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| Birth Name(s) : Patty Lee Ramey |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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Partner:
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| Profession:
Singer |
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Full Patty Loveless Biography
Patty Loveless (born Patty Lee Ramey on January 4, 1957 in Pikeville, Kentucky, raised in Elkhorn City, Kentucky and Louisville, Kentucky ) is an American country music singer. Loveless rose to stardom thanks to her mix of honky tonk and emotive country ballads. She is a distant cousin of Loretta Lynn and Crystal Gayle.
When Dotty got married, Patty joined her brother Roger and started singing together at the Lincoln Jamboree and several clubs in Louisville Kentucky, under the name "Singin' Swingin' Rameys".
Loveless and her brother would perform in various clubs. 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 Loveless to appear on stage, he would call up the Rameys and try to get them a booking.
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.
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.
With the new recording contract, Loveless headed into the recording studio to record new material. However, nagging problems over the years with her vocal chords turned into emergency surgery in late 1992 to repair burst nodes on her vocal chords, put her new album on the back burner and seriously threatened her career.
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.
She took all of 2006 off of the road to spend more time at home with husband Emory Gordy. As of the beginning of 2007, she was still off the road.
Patty was an active amateur radio operator, with callsign KD4WUJ. As of April 3, 2007, her license shows as being canceled in the FCC database. |
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