Patty Loveless

Patty Loveless (born Patricia Lee Ramey, January 4, 1957) is an American country music singer.

Patty Loveless was born Patricia Lee Ramey on January 4, 1957, in Pikeville, Kentucky to Naomi (née Bowling; 1921–2006) and John Ramey (1921–1979).

She is the sixth of seven children.

Through her patriline, Loveless is a distant cousin of country singers Loretta Lynn and Crystal Gayle.

She was raised in nearby Elkhorn City, Kentucky, where her father worked in a coal mine.

He contracted black lung disease as a result of the job, forcing the family to move to Louisville, Kentucky, to facilitate his medical treatments.

Loveless spent much of the late 1970s playing rock cover songs at various venues in the Midwestern United States.

In 1973 she married the band's drummer, Terry Lovelace, the same year and moved with him to Charlotte, North Carolina.

At this point, she altered the spelling of her name to Patty Loveless, a variant of her married name.

John Ramey died of the disease in 1979.

By the time she was 11, she began playing guitar and writing songs with her Brother Roger, which led to the two of them performing together at local events.

The two were discovered at one such show by the Wilburn Brothers.

The duo did not consider her mature enough for a musical career at the time and encouraged her to keep performing.

After she graduated high school, she began touring with the Wilburn Brothers as a vocalist in their touring band.

By the mid-1980s, she moved back to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a career as a country artist.

At the time, Loveless said she was inspired by the rise of neotraditional country in the mid-1980s through such acts as Dwight Yoakam, The Judds, and Randy Travis.

She began performing in her teenaged years before signing her first recording contract with MCA Records' Nashville division in 1985.

While her first few releases were unsuccessful, she broke through by decade's end with a cover of George Jones's "If My Heart Had Windows".

In Nashville, she sang demo recordings for other artists and signed a songwriting contract with Acuff-Rose Music in 1985.

Loveless recorded five of her own songs on a demo tape, which her Brother Roger sent to MCA Records' Nashville division.

Tony Brown (a record producer who was also serving as that label's president of artists and repertoire) helped sign Loveless to the label in July 1985.

Loveless began recording music for MCA with production assistance from both Brown and Emory Gordy Jr.., a producer whom Roger had befriended.

Prior to working with Loveless, Gordy was a member of Emmylou Harris's backing band, the Hot Band.

MCA Nashville released Loveless's debut single in late 1985 titled "Lonely Days, Lonely Nights".

This was followed by "Wicked Ways", "I Did", and "After All".

All four singles peaked outside the top 40 on the American Billboard Hot Country Songs charts.

Because of their failures, MCA executives initially did not want to release an album.

However, Loveless noted that "I Did" was highly popular among fans and concertgoers despite its low chart showing and successfully convinced label executives to allow the release of a full album.

That album, the self-titled Patty Loveless, was released in 1986.

Gordy and Brown produced the project and were among the contributing musicians, as were guitarists Reggie Young and Richard Bennett.

Contributing songwriters included Guy Clark, Jo-El Sonnier, and Karen Staley.

Loveless issued five albums on MCA before moving to Epic Records in 1993, where she released nine more albums.

Four of her albums—Honky Tonk Angel, Only What I Feel, When Fallen Angels Fly, and The Trouble with the Truth—are certified platinum in the United States.

Loveless has charted 44 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including five which reached number one: "Timber, I'm Falling in Love", "Chains", "Blame It on Your Heart", "You Can Feel Bad", and "Lonely Too Long".

Loveless's music is defined by a mix of sounds, including neotraditional country, country pop, and bluegrass music, with her singing voice garnering favorable comparisons to Loretta Lynn and Emmylou Harris.

Recurring songwriters whose work she has recorded include Matraca Berg, Kostas, Jim Lauderdale, and Steve Earle.

She has collaborated with Vince Gill, George Jones, and Dwight Yoakam, among others.

Nearly all of her albums were produced by her husband, Emory Gordy Jr.. Although she largely retired from performing in 2009, Loveless has sporadically contributed to other artists' works in subsequent years.

She has won five awards from the Country Music Association, two from the Academy of Country Music, and two Grammy Awards.

Loveless was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame on October 22, 2023.