Patty Loveless

Patty Loveless (born Patty Lee Ramey, January 4, 1957 in Pikeville, Kentucky, raised in Elkhorn City, Kentucky and Louisville, Kentucky) is an American country music singer.

Overview

Since her emergence on the scene in 1987 with her first, self-titled album, Loveless has been one of the most popular female singers of the Neotraditional country movement, although she has also recorded albums in the Country pop and Bluegrass gernes.

Loveless rose to stardom thanks to her blend of honky tonk and country-rock, not to mention a plaintive, emotional ballad style. Her late-1980s records were generally quite popular, earning her comparisons to Patsy Cline, but most critics agreed that she truly came into her own as an artist in the early 1990s.

To date, Loveless has charted more than forty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including five Number Ones. In addition, she has recorded fourteen studio albums (not counting compilations); in the United States, four of these albums have been certified platinum, while two have been certified gold.

Loveless' accolades have been many, including being awarded the Academy of Country Music (ACM) Top Female Vocalist (1996) and the Country Music Association (CMA) Female Vocalist of the Year (1996) awards. She is a frequent performer at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, being a member of the Opry since 1988.

Loveless is also a distant cousin of Loretta Lynn and Crystal Gayle. She has been married twice, first to Terry Lovelace (1976-1986), from whom her professonal name "Loveless" is derived, and to Emory Gordy, Jr. (1989-Present), who is also her producer.

Discography

Main article: Patty Loveless discography

Biography

Early years

Patty Lee Ramey was born the sixth of seven children to John and Naomi Ramey outside of Pikeville, Kentucky on 4 January 1957. Although born in Pikeville, the family lived in a small town nearby named Belcher Holler where her father was a coal miner.

Loveless' interest in music started when she was a young child. In 1969, when she was twelve, the Ramey family moved to Louisville, Kentucky in search of medical care for John Ramey, who was afflicted with "Black Lung Disease" (Coalworker's pneumoconiosis).

Her older sister, Dotty Ramey, was an aspiring country singer, and would perform frequently at small clubs in Eastern Kentucky, with her brother Roger Ramey, known as the "Swinging Rameys". Traveling with Dotty and Roger to Fort Knox in 1969, and hearing her sister perform on stage, Patty Ramey decided that she would like to become a performer as well.

When her sister Dotty married in 1969 and quit performing, Roger Ramey convinced Patty to perform onstage for the first time at a small country jamboree in Louisville. The forum consisted of foldout chairs in a small auditorium and was called the "Lincoln Jamboree". She was terrrified at first, but with her brother performed several songs. Patty loved the applause she recieved for her performance, and after the show she was paid five dollars, the first money she ever earned.

Patty Ramey joined her brother Roger and started singing together at the and several clubs in Louisville Kentucky, under the name "Singin' Swingin' Rameys". Loveless and her brother would perform in various clubs in the Louisville area. A local radio announcer, Danny King with a country radio station in Louisville was a supporter of the Ramey kids. Whenever there was an opportunity for them to appear on stage, he would call up the Rameys and try to get them a booking.

Porter Wagoner

It was her brother Roger that initially took Patty Ramey to Nashville, Tennessee in 1971. Having grown up listening to the music of the Grand Ole Opry both in Pikeville, and then in Louisville, Roger had first gone there and became a producer with The Porter Wagoner Show.

When they arrived in Nashville, Roger went to Porter Wagoner's office without an appointment and managed to introduce his sister to Wagoner. Roger was able to convince Wagoner to listen to his sister sing, and she performed a song she wrote for their father, John, called "Sounds of Loneliness". To both Roger and Patty's suprise, Wagoner thumped his hand on his desk and said he was going to help her out. Wagoner introduced them to his singing partner at the time, Dolly Parton, and encouraged her to go back home and finish school, although he did invite her to travel with him and Dolly Parton on weekends during the summer.

It was during a 1973 touring Grand Ole Opry show in Louisville Gardens that Bill Anderson, Connie Smith, the Wilburn Brothers, and Jean Shepard was scheduled to appear. However Jean Shepard was caught in a flood, and she wasn't able to make it in. Danny King, sensing an opportunity, gave the Rameys a call. Loveless and her brother Roger appeared for about fifteen minutes on stage.

The Wilburn Brothers listened to Loveless and after her performance asked her if she wanted to come to Nashville and work with their band to replace their female singer. While traveling with the Wilburns, she met her future husband, Terry Lovelace, who was the drummer of the band.

After graduation from High School in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1975 Loveless chose to travel in a small band with Terry Lovelace, whom she married in 1976. (When she began performing professionally, she changed her name from Patty Lovelace to Loveless, so as not to draw any connection to porn actress Linda Lovelace [1].) For the next decade, Loveless performed in relative obscurity in North Carolina.

MCA years (1985-1992)

In early 1985, Loveless' marriage to Terry Lovelace was ending and she contacted her brother Roger to help her get back to Nashville. Roger told her that he could get her a deal with a major record label. Loveless moved back to Nashville, and her brother assisted her in making a five-song demo tape, one of them being a rough cut of her self-penned song "I Did", which Loveless first wrote as a teenager, then later included on her first album.

Roger Ramey then began to spread the word around about her talent. She and her brother disagreed about including "I Did" on the demo tape. Loveless didn't believe the song was good enough, but Roger argued that it would be what got her a contract. Once the demo was finished, Roger started trying to get her a deal. It didn't take very long. He had already decided that MCA Nashville, was his first choice of labels, being the industry leader at the time. So he went to their offices, without an appointment, hoping to be able to meet someone by chance. Tony Brown wound up being that someone. The receptionist was a friend of Roger Ramey, and she helped him get in to see him. As soon as they met, Roger told him he had the "best girl singer to ever come to Nashville". Tony Brown said he'd give Roger 30 seconds to sell him, and he quickly played the tape of Patty singing "I Did".

