Known for her smooth, powerful delivery, Patsy Cline became the first successful crossover female country vocalist with hits in the pop market during the early 1960s. Cline was an aggressive artist who fought against efforts to mold her into a pop sensation. She initially disliked many of the songs that became her biggest hits, preferring uptempo country tunes to the more accessible ballads that made her famous. As her relatively brief career came to an end in 1963 when she died in a plane crash, the slick recording style known as the "Nashville sound" was taking over the industry. In Country Music, U.S.A., historian Bill C. Malone notes that Cline "moved female country singing closer to the pop mainstream and light years away from the sound" of artists with a more traditional, rural style such as Kitty Wells. Despite her resistance to being...