Patty Loveless
Patricia Lee Ramey (born January 4, 1957), known professionally as Patty Loveless, is an American country music singer. Since emerging on the country music scene in late 1986 with her first (self-titled) album, Loveless has been one of the most popular female singers of neotraditional country. She also recorded albums in the country pop and bluegrass genres.Loveless was born in Pikeville, Kentucky, and raised in Elkhorn City, Kentucky, and Louisville, Kentucky.
She rose to stardom thanks to her blend of honky tonk and country-rock and a plaintive, emotional ballad style. Throughout her career, Loveless has sold 15 million albums worldwide.Patty Loveless was born in Pikeville, Kentucky. She was the sixth of seven children born to Naomie (née Bowling; 1921 – 2006) and John Ramey (1921 – 1979) of Elkhorn City, Kentucky. Like many men in the area, Mr. Ramey worked as a coal miner. Through her patriline, Loveless is first cousins with fellow country singers (and sisters) Loretta Lynn and Crystal Gayle.
Loveless’ interest in music started when she was a young child. In 1969, when she was 12, the Ramey family moved to Louisville, Kentucky. The move was necessitated from her father’s struggles with coalworker’s pneumoconiosis, or black lung disease. The disease was caused by years of working in the coal mines and breathing in coal dust.Loveless graduated from Fairdale High School in 1975.
Her older sister, Dottie Ramey, an aspiring country singer, frequently performed at small clubs in eastern Kentucky with her brother Roger, billed as the Swinging Rameys. Traveling with Dottie 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 Dottie married in 1969 and quit performing, Roger persuaded Patty to perform onstage for the first time at a country jamboree in Hodgenville, Kentucky. The forum consisted of foldout chairs in a small auditorium and was called the “Lincoln Jamboree”. She was terrified at first, but with her brother performed several songs; she loved the applause she received 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 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.Doyle Wilburn was slowly grooming Ramey as his lead female singer. He also held a music publishing contract on her with Sure-Fire music, his songwriting agency, as Wilburn realized that she was also a very talented songwriter. In addition, during the summer when the group wasn’t on the road, Doyle Wilburn had Patty Ramey work at his various enterprises in Nashville, having her wait on tables in one of his restaurants and clerking at his Music Mart USA record store.
After graduation from Fairdale High School in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1975 Patty Ramey became a full-time member of the Wilburn Brothers’ band as their lead female singer. About this time she met the Wilburns’ new drummer, Terry Lovelace. Lovelace came from a small town in western North Carolina, Kings Mountain, and shared many things in common with Loveless. At first Patty kept her friendship and her growing relationship with Lovelace a secret from the Wilburns. However, eventually Doyle Wilburn learned about it and asked Patty to break it off. However, Ramey was a rebellious teenager, quit the Wilburns, and left with her boyfriend for western North Carolina. In early 1976, she married Terry Lovelace and began performing with him in a pickup-band based in Kings Mountain.
Loveless has charted more than 40 cuts on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including five in the No. 1 position: “Timber, I’m Falling in Love”, “Chains”, “Blame It on Your Heart”, “You Can Feel Bad”, and “Lonely Too Long”. She has recorded 14 studio albums (not counting compilations); in the United States, four of these albums have been certified platinum, and two have been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). She has been a member of the Grand Ole Opry since 1988. Loveless was married to Terry Lovelace, from whom she derived her professional name, from 1976 to 1986. She has been married to record producer Emory Gordy Jr. since 1989.
In April 1985, Loveless felt her marriage to Terry Lovelace was ending (they eventually divorced amicably in 1986). She contacted her brother Roger to help her get back to Nashville. After being in the rock ‘n’ roll scene for so long she felt completely out of the country-music loop but wanted to sing country music again. Roger Ramey helped his sister cut 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 recording contract with a major label in Nashville.
Roger Ramey sent the demo tape out to every major label in Nashville, and was met with a solid wall of rejection by them all. After a month of not getting anywhere, out of desperation to help his sister, he decided to take a chance with MCA Nashville. MCA, being the industry leader at the time was his first choice of labels. Taking a cassette of the five song demo of Loveless, Roger bluffed his way past the receptionist of Tony Brown, the head of A&R (Artist & Repertoire – in charge of finding and developing new talent) by pretending to be someone else who was late for an appointment.As soon as they met, Roger told Brown he had the “best girl singer to ever come to Nashville”. Tony Brown said he would give Roger 30 seconds to sell him on it. Roger 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.
With Roger Ramey waiting in his office, Brown took the tape to Jimmy Bowen, President of MCA Nashville at the time. Hearing the tape, Bowen wasn’t impressed with Loveless, but told Brown to go ahead and sign her, but only to a short-term, singles-only recording contractMCA years (1985–1992)
Tony Brown brought in one of his top producers, Emory Gordy Jr., to help develop Loveless for MCA. Together, they produced a series of songs for Loveless, and all of them were released to radio stations with varying degrees of success. MCA released her first single, “Lonely Days, Lonely Nights” on December 7, 1985, charting on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for 8 weeks, reaching No. 46 on January 25, 1986.
Loveless’ second single, “I Did”, was released in April 1986. The song had gone out with releases from four other MCA singers, all of whom had album contracts. Shortly after its release, Roger Bowen asked Loveless to come into his office where he explained to her that he wanted to pull the song from radio because it was succeeding too well. “I have to be fair to the other artists”. In return, he would give Loveless an album deal and she could release “I Did” as a single from her first album.
This produced her self-titled Patty Loveless album, being initially released on October 1, 1986, in a promotional form, with a full release on February 21, 1987. The 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, released on January 25, 1988, was the one that got Loveless noticed in the country music world. “If My Heart Had Windows” and “A Little Bit in Love”, covers of George Jones and Steve Earle respectively, both 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. On the road, Loveless was the opening act for the top MCA artists, such as George Jones, Reba and Strait, which had people coming early to the shows to hear her sing. However, her concert popularity did not translate into album sales for her label.
For Loveless’ third album Honky Tonk Angel, Brown took over as sole producer. With five tracks from the album charting in the Billboard Top Ten Country Singles, including two at No. 1, it served as the breakthrough album for Loveless. The album itself was Loveless’ highest charting at No. 7 on the Country Albums category. The two No. 1 singles were “Chains” and “Timber, I’m Falling In Love”. Loveless also did a cover of the Lone Justice song, “Don’t Toss Us Away”, which featured Rodney Crowell on backing vocals.
The song charted at No. 5. Famed songwriter Kostas had a major role by writing three of the album’s tunes, including “Timber, I’m Falling in Love” and “The Lonely Side of Love”, which peaked at No. 6Returning to the studio in 2008, Loveless appeared on a track on George Strait’s Troubadour album, as well as a track on Jimmy Wayne’s Do You Believe Me Now. Later in 2008, Loveless signed a recording contract with Saguaro Road Records.,[20] and recorded a Tribute album, Sleepless Nights, which was released on September 9.[20] Sleepless Nights received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Country Album. Patty’s latest recording for Saguaro Road, Mountain Soul II, was released on September 29, 2009, which would go on to win a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album.
Loveless resumed touring in September 2008 with a handful of appearances and continued touring with small annual tours in a few venues through 2010. She has been active as a background singer for a number of artists, appearing on Miranda Lambert’s Four the Record (2011) and Kathy Mattea’s Calling Me Home (2012).Over the past several years Loveless has made annual appearances in Nashville at the Grand Ole Opry and goes on an annual country music cruise. She no longer performs on a regular basis, spending her time with her husband and family at their home near Dallas, Georgia, northwest of Atlanta.On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Patty Loveless among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.
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