“EVERYBODY’S REACHING OUT FOR SOMEONE”: CATCHING UP WITH 1970’s RCA RECORDING ARTIST PAT DAISY

by John O’Dowd 2008

Blessed with a gorgeous folk-tinged voice and a burgeoning talent in songwriting, singer Pat Daisy left her small southern town in the 1960’s and headed to Nashville to pursue her childhood dreams of becoming a successful recording star. Under the aegis of legendary songsmith Curly Putman (Green, Green Grass of Home, He Stopped Loving Her Today), who believed strongly in her potential as both an artist and a songwriter, the lovely dark-haired vocalist signed with RCA Records in 1970 and soon afterwards came out with her first single, the self-penned You’re The Reason. Over the next four years, Pat’s promise as a performer grew as she issued a series of eclectic 45’s for the label, including her musically sublime Top 20 hit, Everybody’s Reaching Out For Someone.

Initially encouraged by RCA’s strong commitment to develop her career in slow and steady fashion (much like Capitol Records had done with fellow newcomer and musical contemporary Anne Murray), Pat eventually learned that promises made (especially those given in haste by record label executives) are all too often, impossible to keep. Within five years of her arrival in Nashville, Pat Daisy’s solo recording career was over, and she retreated to a much more fulfilling home life as a wife and mother—a life that she still enjoys today, over 30 years later. The tradeoff, as Pat will tell you, was more than worth it.

In summer 2008, with the sudden and unexpected loss of her family’s former homestead outside Gallatin, Tennessee, still fresh on her mind, Pat was eager to reflect on both her upbringing, and her career in country music, with author and biographer John O’Dowd.

John: Pat, please talk a little bit about your early years. When and where were you born and what did your parents do for a living?

Pat: I was born Patricia Key on October 10 in Gallatin, Tennessee, and I grew up in nearby Bush’s Chapel, a small town out in the country which was about eight miles north of Gallatin. The countryside out there was beautiful and I guess that’s why I have always loved nature so much. From the time I was a young child, I always had lots of pets. I raised several ducks and I also once nursed a baby squirrel back to health by feeding it with a medicine dropper. And our family always had cats. Our house was at the center of activity in the community, being right across from an elementary school and a cemetery separating us from the church. I used to sit in the cemetery every evening and watch the sun set in the valley where a mist would rise over a small lake. It was wonderful. My mother was a homemaker known for her great knowledge of the Bible and her delicious, homemade pies. Her grandparents were from Ireland and when her grandfather boarded a boat for America, her grandmother (who was on the boat telling him goodbye as he intended to send for her later), accidentally got stuck on the boat after it set sail. So, they wound up coming over here together. My father was a shoe cutter at a shoe factory in Gallatin. I was the youngest of four children. I have three older sisters (the closest to me is eight years older), so I spent my days playing with a boy cousin who lived down the lane at the old homestead. I was a tomboy and we spent our days playing together in the fields and woods.

In May of this year [2008], the old home place where I grew up burned down and I was devastated. The lady that was living in the house at the time thought she had turned off a burner on the stove but instead she had turned it all the way up and then left the room. When she came back, it was too late…everything was already in flames. All she managed to get out of there was her purse.

I went up to Bush’s Chapel recently to see the ruins. You know, sometimes you have to see something for yourself for it to be real. I was shocked to see that there was nothing left. All my childhood memories were centered around that old house and it was very sad to lose it.

John: At what age did you first become interested in music? Do you come from a musical family?

Pat: I don’t ever remember not singing. I have another cousin who often tells the story of how he used to hear me singing way up in a tree I used to climb. He lived about a quarter of a mile away from me and yet he could always hear me singing. My mother sang around the house all the time, so I was always around it.

John: Where did you attend school and were you a good student?

Pat: I attended grades one through eight at the school across from my house. I made very good grades. Later, I rode the bus into Gallatin where I attended high school. I made good grades there, too, but I didn’t like high school because it was so different from what I was accustomed to back in Bush’s Chapel.

John: I read that you were part of a musical trio in high school with two other girls. Can you talk a little bit about this experience? What was the name of your group and where did you perform? Was it strictly in school, or did you also sing at social events in your hometown?

Pat: This trio was made up of two other girls from the community and me. One girl played the piano and we only sang once a year at a holiday party at the shoe factory where our fathers worked. This was in grade school. I sang in the glee club in high school but never as a soloist or in a group.