Brown listened to the entire five-song tape, and asked Roger to leave it with him so he could play it for some other execs and get back to him. Roger refused and told Brown that he wanted a commitment that day, and if he didn't want her on MCA, he knew another label that did.

Tony Brown agreed to sign Loveless to a short-term, singles-only recording contact. MCA released her first single, "Lonely Days, Lonely Nights" on December 7, 1985, reaching #46 on the Billboard charts.

Other singles followed in 1986, with one of those first recordings being "I Did". When released in April 1986, "I Did" gained a significant amount of airplay, much to the surprise of the executives at MCA.

At this point and with the song doing so well, Loveless was offered an album contract. This gave birth to the self-titled Patty Loveless album, being initially released on October 1, 1986 in a promotional form, with a full release in February, 1987. Several other singles, "Wicked Ways" and "After All", were released from that album, which again, did not do well on the charts but garnered sufficient airplay that Tony Brown decided to sign Loveless to a long-term recording contract.

It was her second album, If My Heart Had Windows, that got Loveless noticed in the country music world. "If My Heart Had Windows" and "A Little Bit in Love" reached the country music top 10. Also, in 1988 Loveless was invited to join the Grand Ole Opry, which put her firmly in Nashville to stay.

While at MCA in the late 1980s, Loveless released three more albums for through 1991, scoring hits with songs such as "Timber, I'm Falling In Love", "Chains", "I'm That Kind of Girl", and "Jealous Bone". She toured endlessly and performed on television frequently. Also during these years, she met and married her second husband Emory Gordy, Jr. in 1989 who co-produced her music.

Although MCA had given her stardom, there was the belief (rightly or wrongly) that the record label did not promote her albums well. At MCA she was forced to compete with Reba McEntire, Trisha Yearwood and Wynonna. Changes in her band, also replacing her brother Roger as her manager did not improve matters. Feeling that she was not a label priority, she left for Epic Records in late 1992.

Epic Records years (1993-2006)

With the new recording contract, Loveless headed into the recording studio to record new material. However, nagging problems over the years with her vocal cords turned into emergency surgery in late 1992 to repair burst nodes on her vocal cords, put her new album on the back burner and seriously threatened her career.

On her 36th birthday, Loveless re-entered her professional life by performing at the Grand Ole Opry. She was fully recovered, and in fact many say that her voice had a richer, fuller quality to it. Going back to work in the studio, she released the album Only What I Feel in April and her #1 single "Blame It On Your Heart" which firmly put Loveless back into the spotlight. The release of Only What I Feel gave Patty two CMA nominations for Single of the Year and Video of the Year for "How Can I Help You Say Goodbye". Some critics said that this album with Epic was her personal best.

Perhaps her crowning achievement was that album's follow-up, When Fallen Angels Fly. It won the Country Music Association's Album of the Year award and gave her four Top 10 singles. She followed it up with The Trouble with the Truth in 1996 which gave her Female Vocalist of the Year awards from both the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association.

Although she continued to record for Epic throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, her commercial momentum slowed down, as neotraditionalist artists like Loveless were eclipsed on country radio by flashier, trendier young performers like Shania Twain and Lee Ann Womack; none of the singles released from her 1997 album Long Stretch of Lonesome or 2000's Strong Heart reached the top ten. (The albums themselves continued to do well, however, with Long Stretch reaching # 9, and Strong Heart peaking at #13 on the country albums charts.)

In an effort to control her own destiny, rather than be controlled by country radio, Loveless made an abrupt move away from commercial, country/pop and made a stone-cold bluegrass album in 2001. Mountain Soul was released to numerous critical accolades and sold decently despite a lack of radio support. She used the same bluegrass approach on a Christmas album, Bluegrass & White Snow: A Mountain Christmas, in 2002. On Your Way Home, a return to more commercial oriented country, was released in 2003 to critical acclaim. Though she has not scored a top-forty country single since "On Your Way Home" reached # 29 in 2004, Loveless' albums still do well, usually charting in the country albums top forty, despite the fact that she no longer has the support of mainstream country radio.

In 2005 she released Dreamin' My Dreams. While critical reception was good, it did not fare well commercially. The album debuted and peaked at number 29 on Billboard's country album chart while no song from the album made the singles chart.

In 2006, Loveless sang one song in duet with Bob Seger on his album Face the Promise; the same year she also collaborated with Solomon Burke on his Nashville album.

Current (2006-present)

She took all of 2006 and 2007 off of the road to spend more time at home with husband Emory Gordy, Jr., though she & Emory did a few appearances at the Grand Ole Opry and did a couple of appearances at other shows. She has not yet announced if she plans to return to the road in 2008. Loveless appears on a track on George Strait's 2008 album Troubadour.

References

• Leamer, Larwence, Three Chords and the Truth: Hope, Heartbreak, and Changing Fortunes in Nashville, 1997, ISBN-10: 0060175052

• Interview on Country Music Television Showcase, November 1997 (Parts 1 through 4)
• Interview with Roger Ramey, "Essentially Patty Loveless", August 1999 internet newsletter
• "Before She Was A Star", "Essentially Patty Loveless", July 1999 internet newsletter

External links

• Patty Loveless official site
• Patty Loveless at Country Music Television