On the morning of Thursday, March 7, 1963, a heavy silence fell over Nashville. The skies matched the raw grief of a country music community that had just been shattered two days prior. The bodies of Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas, and their pilot-manager Randy Hughes had been retrieved from the swampy woods of Fatty Bottom near Camden, Tennessee. They lay in state now, surrounded by banks of flowers and thousands of weeping fans who surged against the barricades of Nashville’s funeral homes.
The industry was very small then. An intimate network of road warriors who had spent a decade traveling together in caravans, swapping songs, and sharing stages from the Louisiana Hayride to the un-airconditioned backstage of the Ryman Auditorium. To lose three of its most vibrant stars at once felt like a generational catastrophe.
But the Grim Reaper wasn’t just yet finished with Music City.
As the surviving stars prepared to dress in their Sunday best to pay their final respects, one beloved veteran of the Opry stage decided he needed to look presentable for his friends. Jack Anglin of “Johnnie & Jack” wanted a quick trim. It was simple and mundane on a day of monumental tragedy. But on that black Thursday, even the most routine drive in Nashville carried an invisible weight.