John: Who were some of your earliest musical influences? Did you ever get to meet any of them after you began your recording career, and if so, what were they like?

Pat: When I was in grade school my best friend and I used to play records by Teresa Brewer and Brenda Lee and take turns singing along with them. I met Brenda years later when she was hosting a show I attended. I thought she was nice. While growing up I guess you could say I listened to whatever our local radio station was playing, and that was usually just the major hits of the day. I don’t remember the stuff being country, per se. Back then (to me, anyway) country music sounded more like what bluegrass sounds like today. After I was married I started listening to artists like Dottie West, Jim Reeves and Marty Robbins. I later met

Dottie in the ladies restroom at an RCA function. I remember we discussed Fan Fair. I liked to watch Dottie perform because she just stood there and sang her heart out.

John: When did you first begin to think about pursuing a musical career? Did you attend college?

Pat: I did not attend college. My boyfriend Mike Deasy’s mother died right before his high school graduation.  His father worked a night shift and he had an eleven year old sister who needed to be watched, otherwise she would have had to go to an aunt’s house every night. Mike and I had planned on marrying in two years but because of the circumstances we decided to get married right away. We stayed in our hometown for two years and then moved to Nashville. Soon afterwards, we watched the taping of several syndicated country shows. Seeing those shows really aroused my love for country music and got me thinking that I would really like to try to break into the business.

John: I understand you moved to Huntsville, Alabama in 1966, where you worked in a folk group.

Pat: Yes, my husband’s work brought us to Huntsville in the mid 60’s. Mike was an engineer and in those years the space program provided lots of opportunities for people. A close friend of his was in Huntsville working for NASA. He knew I enjoyed singing and he introduced me to three guys who had a local folk group. They liked my voice and occasionally asked me to sing with them.

John: When were you signed to RCA Records? Was this your first record deal and were you given an album deal, or were you signed to the label as a singles artist?

Pat: I was introduced to RCA through the great songwriter Curly Putman. Mine is a real Cinderella story. My husband had bought me a small tape recorder and I started writing songs and putting them down on tape. I didn’t know how to play an instrument and I didn’t know how to read music so I asked one of the guys from the folk group, who had become a good friend, to play the guitar for me. He would come over to our house and I would sing the song to him and he would find the chords I was singing and we would put it down on tape. Then, I would add the background harmonies later on. I let someone hear some of the songs I had written and he let someone else hear them and that person had some contacts in Nashville. He got me an appointment with Curly Putman, who had his own publishing company at the time, and Curly asked me to work for him as a songwriter. I continued to write for about a year and then I finally went up to Nashville to cut some demos of my songs. Curly took that tape to Chet Atkins at RCA and in 1970 he signed me to the label as a singles artist. I was on cloud nine as my childhood dream of being a singer and a recording artist had come true!

John: I see you first hit the Billboard country charts in February 1972, when your first single for RCA, Everybody’s Reaching Out For Someone hit the magazine’s Top 20. That is a terrific showing for an artist’s first single.

Pat: My first single was actually You’re the Reason, and it came out in April of 1970. Both sides of the record were songs I had written. I think the single made it to the 60s on the Cashbox and Record World charts. [ed. note: The song did not chart in Billboard.] My next single was also comprised of two songs that I wrote…the A side being Are You Really Leaving, Baby? It was also on the charts in Cashbox and Record World, but I don’t remember where. My third single was Everybody’s Reaching Out.

John: Can you recall your feeling at the time when you realized you had a hit record [Everybody’s Reaching Out] on the national charts? Did RCA show a lot of belief in your career at the time and did they put a lot of promotional support behind the record?

Pat: When I first signed with RCA I was very excited as they said they were going to build my career and promote me like Capitol was doing with Anne Murray. But after Everybody’s Reaching Out peaked, they didn’t follow up with another single for almost six months. At that time in Nashville very few artists were doing anything that was really original. Everyone seemed to be copying each other’s music because that’s what the industry wanted. As for my producer, Jerry Bradley (Owen’s son), I remember him telling me early on that he didn’t know what to do with me. I didn’t like some of the songs RCA had me cut after Everybody’s Reaching Out because they were not really me. I wanted to develop my own style but unfortunately that never happened.

