[78-L] Patsy Montana's "Million Seller"

[Cary Ginell]

We still don't know how this rumor got started. I can see the Grand Ole Opry folk or the Nashville contingency propping up their artists by inventing a story like this, but this was Patsy Montana, who was on WLS Chicago for years and had little to do with Nashville in either her image or her music. I think that it is interesting, if not irresponsible, for so many credible historians like Oermann, Charles Wolfe, and everyone else who has written about Montana to mention this pseudo-fact in every opening paragraph about. Everybody bought into it, even me. I've been just as guilty as everyone else. So what's the truth and how did the lie get started?

Cary Ginell

> Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 19:20:23 -0400
> From: dlennick at sympatico.ca
> To: 78-l at klickitat.78online.com
> Subject: Re: [78-L] Patsy Montana's "Million Seller"
> 
> When the legend becomes fact..
> 
> dl
> 
> On 5/24/2011 7:16 PM, Mark Bardenwerper wrote:
> > On 5/24/2011 2:33, Cary Ginell wrote:
> >> Got this from Jay Orr of the Country Music Hall of Fame:
> >>
> >> Regarding your Patsy Montana / Cowboy’s Sweetheart
> >> question, I have this from our senior historian, John Rumble. He refers
> >> to Robert K. Oermann and Mary Bufwack, authors of
> >> Finding Her Voice: Women in Country Music. They make the
> >> assertion that I Wanna Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart was “the first record by
> >>    a woman in country music to pass the million mark in sales.”:
> >>
> >>
> >> We have not referred to
> >>    it as a million-seller, because sales of this magnitude seem
> >> implausible during the midst of the Great Depression. I seem to remember
> >>    seeing one source, possibly one of our interviews
> >>    with Art Satherley, who stated that it sold in the hundreds of
> >> thousands, but not 1 million. If Cary wants to contact Oermann and
> >> Bufwack, they may have obtained hard data to back their claim. But I
> >> don’t think so. I think the million-seller designation probably
> >>    bent the truth for promotion purposes. I suppose it’s possible that
> >> cumulative sales over a good many years reached 1 million, but to reach a
> >>    million within a year or even two years just doesn’t ring true, to me.
> >> I’ll check some of the Art Satherley interviews
> >>    and see what I find, as this won’t take long and may turn up some
> >> evidence. Of course, Uncle Art was reflecting after many decades, and
> >> his memory might not be accurate.
> >>
> >>
> >> Another thing to
> >> consider is that the Carter Family—enormously popular and with the
> >> support of 500,000-watt Border Radio, never sold that many copies of a
> >> single. Considering that 30,000 to 40,000 was considered
> >>    a decent, profit-making country sale in the prosperous late 1940s and
> >> 1950s, I just find it hard to believe that “Cowboy’s Sweetheart” sold 1
> >> million units.
> >>
> > So, in other words, the truth was a lie.
> >
> 
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