Panel Discussion: Forever with Us: The 50th Anniversary of a Country Music Tragedy
Saturday, March 02, 2013 : 1:30pm
Panel Discussion: Forever with Us: The 50th Anniversary of a Country Music Tragedy
Special Program
March 2, 2013
Though the reason for the gathering was to mark the tragedy, fifty years ago, of the airplane crash that took the lives of Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and Randy Hughes, host Eddie Stubbs told the capacity Ford Theater audience, "We're going to celebrate today." Watch the complete video of this program.
In 2013, Cline's legacy shines brighter than the other artists', but Stubbs pointed out that at the time of their deaths "everybody was a star of equal value." Over the course of a two-hour program, attendees were treated to rare video footage of all the principals performing in their prime, prompting appreciative applause from the audience.
Panel members included Cline's widower, Charlie Dick; Hughes's widow and Copas's daughter, Kathy Copas Hughes; Hawkins's former band member, fiddler Earl White, filling in for ailing Country Music Hall of Fame member Jean Shepard, who was Hawkins's widow; and Bobby Wright, whose uncle, entertainer Jack Anglin, died in a car accident on the day of the funeral.
Hughes remembered watching her father and Hawkins play with a child's gyroscope the morning the two men departed for Kansas City and the concert they played for the benefit of the family of recently deceased radio DJ "Cactus" Jack Call. She would not see her father again. Hughes also recalled that she learned of their deaths, and the death of her husband, Randy, who was piloting the plane, when she heard the announcement on a newscast at 7 a.m. the next morning.
Though Shepard couldn't attend the program, Stubbs brought along audio excerpts from a previous interview, in which she remembered Hawkins as a "man's man" who loved to hunt and fish. She recalled that a fan club member awoke her on the night of the crash with the news.
Dick recalled Cline's voracious appetite for recorded music. "She had records of everybody you could think of," he said, "and they was on all the time ... whether you liked it or not." Stubbs called her "one of the greatest voices, not just of her time, but of all time."
Stubbs also praised Kathy Hughes for her talent. After screening a rare clip, from 1962, of a duet performance featuring Hughes and her father on the show Pet Milk Grand Ole Opry, Stubbs said, "Girl, you had it!"
"With him," she replied, "I could do anything."
