Things found at Patsy Cline's death scene

A farmer heard the engine sputter and then stop followed by the sound of a crash. The evening of March 5, 1963, in Benton County, Tennessee was "rainy, kind of foggy, and misty" with "the wind blowing" and streaks of lightning ripping across the sky, Jerry Phifer, the police dispatcher who received the call about the plane crash, recalled. "It wasn't a very good night to be flying, I think," he told the television show "Friends and Company" in 1996 (via YouTube). Soon Phifer and the rest of the world learned the terrible news. Country star Patsy Cline was dead as were her fellow Grand Ole Opry performers Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins, and Cline's manager, Randy Hughes, who was piloting the small plane when it smashed into a wooded hill near Camden, Tennessee, per the Associated Press.

Patsy Cline was the perfect picture of a rural, blue-collar country music singer. Cline grew up as Virginia Patterson Hensley in Virginia in the 1930s. She was Virginia from the Virginia coal country or, as she was called when she was younger, "Ginny." Cline went on to take the country music world by storm. She recorded her first album in 1955 and gained a huge following by the time the 1960s rolled around. Her songs started to appear on the radio. Her face was showing up on the television variety program Town and Country Jamboree. She was on her way to the top.

Country legend Patsy Cline sat on a plane and began to write. She wasn't penning a new hit tune, but rather, on that day in April 1961, while on her way to perform a concert in Kansas City, Kansas, she began to write out her last will and testament on Delta Airlines stationery, according to "Patsy Cline: The Making of an Icon." She wanted the bulk of her estate to go to her mother, Hilda Hensley, along with her two children, Julie and Allen, until they were 18. Though Cline was married to a man named Charlie Dick, she and Dick had a turbulent relationship, according to The Buffalo News. To Dick, she left some furniture and their car.

An icon known for her smooth, sentimental vocals and for blazing a path for women in country music, Patsy Cline's life story is the epitome of a country music song — sweet dreams of love and fame punctuated by tough breaks and hard times, crazy adventures with friends and lovers underlined by dirty deals, and cheating death. Cline's legacy as one of the most influential voices in country music is as much notable for her cross-genre appeal into pop music and pioneering the Nashville Sound as it is for swearing with abandon and calling everyone she knew "hoss."

Virginia Patterson Henley, otherwise known as Patsy Cline, is a country legend who changed the music industry for women (via Outsider). As a child, she discovered she had a passion for singing. When the Virginia native left school at 16, she pursued her musical aspirations, all while working odd jobs (per Biography). Although she received a recording contract in 1954, Cline remained virtually unknown until 1957. That all changed when she went on CBS's "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts."