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Biography
Kathy Mattea (born Kathleen Alice Mattea on 21 June 1959) is an American country music and bluegrass singer. Active since 1984 as a recording artist, she has charted more than 30 singles on the US Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including four that reached No. 1 ("Goin' Gone", "Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses", "Come from the Heart", and "Burnin' Old Memories") plus 12 more that charted within the top ten. She is a two-time Grammy Award winner: in 1990 for "Where've You Been", and in 1993 for her Christmas album "Good News".
Mattea was born in South Charleston, West Virginia, because it had the nearest hospital to her parents' home in Cross Lanes, where she grew up, graduating from nearby Nitro High School. In 1976, while in college, she joined the bluegrass band Pennsboro, and two years later dropped out of school to move to Nashville. She worked as a tour guide at the Country Music Hall of Fame, did backup vocal work for Bobby Goldsboro , and sang demos for several Nashville songwriters and publishers including Nashville songwriter/producer Byron Hill, who brought her to the attention of Frank Jones (then head of Mercury Records), who signed her to her first record deal in 1983.
