12 Greatest Hits [Best of]

For a few dollars more you can pick up one which has all 19 of her Country hit singles registered between 1957 and 1982, the last ten posthumously following her death in that March 1963 plane crash.

Also, like far too many of the early compilations, they chose NOT to give us the original version of her first hit for Decca in 1957, Walkin' After Midnight. That version went for 2:30 and reached # 2 Country/# 12 pop in May. What they give you here was a re-recording done in August 1961, shorter by almost 30 seconds and performed at a slightly faster tempo.

The rest are all originals although, technically, tracks 7, 10, and 11 were not among her "greatest hits" which is, after all, the title of this album. Back In Baby's Arms was the uncharted B-side of Sweet Dreams (Of You), Why Can't He Be You? was the uncharted flip of Heartaches which, not included here, made it to # 73 pop in 1962 but failed to make the Country charts, and You're Stronger Than Me was the uncharted flip of So Wrong in 1962.

In addition to Heartaches, legitimate hits left off this volume were the B-side to Walkin' AFter Midnight - A Poor Man's Roses, Or A Rich Man's Gold [# 14 Country] - the double-sided 1962 hit When I Get Thru (You'll Love Me Too)/Imagine That which reached # 10 Country/# 53 pop and # 21 Country/# 90 pop respectively, When You Need A Laugh [# 47 Country in 1964], and He Called Me Baby [# 23 Country in December 1964 and her first immediate posthumous hit].

In 1969 her rendition of the old Eddy Arnold hit, Anytime, reached # 73 Country, followed nine years later by Life's Railway To Heaven which topped out at # 98. Two years after that, in 1980, a release of her cut of the old standard Always went all the way to # 18, followed in December by a re-mix of I Fall To Pieces [# 61]. In late 1981 her duet with Jim Reeves on Have You Ever Been Lonely (Have You Ever Been Blue?] soared all the way to # 5, and in 1982 yet another version of I Fall To Pieces, this time dubbing her voice with that of Jim Reeves, levelled off at # 54.

With the insert you do get two pages of background notes written by Jay Orr and Don Roy, a chronology of Paty's all-too-brief life, and a list of session personnel involved on each of the 12 tracks. But while these features and the AAD sound reproduction makes this a nice, inexpensive, sampling of Patsy, MCA can easily turn it into a 5-star offering by simply following the lead of others who re-released earlier 10- and 12-track CDs [Elvis, Donovan, Sarah Vaughan as examples] with bonus tracks.