John: Who are some of the country artists you met during your time in Nashville? Do you have any amusing, interesting, or even sad memories of any of them?

Pat: I met a lot of the other RCA artists at various business functions. Dolly Parton was a very sweet person. Dottie West and Connie Smith were also nice. I did a show with Skeeter Davis once and was happy to learn that we had a love of animals in common. She brought her cat to the show and I have a photo of the three of us together backstage. George Hamilton the IV was a friendly guy. We discussed the possibility of maybe being related to one another because my mother’s maiden name was Hamilton. Dickey Lee was also a very sweet and nice man. He was the co-writer of Everybody’s Reaching Out. Johnny Russell was always funny. So was Jerry Reed. I was doing a recording session one day and Jerry (whom I didn’t know at the time) came in the back door of the studio and laid down at my feet until I finished the song. Needless to say that made me very nervous since I had never met him before! (laughs) One day I was at RCA and they were throwing a party for Buford Pusser, the guy whose life the Walking Tall movie was about. I met him that day and was surprised that he was very quiet and shy. I attended my first dee jay convention in Nashville and RCA held a big party the night before. Someone took a picture of me with Chet Atkins and Frances Preston, who was the head of BMI at the time. I didn’t know it but the next morning the picture was on the front page of all the Nashville newspapers. I guess that was RCA’s way of introducing me to the dee jays because right under the picture was a blurb about my new single coming out.

My first recording session at RCA was at Studio A. It was a very large room and I was scared to death! When I walked into the studio, the Jordanaires were standing there, as were several musicians that are now in The Musician’s Hall of Fame. That was a very thrilling experience for me. Harold Bradley led that first session [and all the others that followed]. We would run over the songs a couple of times and then record them. As I said earlier in the interview, I felt like all my childhood dreams were coming true.

John: When did you change your surname from its original spelling “Deasy” to “Daisy”? Was it suggested to you by an agent or your management that “Daisy” was a more commercial sounding name?

Pat: My married name [Deasy] is pronounced Day-see so when RCA signed me and looked at the original spelling they said there was going to be a problem. My producer Jerry Bradley said that every DJ was going to mispronounce my name and suggested that I change it to Daisy. I liked the idea and they used it for a while as a promotional thing. With my first record, You’re The Reason, they sent out a Daisy night light, and some ads in Billboard even had a daisy with my face in the center. I thought that was very clever marketing on RCA’s part.

John: What were some of the venues you played in the early 1970s? Did you do a lot of fair dates, and did you tour extensively? If so, who were some of the acts you toured with and do you have any memorable stories about them, or the places you played?

Pat: I didn’t do as many dates as most artists because I had a small child at the time (my son Kevin was born in 1965) and I didn’t want my music career to interfere too much with my family life. I worked mostly on the week-ends and my husband always drove me to and from the dates. Sometimes when working shows with other performers (whom I would rather not name), I was very sad to see that they were drinking and doing other things [that were not healthy]. Life on the road was very hard back then. I remember doing a show in Pennsylvania with Waylon Jennings and some other artists when we didn’t get paid. I had worked an outdoor show the day before Waylon arrived and the promoter told me that his partner had run off with all the money. Waylon pulled up in his black bus and Little Jimmy Dickens had returned in his bus from the day before when he had done his show—I’m assuming, to try to get his money. He and the promoter were in that bus for a long time. Waylon told me he wasn’t going on, and I was going to have to do exactly as he did. After a while he said, “Those people out there have paid good money to see me so I ‘m going to do the show.” The promoter gave me a check, which as an artist you’re not supposed to take, and of course it bounced! The last time I talked with Waylon was at RCA where we were recording a tribute to Chet Atkins and he asked me if I ever got paid for that show. I told him I didn’t and he said that he didn’t, either.

That sort of thing happened a lot in those years.  For instance, I heard several other country stars say that after paying their band they would have to turn around and borrow money from them just to get back home! The kind of money that artists get paid now and the venues they play have changed so much since the 70’s, and they have a much better life on the road than we had.

John: During this period, did you appear frequently on TV?

