I don't want to get into all that," says Patty Loveless from a plush sofa at Nashville's tony Hermitage Hotel. Nothing nasty about her tone, mind you; it's just that with 10 interviews ahead of her today, she's pacing herself.

And besides, Loveless has never been comfortable with spilling her guts about her personal life to just any shnook with a notebook and a tape recorder.

Over the last few years, though, Loveless has had plenty to fret about. In 1995, her older brother Roger fought off a potentially fatal liver ailment.

Shortly after that, her sister, Dottie, died from emphysema at 49. Her husband, producer Emory Gordy, Jr., faced emergency surgery for a life-threatening bout of pancreatitis. And Loveless herself was hospitalized for pneumonia during the winter of 1996-97.

But you won't find her doing any public therapy on Oprah any time soon. Instead, the emotional fallout from these events is kept tucked away, to be used as fuel for some of the most heart-rending vocal performances Nashville has known in a while.

Ah, but get her talking music and her career, and she can't shut up. No surprise, considering that she's a former Country Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year, and her latest album, Long Stretch of Lonesome, which just went gold, has gotten the kind of reviews that exist only in publicists' dreams.

And when she needs duet partners, she calls on the likes of Vince Gill ("When I Call Your Name"), George Jones ("You Don't Seem to Miss Me") and Ralph Stanley ("Pretty Polly" on his new Rebel Records album Clinch Mountain Country). After 12 years of record-making, Patty Loveless has become an elder stateswoman of country music - a crown she wears uneasily.

"My husband pointed it out to me," she explains, "because he's had the opportunity to work with some other young female artists. They talk about me to him, but when they get around me, they're so excited! There's a girl named Rebecca Lynn (Howard, signed to Rising Tide Records until that label folded in March), who's just wonderful. She's 18 and she's written a song that (mentioned) me. And she refused to take it out! I even told Emory, 'I don't think she should leave my name in there,' and she refused to do it. She said, 'It is what it is.' Which is good for her; I'm glad to know somebody so young can stand up for herself. Then I look at LeAnn Rimes, and I think, "My God, that kid was probably listening to me when she was three years old! Maybe two!'"

Loveless can understand the teen singer thing. "I had the chance to be a LeAnn Rimes at one time in my life if I had chosen to be," she says. "I was about 14 when I first came to Nashville. I was writing songs too - sort of adult-lyric type of songs for a 14-year-old. I signed with a company called Sure Fire for the Wilburn Brothers.

"But I look at LeAnn Rimes, and she's very mature for her age. Even some of the songs that she's starting to do today are little bit mature for a 14- or 15-year-old. But when I look back and think about those years, I had the chance, it's just that I didn't have the patience. At the time, when I was 14, there was a singing sensation that came along by the name of Tanya Tucker. I was so immature, but I loved hanging out with older people. Tanya, I think, was pushed into growing up really fast. And for me, I was still being treated as a 14- or 15-year-old - especially when I was with the Wilburn Brothers, because Doyle Wilburn was one who was always sort of an uncle image. He was always telling me how young I was, but I was thinking older. I wanted to record; I wanted to do what Tanya Tucker was doing!"

However, fate had other plans for Loveless. She met and married rock drummer Terry Lovelace, whose band sometimes backed up the Wilburns. "He was a rock 'n' roller, and he was a rowdy boy," admits Loveless, "the kind of guy I had to get involved with to find out what kind of life I had been missing - and I 'm glad I did miss!

She and Terry moved to North Carolina, and for the next seven years played the club circuit, often gigging from 11 p.m. till 6 a.m. "It was a training period for me, and it taught me a lot of things about life and people. It also caused me to grow up. I was very naive and very immature. I was 19 when I married him, but mentally I was still 10, or maybe 12. It's because I had a very isolated life when I was growing up. The only way I cold get out and do things was by singing."

However, it wasn't the kind of vocal work that Loveless' fans today would recognize. "It just came to a standstill for me musically, as far as country music," says Loveless. "I started getting into some rock 'n' roll, doing some Donna Summer. And of course, I did Linda Ronstadt, but I always tried to slide in some Dolly Parton - "I Will Always Love You" and that kind of stuff.

