When Patty
Loveless was a little girl, she had an ongoing argument with her
father. Each week the two would settle into their living room in
Pikeville, Kentucky to watch television. Her father, a coal miner and
country music fan, wanted to watch the Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt
Review, but his daughter preferred The Flintstones. “Of course
Daddy would always win out,” she admits, “and I’m so glad he did. It
taught me a lot.”
And we’re so glad
he did. Loveless, who possesses a plaintive, aching voice with the
elastic sensibility of a steel-guitar, is one of the last genuine
country singers in a genre gone far too pop. One of the most expressive
voices in any genre of music, her yearning alto resides somewhere at the
intersection of Twang & Soul. She is the torchbearer for the brutally honest approach
that defined the careers of Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn
(who is Loveless’ distant cousin).
Anyone who wants
to know what country music is really about — the heartache, the despair,
even the drinking — need look no further than Loveless’ latest CD:
Sleepless Nights: The Traditional Country Soul of Patty Loveless
(Saguaro Road Records). Gathering songs for the project, she and her
husband, producer and musician Emory Gordy, Jr., listened to hundreds of
classic country songs before settling on the fourteen standards that
grace the CD, lauded by critics as a true return to form.
“We’d just sit
there and listen to George Jones and then Jack Green or Webb Pierce,”
explains Loveless, “and a smile would come across Emory’s face or
mine.” She describes the country classics, stalwarts like “The Pain of
Loving You,” “There Stands the Glass” and “Please Help Me, I’m Falling,”
as music that “just pulls at your heart, old friends that you revisit
again.” To create the CD’s rare blend of retro tunes with fresh
arrangement, Loveless and Gordy amassed musicians from “old school”
Nashville — players like Harold Bradley, “Pig” Robbins and Billy Lenneman
— with
contemporary pros like Steve Gibson and Al Perkins. And then they threw
in background singers like the inimitable Vince Gill, who blends
seamlessly with Loveless on the title track, to sweeten the pot.
Not surprisingly,
the George Jones songs take Patty to another level, further solidifying
her reputation for authenticity. “I’ve been listening to him probably
since I was a baby,” she says. “When I was in my mother’s womb, my
family was playing those records around the house.” Apparently, the
prenatal osmosis worked. On “He Thinks I Still Care” or “The Color of
the Blues,” Loveless takes Jones’ signature melisma, his inventive
flirting with notes, and kicks it up a notch with her own signature
power. “It’s just that I studied George so much that those songs were
easier for me,” she comments.
In
fact, Loveless’ first top-ten hit was a cover of a Jones tune, “If My
Heart Had Windows” in 1988. She also won a Grammy nomination in 1997
for her collaboration with Jones on “You Don’t Seem to Miss Me.”
Loveless has
studied at the altar of many of country music’s greatest performers.
She grew up in a house filled with not only country and mountain music,
but also early rock and roll. “I even had one brother — my oldest
brother — who enjoyed Otis Redding and Percy Sledge,” notes Loveless, “and
in that neck of the woods, you didn’t hear that much of that music.”
And the music spawned home-grown talent: her older siblings Roger and
Dottie formed a singing duo and moved to Louisville to pursue a career.
After Loveless
replaced Dottie, who retired to marry, she and Roger were invited by the
revered country duo of the Wilburn Brothers to visit them at the Grand
Ole Opry. By the age of fourteen, she was watching Dolly Parton and
Porter Wagoner on the stage of the Opry. When Wagoner heard Loveless
sing, he immediately took her and Roger under his tutelage.
“We would sit
around with Porter at his boathouse — we would just go out there and
hang,” says Loveless. Her current cover of the Wagoner classic “The
Pain of Loving You” actually grew out of that experience. “We used to
sing that song together,” she recalls. “And Dolly and I would sing one
of her songs, ‘My Blue Tears.’ She would sing harmony and I would sing
lead.” When Wagoner made his final appearance at the Opry, shortly
before his death in 2007, both Loveless and Parton performed for him.
By the time
Loveless was fifteen, she began to travel and perform professionally
with the Wilburns. “We were riding in the back of a Cadillac,” she
remembers. “I would sleep on their shoulders — we didn’t have a tour
bus.” Is it any wonder traditional country runs through her veins?