Pat: Yes, I was often a guest on Ralph Emery’s morning TV show in Nashville. Ralph was always very nice to me. He also had his own syndicated radio show at the time which usually only featured artists who had albums to promote but he always invited me on the show to play and promote my singles, too. Ralph also had me on his nightly radio show on WSM. The first time I was invited to play the Grand Ole Opry was right after my first single came out. I performed on the afternoon matinee and did three shows that night. All together, I made around ten appearances on the Opry. Unfortunately, I didn’t hire a manager until some time after Everybody’s Reaching Out was released, which was a little too late [for it to do any good]. During this time, I appeared on a syndicated TV show called That Good Old Nashville Music and I also did a network show called Country Music USA. The last time I was on the Opry I had gone up to do Ralph’s morning show and Tex Ritter was there. He said, “I am going to introduce you on the Opry tomorrow night.” I was thrilled. Sadly, he died very shortly after that show.

John: Following Everybody’s Reaching Out, RCA released the song Beautiful People in the summer of 1972 as your next single. It was a remake of a 1967 pop hit for Bobby Vee. Did your producer choose this song for you, or did you have a say in this, and the other kinds of material you recorded?

Pat: Beautiful People was chosen for me by Jerry Bradley. He was trying to find something pop sounding [to try to get us a crossover hit] but that song would not have been my first choice. In fact,  I had a lot of trouble recording it…I just didn’t like it.

John: Beautiful People was a mid-chart success and your next single that appeared in Billboard came out a year later. Titled The Lonesomest Lonesome, it was a moody and heavily-produced record with a dramatic string arrangement. Do you remember who wrote this song and how you found it? The single hit the Top 50 in Billboard. Did you like performing it?

Pat: The Lonesomest Lonesome was written by Mac Davis and had been recorded earlier by Ray Price with an entirely different arrangement. I heard the Mac Davis version on one of his albums and brought it to my new producer, Roy Dea. We both loved it and the promotion guy at RCA later told me that it was the only record he had ever gotten a call on from Ralph Emery telling them that RCA had a hit on its hands and that they shouldn’t let it slip away. When I did the Opry, one of the guys in the band asked me where Lonesomest Lonesome was on the charts and when I told him it was only in the Top 50, he couldn’t believe it. He said they were playing it constantly on the radio in Nashville, even though people couldn’t find it in any of the record stores. People would always tell me when they met me that they couldn’t buy my singles anywhere—even early on, when Everybody’s Reaching Out was a hit. I often received fan mail back then telling me the same thing. I have no idea why that was, but evidently RCA had some problems with its distribution back then.

John: Did you ever record an album for RCA? If not, did you record several sides at RCA that were unreleased but could have made up an album’s worth of material? In other words, do you know if there are any Pat Daisy cuts at RCA that remain unreleased in the label’s vaults?

Pat: There were several songs that I recorded that were never released, and I have copies of all of them. After a session I always had them make me a copy of whatever I had recorded that day. RCA said it was going to release an album after Everybody’s Reaching Out made the Top 20, but it never happened. Whether everything I cut at the label is still in its vaults all these years later is something I can’t answer because I don’t know.

John: The song My Love Is Deep, My Love Is Wide was your last single on RCA that appeared on the Billboard charts. What can you tell us about this song? Were you still being produced by Roy Dea at the time?

Pat: Yes, Roy was still producing me. Personally, I would not have chosen My Love Is Deep, My Love Is Wide as a single. I told Roy that if we were going to record it, that we should cut it “Anne Murray-style”[meaning, more pop, or country/pop sounding]. He knew how much I disliked a steel guitar sound on my records because I asked him to remove it from The Lonesomest Lonesome, which he did. Anyway, when I came in to record My Love Is Deep, My Love Is Wide, one of the best steel guitar players in town was there for the session, so needless to say, I was a bit surprised by that! But that’s how that particular song came about and while it was the last one of my RCA singles to chart, it wasn’t the last single we released.

My last recording session at RCA was sometime in 1974 at the famous Studio B (although at the time I didn’t know it was going to be my last session). In addition to My Love Is Deep, My Love Is Wide, I also recorded a song called I’ll Comfort You and two songs that I had written, For You and Would You Go Away. I cut both those songs with a five string quintet, which was kind of unique at the time. I had hoped that RCA would see that the songs were different from anything else being recorded in country music back then and that the label would promote them that way. Roy Dea loved both of those songs and put For You on the back of what turned out to be my last single for them, I’ll Comfort You. Would You Go Away never saw the light of day and I imagine it is still in the can somewhere. Roy told me he got a call from a DJ in Texas about For You saying how he thought it could become “a modern-day classic”. But unfortunately, with it being the B-side of a record that wasn’t a hit, that didn’t happen.