The band didn't last. Neither did the marriage.

But Loveless sent a demo to MCA Records in Nashville that featured two of her own songs, "I Did" and "Sounds of Loneliness."

Tony Brown, then head of A & R at the label, insisted she be signed. "Tony took more of an interest in the country things I did, the very traditional country song that I wrote," she remembers. "I don't think at the time (then president of MCA Nashville) Jimmy Bowen had any interest in signing me. But Tony and Emory Gordy, Jr. did. I think they were ready to turn in a letter of resignation if Bowen didn't sign me. That's how much they believed in me."

While Loveless' six years at MCA yielded No. 1 hits like "Chains" and "Timber, I'm Falling in Love," she hadn't yet hit upon the right blend of voice and material.

And it kept her from attaining the status of label mates like Reba McEntire and Wynonna. "Sometimes I look back on albums that I've done, and it's hard for me to listen to," she claims. "Some of those albums were done so fast and so quickly, during a time when we were trying to find what particular style of style music Patty Loveless will sell to the audience out there. And of course, that's what labels are always going to think of: Sell, sell, sell. And I was always thinking, 'How do I make the best music?'"

Thus in 1992 she left for Epic Records, where she hit Number One with her next single, "Blame It On Your Heart." Loveless was finally a player, one who had a contemporary sound to go with her mountain-rooted country soul.

Over the next few years, the hits and awards piled up, and everyone finally recognized that the naked emotion of Loveless' voice was the kind of sound that occurred maybe once in a generation.

The latest evidence is on Long Stretch of Lonesome, a potent collection reinforcing Loveless' reputation as a singer who can consistently find the heart of a song. From the exuberance of "The Party Ain't Over Yet" to the hard country soul of "You Don't Seem to Miss Me" to the plaintive title cut, Loveless tackles a wide range of emotions and comes up aces every time.

But it wasn't actually the album that Loveless wanted to make.

"I wasn't ready to turn this album in," she admits. "I wanted to wait and cut a couple more things, actually I was getting ready to go into the studio. And I did tell the label, 'Well, I'll hand this in, but I really don't want to.' It's a serious record. I wanted to find a couple more things that were a little more light-hearted. "High On Love' is the most light-hearted song on the album; even "The Party Ain't Over Yet' is lyrically serious."

"But I wanted find something else like 'I Try to Think About Elvis' to have fun with on stage. That's the reason it's so important to me to have as many good songs on an album as I can. I know you need the uptempo and fun stuff; it's important to have that balance. But that's the reason I wasn't ready to hand this album in, because I felt the ballads on there were serious. But I think this album is really good, and I'm proud of it. But I still sometimes go, 'If I had just a little more time'."

As a music-biz vet, Loveless obviously knows that an artist has to move product. But thinking about sales is not something she enjoys.

"Sometimes I get so tired hearing about breaking records. That's not what I'm here for. It's takes a lot of the fun out of it, and it takes a lot of the meaning out of making music. When you start thinking, 'I've got to break my own record' or 'I've got to break his or her record'.....No! You've just got to make music that moves people. And I hope that we never lose sight of that. I'm not here to break records, I'm here to make records.

"You constantly hear this 'uptempo positive' today. But when it comes right down to it, what really sells records is ballads, and when I finally had the chance to be heard, that's when things started taking off for me, like 'If My Heart Had Windows,' 'Don't Toss Us Away' - those types of songs were selling records for me. Still, 'Chains' and 'That Kind of Girl,' those kinds of songs did the same thing. With this album, I had been a little more selective with lyrics.

"With the songs that I choose, I try to be true to my own self and what I can present. I'm able to share some of my feelings within those songs with my audience. I know 9 times out of 10, there's going to be somebody who feels the same way as what the song is trying to say. Exactly like 'I Don't Want to Feel Like That' - what I pictured in my mind was this person having a conversation with themselves, waking up in the morning; they can't sleep, and they're saying "I don't want to feel like that no more.' I found myself doing that many, many times in the past few years, and it touched me, and I think that it will touch many other people out there too."

In short, Loveless lets the music do the talking. "I want to be considered as a very emotional singer," she insists. "To me, that's what success is all about."