Book excerpt: Born Ruby Rebecca Blevins in a log cabin nestled among the Arkansas Ozarks in 1908, Patsy Montana began her musical career performing in the 1920s with the California-based Montana Cowgirls trio. She went solo and in 1936 became the first female country and western singer to sell one million records with her self-penned "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart." Her career spanned eight decades, and in 1996 (also the year of her death) she was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Here is the story of a tiny, blue-eyed woman who had a pioneering spirit and a big voice. Patsy Montana describes in her own words and in vivid detail her life, career, and success at a time in music history when women did not cut gold records, gold records were not even given, and Billboard did not even have a chart for western music.