John: Please talk a little bit about I’ll Comfort You, which was your last RCA single. The record didn’t chart in any of the trades. Did you know at the time of its release that it would be your final single for the label? (Or was it released at the same you were leaving the label, and that’s why RCA didn’t promote it?)

Pat: That was another one of those songs that wasn’t quite me. It was released when was I was still on the label but it wasn’t worked, and it didn’t chart. During this time, my contract was not renewed but I was told by RCA, “If  you ever come up with another hit record bring it to us and we’ll put it out.” The way the label found songs for me was to listen to other people’s albums for songs that had already been recorded. That made things easier for them as there was very little work involved on their part and they didn’t have to be creative, but it made it impossible for me to find my own sound.

John: When did you leave RCA? Did you immediately look for another record deal, or did you instead concentrate on your stage show and your personal appearances?

Pat: I left RCA in 1974 and everything ended, as far as my recording solo stuff. I was frustrated because after almost five years with the label I still couldn’t get the kind of sound that I wanted. Curly Putman once told me that I was ahead of my time because middle of the road wasn’t as popular back then as it would be later on.

Following her tenure as a solo artist at RCA, Pat began a long and fruitful association with legendary pianist Floyd Cramer, one of the primary architects (along with Chet Atkins and Owen Bradley) of the smooth and classy “Nashville Sound”of modern country music. Born October 27, 1933 in Sampti, Louisiana, Cramer had grown up in the small town of Huttig, Arkansas, where he began playing the piano at age five. Upon graduating from high school in the early 1950’s, he returned to his home state where he worked as a pianist on the KWKH-Shreveport Louisiana Hayride radio show, later touring the southwest with a rockabilly band. Cramer moved to Nashville in January 1955 and quickly became one of the busiest studio musicians in the industry, playing on recording sessions for everyone from Webb Pierce and The Browns to Don Gibson and Faron Young. Signing with RCA Record in 1959, he performed regularly on many TV and radio shows, including the Grand Ole Opry, and began issuing a series of mellow instrumental albums geared at both the pop and country markets

As a session player, Cramer developed a distinct sound in his piano playing that would eventually become his trademark. When he would hit a note, he would purposely hit an adjacent key and then allow his fingers to slip off, creating a sound that would be dubbed the “slip note”. It’s been written that Cramer first stumbled upon this melancholy piano style on a demo he and songwriter Don Robinson recorded of the future classic Please Help Me, I’m Fallin’, though Cramer himself always maintained that he had actually developed the style from listening to Mother Maybelle Carter on the autoharp. The “slip note” style Floyd Cramer perfected can be heard on nearly every RCA recording made in Nashville during the 1960’s and 70’s, including Jim Reeves’ Four Walls and Elvis Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel.

In late 1960, Cramer had a huge hit record with his beautiful and haunting instrumental composition of Last Date (again featuring his slip note style of playing). The song soared to the Top 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 pop music chart and into the Top 15 on the magazine’s country chart and made him a household name, virtually overnight. He followed this with several other hit records, including On The Rebound and his version of the Bob Wills’ classic, San Antonio Rose (a Top 10 country hit in June 1961). Although his musical style eventually fell out of favor in the marketplace when country music became much more progressive in the late 1970’s and 80’s, Floyd Cramer was still a popular concert draw when Pat Daisy was given an opportunity to work with him in the mid 70’s.

John: How did you come to work for Floyd Cramer? Were you part of his touring company as a featured female vocalist?

Pat: After I was no longer recording for RCA I received a call from Roy Dea who said the label wanted to do something different with Floyd Cramer, who had been on the label for several years. They wanted to use a single female voice instead of a group on his next record and Roy asked me if I would be interested in doing that. Of course I was thrilled and said yes. RCA sent me the tape of the song they had in mind, Touch The Wind. [The Spanish version of the song, Eres Tu, was a pop hit a few years earlier.]  The day before the recording session, Roy told me if Floyd liked me he might ask me to do an entire album with him. I drove up to Nashville and Roy took me up to Floyd’s office in the RCA building so that I could meet him. I remember Roy telling me beforehand, “With you, Floyd and Chet Atkins in a room together, the silence will be deafening.” (laughs) We were all very quiet people. Anyway, Floyd and I hit it off right away. We went down to the recording studio that same day and cut the song Touch the Wind. Chet and Roy Dea produced the session. When we were finished, Floyd came to me and said he had the studio rented for another session and could I stay and cut three more songs for an album he was doing? So, later that day we cut Faded Love, Thinking Tonight Of My Blue Eyes (which was later nominated for a Grammy), and The Prisoner’s Song. They put Faded Love on the back of the Touch The Wind single, as well as on the album. The album came out in 1976 and was titled Floyd Cramer Country.

