Patty Loveless Salutes Men on New CD

Patty Loveless photo courtesy of Saguaro Road Records.

Sept. 17, 2008 — Patty Loveless has been previously named the best female vocalist in country music by the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association as well as in the Grammy Awards, yet when she went to record her new album of remakes, Sleepless Nights, she purposely stayed away from songs that had a strong history in her own gender.

"I would steer away from the female country artists," she says, "for the fact that I felt like I was gonna be compared."

Thus, most of the covers on the CD are old songs from the 1950s and ‘60s that were originated by such male acts as George Jones, the Everly Brothers and Jack Greene.

Not that some of the songs weren’t eventually done by females. As an example, Loretta Lynn covered the Webb Pierce title "There Stands The Glass" as an album cut. Patsy Cline likewise did her own remake of the Ray Price standard "Crazy Arms." In fact, it would’ve been nearly impossible to find classic country songs that hadn’t been remade by a woman somewhere, because cover versions were once a common way to fill out an album.

"If it was a hit," Patty says, "they made the artist go in there and say, ‘We need to cut the hits. People wanna hear the hits by their favorite artists.’ Even though maybe Webb Pierce or Jack Greene mighta had a hit on these songs, they would take somebody else in, an artist that wasn’t as well known , and cut the hits."

The one song on Sleepless Nights that made its biggest impact through a female act is "I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know." The song went to No. 1 in 1953 for the Davis Sisters, one of whom was a member of the Grand Ole Opry at the time that Patty was inducted: Skeeter Davis.

Patty is GAC's September Fan Focus artist. Click here to watch her talk about the making of Sleepless Nights!