finetune artist: K.T. Oslin

b. Kay Toinette Oslin, 15 May 1942, Crossitt, Arkansas, USA. Oslin was raised in Mobile, Alabama, and then in Houston, Texas. She loved Hank Williams and the Carter Family, but hated early 60s country music because "it was middle-aged men singing about drinking whiskey and cheating on their wives". She attended drama school and worked in Houston as a folk trio with Guy Clark and radio producer David Jones. A live album she made with Texas singer Frank Davis was never released. She was in the chorus for the Broadway production of Hello, Dolly! starring Betty Grable, and for many years, she played bit parts, did session work and sang commercials to make a living. She sang harmony on the 1978 album Guy Clark, but her 1981 Elektra singles of "Clean Your Own Tables" and "Younger Men (Are Startin' To Catch My Eye)", released as Kay T. Oslin, did not sell. In 1982 Gail Davies recorded her song "Round The Clock Lovin'", which prompted her to borrow $7,000 from an aunt to form a band for a Nashville showcase. The Judds recorded her song "Old Pictures", while her own piano-based ballad, "80's Ladies', was a Top 10 country single and an anthem for older, single women (Oslin herself is unmarried). An album of songs written from the female perspective, also called 80"s Ladies, was a top-selling country album that crossed over to the pop market. Tom T. Hall described her as "everybody's screwed-up sister". Her number 1 country singles are "Do Ya" (she stopped a faster take being released when she realized it worked much better at half-tempo), "I'll Always Come Back" and the partly narrated "Hold Me". As a self-confessed "aging sex bomb", it is unusual for a woman to have made her first mark on country music so late in life; it seems doubtful that she can maintain the momentum, particularly as she seems to have exhausted her original flow of songs, and because of the heart bypass operation she had to undergo in 1995. She released an imaginative covers album a year later, featuring songs picked from the past two centuries.

Listen to K.T. Oslin at Finetune.

(2002) RCA Country Legends
(2001) Live Close By, Visit Often
(1997) Super Hits
(1996) My Roots Are Showing
(1993) Greatest Hits--"Songs from an Aging Sex Bomb"

80's Ladies
Do Ya'
I'll Always Come Back
Hey Bobby
Come Next Monday