When Patrick Haggerty released his first record in 1973, he sensed it would not be the one that would launch his musical career.
In fact it took over forty years for that to happen with the surprise re-release of his only album Lavender Country.
The record is widely recognised today as being the first gay country music album ever produced and although popular among the gay community, it was generally viewed as outlandish and outrageous and quickly disappeared into a musical black hole.
When Haggerty got a call from indie record label Paradise of Bachelors 40 years later, he thought they were “encyclopaedia salesmen” he tells The Green Room.
In that first phone call, the label offered him a contract and told him they planned to re-release the record.
“It’s been such a magical Cinderella story.”
Requests for interviews and appearances haven’t stopped since.
Haggerty’s story is all the more remarkable because of the role his father, a dairy farmer played.
“My father has been dead for 50 years, longer even, but I can feel him behind this whole thing.”
“He was a colourful guy, very gruff exterior, a redneck and gruff in appearance..but he had a very lively interior..and was quite an intelligent man.”
His father recognised that Patrick was different from other boys and “he was ok with it.”
“It was an established fact within my family that I was a ‘sissy’. We had open discussions about it at the dinner table.”
“But he never put me down .. he never degraded me or humiliated me. He never did anything to me in a negative fashion regarding my sissyiness and I had sissy written all over me.”
Compared to what other gay teenagers experienced in the 1950s’ from their fathers, Haggerty says he was privileged.
“It’s a really dirty story. Ugly icky stories abound, hideous stories, hideous and brutal stories. What other ‘sissy’ kids went through with their fathers,.. oh my, oh my”
Listen here for the full interview with Patrick Haggerty on The Green Room with Orla Barry
Lavender Country is released through Paradise of Bachelors Record Label
The Green Room airs on Saturday evenings 9pm-11pm
