Kathy Mattea is among the most commercially successful and respected female country artists of her era, infusing 1980s country with a fresh, stripped-down style and a unique blend of traditional country roots and attention to the stories being told. Growing up outside Charleston, West Virginia, Kathy’s tastes were eclectic.
Her love of traditional country was solidified after she left West Virginia University and took a job as a tour guide at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. It broadened when she started earning extra money singing on demo tapes for songwriters pitching their tunes on Music Row.
I was one of those people that, if you’d written a song that was on the pop side of country music and a song that was on the real traditional side of country music, you’d call me. I could come and sing both of them.
After signing a recording contract with Mercury, Kathy teamed with independent producer Allen Reynolds. Their creative alliance resulted in hit singles for more than a decade, including “Love at the Five and Dime” (1986)—her first Top 10 hit on the country charts, peaking at No. 3—and her biggest No. 1 success, “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses,” which captured the 1988 CMA award for Best Single. Mattea cemented her star status by becoming CMA’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 1989 and again in 1990. Her Top 10 hit “Where’ve You Been,” co-written by husband Jon Vezner and Don Henry, earned Kathy the 1990 GRAMMY Award for Best Female Country Vocal. She won again at the GRAMMYs in 1993 with her Gospel-influenced Christmas album, Good News. After a mining disaster in her home state killed twelve miners in 2006, she came out with Coal (2008, produced by Marty Stuart), filled with songs about mining life and its repercussions, as a tribute, she said, “to my place and my people.”
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