Kathy Chiavola
This talented country vocalist made a big splash in her adopted home of Nashville, Tennessee, USA, in early 1993. Chiavola had initially attempted to launch her career as an opera singer. She clearly made the right decision to switch to country music, though, and the magazine Folk Roots said of her that ‘not often one finds such poise, power or purity in a voice committed to the world of contemporary country’. LABOR OF LOVE, included standards such as Buddy Holly's Well Alright, Peter Rowan's A Woman In Love and the Elvis Presley hit, A Food Such As I, and also the work of less-celebrated artists and songwriters. The only song she wrote was the title track, an elegant tribute to her mother. However, it was her voice that attracted so many fans, leading Robert Oermann of The Tennessean to say that she ‘has the unusual ability to "cry" like a country star, moan like a blues mama and maintain the clarity and purity of tone of a folk soprano, often all in the same song’.