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Here’s how lost recordings from the '50s and '60s were found and why Cline’s daughter says they feel so meaningful.

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A compilation of never-before-released recordings by country music legend Patsy Cline includes two original recordings found in a basement after 30 years.

Cline is famous for “Crazy,” “I Fall to Pieces” and “Walkin’ After Midnight.”

Most of the songs on “Imagine That: The Lost Recordings (1954-1963)” were recorded in D.C. and Virginia. They were just released for Record Store Day on April 12. 

Here’s how the lost recordings were found and why Cline’s daughter says they feel so meaningful. 

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Cline, from Winchester, Virginia, only recorded a few albums before she died in a plane crash in 1963. But her songs and vocal style remain mainstays of country and popular music more than 60 years later.

“The Lost Recordings” includes 48 unreleased songs from concerts and TV and radio appearances.

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"It's just like she's alive again. It is really very personal. And I'm just so impressed with the work that these people did and so glad that we trusted them to do this."

 – Julie Fudge, Patsy Cline’s daughter 

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Fudge said the recordings are unlike any of her mother’s studio recordings.

“She's in her early 20s and she's singing in front of people live,” she said. “And so, it really does have a personal feel when you listen to it. It's like sitting in a room and talking to somebody.”

Two of the oldest songs were recorded in Arlington at the old WARL radio station. The songs were taken from the original acetate disc that had been sitting in a box in Marc Zitelman’s basement for more than 30 years.

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“There's two sides,” he said. “There's an A side and a B side. And as you can see on the label, it was just typed up in the front office while the engineer was recording this from a live presentation.”

Zitelman found the disc in a box of records he got from his father’s restaurant, Bassin’s, which was a popular downtown D.C. night spot for decades. 

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He’s not sure how his dad got the disc but thinks it probably had been in the restaurant since 1954.

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Other songs in “The Lost Recordings” were uncovered by the late Joe Lee, of Joe’s Record Paradise. They’re from the old Don Owens TV show.

“I'm just so grateful to these people who had the foresight to hang on to these things or to even have them in the beginning,” Fudge said.

“I think the thing is that it's finally found its way into perpetuity,” Zitelman said. “So, I'm actually really thrilled that this is now in a place where forever it can be heard, and it's something I don't think was ever heard before.”

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The collection includes live performances of Cline's biggest hits and one of the last known recordings Cline made just weeks before she died: the gospel standard “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.”

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