When
Loveless turned sixteen, she received a surprise birthday present from
Doyle Wilburn. “He gave me a demo session of seven songs as a birthday
gift,” she remembers. Ironically, some of the very players who appeared
on those demos — which Loveless still owns — are featured on Sleepless
Nights: pianist “Pig” Robbins and bass-player Bill Lenneman. “We
sit around and talk about the Wilburn Brothers days,” comments
Loveless.
In 1985, Roger
took a tape of his sister’s tunes to producers Tony Brown and Emory
Gordy, Jr. After a number of hits, including the infectious “Timber,
I’m Falling in Love” (1989) and “I’m That Kind of Girl” (1990), Loveless
and Gordy were functioning as a unit, both professionally and
personally. In 1989 Loveless won her first platinum record for the
album Honky Tonk Angel.
In 1992, with her
career burgeoning, Loveless faced one of her greatest challenges. “I
was starting to have some throat problems out on the road,” she
recalls. She was about to head out on a 30-day tour in the West when a
visit to the doctor brought a stern warning: “He told me, “No, you
can’t — if you do this, you’re going to blow your voice, and it’s going to
be gone, and that’s it.” At first undaunted, Loveless went on to film
appearances on the television special, The Women of Country, but
a follow-up appointment brought her singing to a screeching halt. “He
told me, ‘You just can’t do this,’” says Loveless.
Following surgery
and during her recuperation, Loveless did a lot of praying and wondering
about the eventual shape of her voice. “We went in on my birthday to
cut ‘Blame It On Your Heart,’ and I just couldn’t believe it,” admits
Loveless. “It blew me away.” Loveless received the best possible
birthday present: thanks to the surgery, her voice had attained a richer
timbre and a fuller sound. Her next recording Only What I Feel
(1992) became her second platinum album and yielded not only the number
one “Blame It on Your Heart,” but two of her signature songs: “How Can I
Help You Say Good-Bye” and the riveting “Nothing But the Wheel,” one of
the finest-written country songs from the past twenty years.
More number ones
came with the playful “I Try to Think About Elvis” from When Fallen
Angels Fly (another platinum record and the winner of the CMA Album
of the Year in 1995). Both “You Can Feel Bad” and “Lonely Too Long”
from The Trouble with the Truth” (platinum in 1996) also
hit number one. The Trouble with the Truth also spawned
one of Loveless’ favorites, “To Feel
That Way At All,” a brilliant
performance she tried but failed to get her then-record company to release as
a single. “I kept telling them,” she now reveals, “that song is the one
the fans want.”
In
2001, Loveless released what many have considered her masterpiece,
Mountain Soul, an album of traditional bluegrass songs inspired by
her family’s own coal-mining roots and the music that told their story
and sustained them through hard times. Its centerpiece was “You’ll
Never Leave Harlan Alive,” a Southern gothic mini-drama of thwarted
opportunity and hopelessness delivered in a mountain cry. She dedicated
the album to her parents (her father, John Ramey, eventually developed
black lung disease, the bane of all coal miners).
Emotionally,
Loveless is a fearless singer, particularly deft at choosing those kill-billy
ballads that take listeners to the darker places. “It’s music for the
soul,” she observes, although she admits that there are “very few” truly
haunting songs still being written today. “There’s nothing wrong with
songs that touch people in some way, even if you have to haunt them. I
think in this day and time, and this economy we’re all facing and people
facing hard times, you’re going to hear more of those types of songs.
People need that — to cleanse their soul.”
When Loveless was
only twelve years old, she learned to sing Linda Ronstadt’s pensive
ballad, “Long, Long Time.” “I’d do it at some of the jamborees we used
to play,” she says. Seeing Loveless sing a song like “Nothing But the
Wheel,” you realize that she imbibed not only the genuine emotion that
characterizes Ronstadt’s singing but also the capacity to meld with the
song, to become one with it. “That’s what I’ve always tried to
accomplish,” she explains. “For me, I’m not really acting the song — I’m
living the song.”
Loveless took a
three-year sabbatical before recording Sleepless Nights: she lost
her mother, her mother-in-law and her friend and inspiration Porter
Wagoner all in that period. “I had to go through a process of healing
for a while,” she confirms, “but as I said, music is like a wonderful
friend.” She hopes the songs on Sleepless Nights will reach a younger
audience. “I hope the youth of tomorrow and the next generation will be
influenced and maybe even inspired to write this way,” she comments.
“This kind of music and these melodies —
they’re classic.”
