Patty Loveless

Kentucky

Patricia Lee Ramey was born on 4 January 1957 in Pikeville, Kentucky, and grew up in Elkhorn City, a coal-mining area. She was the sixth of seven children of Naomi and John Ramey. Her father was a coal miner who died of black lung disease in 1979. She is a distant cousin of Loretta Lynn and Crystal Gayle. The singers she names as her own influences include Molly O'Day, the Stanley Brothers, Bill Monroe, George Jones, Patsy Cline and Flatt & Scruggs, though Elvis was the first rock and roll artist she listened to.

By eleven she was playing guitar and writing songs with her brother Roger, and the Wilburn Brothers discovered the two at a local show. After Fairdale High School she toured as a vocalist in their band. At fourteen she made her first visit to the Opry, at the Ryman, as a guest of Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner. She married the Wilburn Brothers' drummer Terry Lovelace in 1976 and altered the spelling of her name to Loveless. They divorced in 1986. Her brother Roger Ramey was an early manager and bandmate, and in the late 1970s she played rock covers around the Midwest.

Nashville

By the mid-1980s she was back in Nashville singing demos. In 1985 she took a songwriting deal with Acuff-Rose, and a demo tape her brother sent to MCA brought her to the producer Tony Brown, who helped sign her in July. Her first four singles all stalled outside the top 40, and the label resisted an album until she argued the case. The self-titled debut followed in 1986. A cover of George Jones's If My Heart Had Windows gave her a top-ten single in 1988, and she was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry on 11 June 1988. In February 1989 she married Emory Gordy Jr., a producer and bassist who went on to produce nearly all of her albums. Her first number one, Timber, I'm Falling in Love, came from Honky Tonk Angel.

In 1992 a vocal cord aneurysm was diagnosed. She had surgery in October, rested her voice for about a month, and left MCA for Epic. Her Epic debut, Only What I Feel, appeared on 20 April 1993 and went platinum. It produced four singles, among them the number one Blame It on Your Heart and, a year later, How Can I Help You Say Goodbye. Platinum records followed for When Fallen Angels Fly and The Trouble with the Truth, and When Fallen Angels Fly won the CMA's Album of the Year.

Mountain Soul

A festival show with Ralph Stanley in West Virginia in 1992 planted the idea of a bluegrass record. Stanley encouraged her, and Gordy said he would like to make one someday. The result was Mountain Soul, released on 26 June 2001 and recorded in Franklin, Tennessee, from January to March of that year.

The idea, in her words, was simple.

It was built around her own family. The cover was shot at an old boarding house tied to a local mine in Kentucky coal country, and the booklet carries photographs of both families, including her father with his face black from coal dust. Several songs came back from the 1992 Stanley show, among them Daniel Prayed and Soul of Constant Sorrow. The record reached number five on the bluegrass albums chart, and appeared on several decade-end lists. Its closing run includes You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive, the Darrell Scott song about generations of Harlan County miners. A sequel, Mountain Soul II, followed on 29 September 2009 and won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album in 2011.

I wanted this whole record to revolve around family.

Patty Loveless, 2001

Recognition

Over her career she placed 44 singles on the Billboard Hot Country chart, five of them at number one, and 31 in the top twenty between 1988 and 2003. She won five CMA awards, two ACM awards as top female vocalist, in 1995 and 1996, and two Grammys. After 2009 she largely retired from performing and settled in Georgia with Gordy.

In October 2022 she took part in the Kentucky Rising flood-relief benefit, and the next month she sang Harlan with Chris Stapleton at the CMA Awards. On 3 April 2023 the Country Music Hall of Fame announced her election as a Modern Era Artist alongside Tanya Tucker and Bob McDill. At the Medallion Ceremony on 22 October 2023 Vince Gill inducted her as the 150th member. CMA chief executive Kyle Young said that artists today say they want to sing like Patty Loveless.