, I know that's a pretty strong statement, but it's the way I feel.  I don't think there's a singer alive today that could sing "I Fall To Pieces" and make you actually feel it like Patsy did.  My Mom got to see Patsy perform in concert a few months before Patsy was killed in the tragic plane crash, and Mom says it is still the best concert she's seen.  Like me, Mom said that when Patsy sang that night at the old Armory in downtown Louisville, you could feel the pain in her voice. 

I hope you sell ten million more copies of your Greatest Hits album, Patsy.  You sure deserve it.