Patti Page, who rose to fame in the 1950’s with traditional pop songs and ballads like “Tennessee Waltz”, died on New Year’s Day. She was 85.
Page, who was nicknamed “The Singing Rage”, never veered from her chosen genre even when music began to take a turn towards popular rock-and-roll acts like Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. Often described as “honey-voiced”, Page made her career a continued success despite the ever changing tastes of the public. She once said that her music was appropriate for the time period she created in.
“It was right after the war,” she said, “and people were waiting to just settle down and take a deep breath and relax.”
Later in her career, she released an album of children’s songs and even founded her own record label–C.A.F. Records–and got her music in front of a much younger audience when she lent one of her songs, “Conquest”, to The White Stripes to cover.