John: Floyd Cramer was an incredibly gifted and successful musician. What was his personality like? Was he down-to-earth, a perfectionist, a good businessman, etc.?

Pat: Floyd was a nice, normal person. He wasn’t arrogant and he didn’t have a big ego. I remember doing a benefit show with him and after the first rehearsal he invited me over to his house to meet his wife, Mary. They had two daughters and they were a very close family. Floyd also spoke highly of his grandson—about how well he could hear a song and then play it on the piano. I remember seeing a couple of pictures the boy had drawn for Floyd taped to the front of his desk. He was a wonderful man…a family man.

John: The song Hiding A Heartache is a demo you wrote that was produced by Floyd Cramer. When did you record this song? In the 1980s? Was the song ever picked up by another artist and recorded?

Pat: After I cut those songs with Floyd in 1976 he asked me to work some shows with him. The shows were what I thought country music was going to be like when I first started out. Floyd’s shows were all about beautiful music. All the men in his band wore tuxedos and there was always a big orchestra behind us. Those shows were probably the highlight of my entire career. Anyway, later on he asked me to send him the songs I was writing. When he had enough of them he demoed them and sold them all to Acuff-Rose. I got a call one day from someone I didn’t know telling me that those songs would never do anything in Nashville and that I should try to get them back. Instead, Floyd demoed several more and Hiding A Heartache was one of them. That was sometime in the 1980’s, however I can’t remember the exact year. Floyd played the songs for one or two people [in the industry] but nothing ever happened with them, so, no…they were never recorded by another artist. Whenever Floyd didn’t receive any songs from me for a while he would call me up and encourage me to keep writing and to keep sending him the songs. Floyd was always hoping to make something big happen in my career. So, I continued to write songs, and to send them to him until the day he died. [ed. note: Floyd Cramer died of lung cancer in 1997 at the age of 64.] However, I haven’t written anything since.

John: In a perfect world, you would have gone on to record many more singles and even albums (either for RCA, or for another label). If this had happened back then, what kind of material would you have wanted to record—mostly pop, with some country-sounding stuff, or the other way around? Would you have had any interest in exploring folk music on your albums, or perhaps other genres, such as rock, blues or gospel?

Pat: I would have liked the opportunity to cut more crossover material—you know, well-written country ballads with some beautifully orchestrated pop instrumentation.  I really liked Gordon Lightfoot’s music and I would have enjoyed recording the same kinds of albums he did. He had a lot of folk sounds in his songs, which I love. In fact, I once recorded a Gordon Lightfoot song called Looking At The Rain and I still think it was one of the best songs I ever cut. I brought it to Jerry Bradley and he agreed to produce it for me, but RCA never released it. There were a lot of songs in several different categories that I wish I could have cut back then, but in those years they always said that you had to be in one category and that you couldn’t straddle the fence.

John: Was there a “dream producer” whose production work you admired and enjoyed, that you wished you could have worked with?

Pat: Yes, Chips Moman…and it almost happened, too. He had produced some big hits in the country and pop fields for people like Elvis Presley and B.J. Thomas and I felt like I had finally found someone who would know what to do with me. A few years after I had quit recording for RCA, I got a call from Floyd saying he had been playing golf with Chips and that he had played him a tape of my most recent songs and that Chips was interested in meeting me. Floyd said, “Bring your guitar and if he likes you he’ll invite you over to the recording studio at his house.” Well, I had never played the guitar on stage—only in putting down my songs on tape, because I’m not a good guitar player, and when you’re taping and you make a mistake you can always start over again. So, I was a little apprehensive at first about playing for Chips. Nevertheless, Floyd and I met him at a Shoney’s Restaurant in Nashville and later on Chips brought us over to his studio. I played my guitar and sang a song for him and he said he just wanted to know if I sounded the same in person as I did on the tape. (He said I did.) Then he took my guitar and Floyd sat down at the piano and they played some wonderful music together. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing—it was fantastic! When we started to leave Chips said he definitely wanted to work with me. I was so excited, I thought, “I’m finally going to get to record the kind of music I’ve always wanted to make.” After that, we talked several times on the phone but nothing ever happened. Finally, I called him up one day and asked if he had changed his mind about producing me and he said, “No”. However, I never heard from him again. I’m not the type to be pushy and I hate to bother people so I never called him after that. Unfortunately, that’s not the way to get ahead in country music—or in any other business, for that matter.

John: When you left RCA, did you immediately look to record for another label, or had you decided by then to retire from recording (or rather, from actively pursuing your recording career)?

Pat: I wanted to keep recording but it didn’t work out. Sometime after I left RCA, my manager Charlie Lamb got hooked up with some people in Texas who were going to start their own label and he wanted me to record for them. But when we went into the studio and I heard the musicians and the back up singers I knew it wasn’t going to work…and it didn’t! After that I just concentrated on my songwriting, sending everything I wrote to Floyd. He believed in me and I knew anything I did with him would be quality work.

John: Can you tell us a little bit about your family?

Pat: I’m still married to Mike Deasy and we have a great life together. Several years ago he and four other guys formed a telecommunications company and in 2000 they sold it to Nokia. As a result, he was able to retire early. Right now, we’re getting ready to leave for England where we’ll be vacationing with another couple who used to live over there. We’ll drive to various areas to do some sightseeing, and I am really looking forward to it.

Our son Kevin is 43 and he is the best son in the world. Kevin has his own web design business, and he is very handsome, sweet and funny. He and his wife Katey have two sons. Drew is 14 and he loves to play the tuba. He also plays bass in the jazz band at school. Drew can tell you anything you want to know about a bug or a lizard and lots of other creatures, too. (laughs) Chad just turned 12 and he plays a saxophone in the school band. He loves sports. They are both real good boys and Katey has always been a very devoted, stay-at-home Mom. We see them all the time as they live only about a mile away from us. They have 22 acres of mostly wooded property and it’s just a great place to raise a family.

John: What kind of music do you listen to nowadays? Do you have any thoughts on contemporary country (or pop) music? Do you have any favorite male and female singers among those who are currently recording?

Pat: I listen to the country radio station but I don’t like some of what I hear. I don’t like what they call pop music today, either. When I’m in the car listening to the radio I go from station to station trying to find something I like and most of the time I end up listening to pop music from the 1970’s and 80’s. There are a lot of good singers in Nashville though—both male and female. I think Trisha Yearwood has a wonderful voice. I also like to listen to Celine Dion, Josh Groban , the Eagles and Rascal Flatts.

John: Do you ever foresee yourself making a comeback in the industry, or even just recording another CD for your fans (to market and distribute yourself)? Or, do you feel that chapter in your life is closed for good?

Pat: I don’t foresee myself making a comeback. The industry these days is way too youth oriented. But, I would enjoy recording again. I always loved working in the studio.

John: Please tell us a little bit about your life today.

Pat: After I retired from my music career I was fortunate enough not to have to work outside the home. Mike and I live on Green Mountain in South Huntsville on nearly three acres. Our land backs up to a 72 acre nature preserve and we are surrounded by all kinds of birds and animals. I have a black cat named Bo, whom I love dearly. I got him at an animal shelter when he was less than two months old and he is now eight. He still runs as fast as ever but I don’t let him go outside on his own. I bought a little dog harness for him and I take him out in the back yard once in a while for a walk. He’s wonderful.

I have loved animals since I was a child, and I always will. I can’t stand to think of an animal suffering in any way, especially at the hand of a human being. They have so much love to give, and those innocent eyes of theirs when they look up at you really get to me. There’s no way I could have ever worked at a pet store…I would have wanted to bring all the animals home with me! (laughs)

Religion has always been the most important thing in my life. My husband and I still attend church services every Sunday morning and Sunday night, and every Wednesday night, too. We’re both Bible class teachers on occasion, and we enjoy doing that. All in all, I feel that my life has been very blessed. I am a very happy and contented person.

 

Interviews