Sweet Dreams, or Crazy?

Budding country star Mandy Barnett smiles when she recalls how Owen Bradley, the legendary record producer who worked with such country divas as Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn, described the young singer as “a strange hillbilly.”

“He thought it was weird that I was 21 years old and I knew so many pop standards and that I sang like I’d started out in the big-band days,” says the raven-haired Barnett, a self-confident, straight-talking former homecoming queen from nearby Crossville, Tenn. “He thought it was so bizarre that at my age I loved hard-core country and old pop music.”

So she returned the compliment to Bradley, a pianist and ‘40s society bandleader who brought a sophisticated elegance to his work as a country record producer in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

“I told him he must be a strange hillbilly too, because we both liked the same kind of music,” Barnett says. “He was the same way I was about what music we loved. But what he thought was weird was the difference in our ages.”

As it turns out, the 81-year-old producer and his protegee, now 23, set out to create the album that Barnett always aspired to do, but that her previous collaborators wouldn’t let her do.

Bradley died from complications of influenza on Jan. 7, 1998, after spending a year finding songs and working on arrangements with Barnett. The two had completed only one recording session before Bradley’s death, but that three-hour session provided four finished songs that appear on “I’ve Got a Right to Cry,” which will be released by Sire Records on April 13.

The collection is sure to rekindle a frequent debate in modern Nashville: How will country music, and especially country radio, react to an outstanding album that’s steeped in the music’s history but out of step with contemporary country trends?

On one hand, Barnett’s powerful vocal performances and the lush production probably will attract fervent praise. There’s such a buzz on her that producers at “Late Show With David Letterman” jumped at the chance to showcase Barnett as a guest performer the day after her new record hits the stores.

On the other hand, the album’s combination of torch songs and light swing goes against the polished, pop-edged sound of today’s country, in which performers such as Shania Twain, Faith Hill and the Dixie Chicks emphasize breezy energy and modern pop beats.

Barnett’s one previous album, 1996’s “Mandy Barnett” on Asylum Records, attempted to reconcile the singer’s tastes with current trends.

“I’d already gone as far as I could in that direction,” Barnett says. “But when the record didn’t sell, they wanted me to go further--as far as the pop side of things.

“They kept bringing me those kind of songs, and I hated them. I mean I didn’t half-hate them--I completely hated them, and I told them that in no uncertain terms. I ended up screaming a lot at the end. I was so frustrated. Why would you want to make someone sing songs they don’t like?”

Kyle Lehning, former president of Asylum Records, agrees that he and Barnett disagreed on musical direction during her time with the label.

“We were trying to do something that would get her some attention at radio,” says Lehning, who co-produced Barnett’s first album and was working closely with her on a second album that went unfinished. “The way we saw that happening was different than how she saw it. But she’s just a phenomenal singer--in fact, she might be the best when it comes to standing in front of the microphone and just putting it down.”

Understandably, then, Barnett’s new album will test country radio: Will Barnett’s songs be allowed to provide a fresh diversion from the norm, as happened with LeAnn Rimes’ similarly torchy 1996 hit “Blue”? Or will her songs be ignored by radio because of their classic-country feel, as has happened with recent records by Dwight Yoakam, the Mavericks and even Vince Gill?

“I’m willing to stake my reputation on Mandy and on this record,” says Seymour Stein, president of Sire Records and the man responsible for discovering such iconoclastic pop acts as Madonna, the Pretenders, the Ramones, Talking Heads and another big-voiced torch singer, k.d. lang.

Indeed, when Stein left the presidency of Elektra Records to relaunch his Sire imprint in 1997, Barnett was the first artist he signed.

“We’re going to be with Mandy for the long haul,” Stein says. “I believe she’s going to be known as one of the great voices of popular music--like Patsy Cline or Roy Orbison or k.d. lang. She’s an incredible talent. Anyone who loves music and hears her sing instantly loves her. She’s that good and that special.”

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Barnett is sitting in the eerie quiet of Bradley’s Barn, a well-kept studio in Mount Juliet, Tenn., situated amid rolling green pastures on a country road about 20 miles from the Nashville city limits. Leaning back on a couch, dressed in a thick wool sweater and black leather pants, Barnett seems very much at home.

She should. Barnett spent most of two years here, and every time she walked into the studio, she stepped back in time. The wood-lined studio is filled with vintage recording equipment, and its walls and corners are crammed with country music memorabilia, including large letters that spell out DECCA, a sign taken from the building from which Bradley ran Decca Records for nearly 20 years.

“Doing this record was really going full circle for me,” says Barnett, who recounts that two of the first country songs she learned to perform as a child--Cline’s “Crazy” and Brenda Lee’s “Break It to Me Gently”--were produced by Bradley. “Before I ever knew his name, I loved his music. I was obsessed with it, really, when I was young.”

Indeed, Barnett first drew attention because of how well she performed songs associated with Bradley.

At age 12, Barnett--who grew up listening to her grandmother play jazz records by Sarah Vaughan and her mother play country albums by Ray Price and Webb Pierce--performed on a live radio broadcast of “The Ernest Tubb Midnight Jamboree.” Host George Hamilton IV followed her performance by saying, “I haven’t heard anybody that could sing like Patsy Cline in a long time. If there are any producers out there, you better call in.”

They did. Within weeks, Barnett was signed to Capitol Records by powerhouse producer Jimmy Bowen, who began a long reign in Nashville after working in Hollywood with such figures as Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. For six years, Barnett worked with a series of producers, all of whom tried to fit her huge voice into a contemporary musical setting.

*

Despite recording dozens of songs over the years, she never released an album. Shortly after her 18th birthday, the label dropped her.

A year later, a friend called to tell her about auditions being held that day for the lead in a musical based on the life of Cline. Barnett beat out 450 rivals for the job, and for two years she sang 30 Cline tunes a night, three times a week to packed houses at the Ryman Auditorium, long the home of the Grand Ole Opry. When “Always . . . Patsy Cline” ended in 1996, Barnett was signed by Asylum, whose executives had been impressed by her Cline stint (captured on a cast album of the show released by MCA).

It wasn’t until she moved to Sire Records, though, that she fulfilled her dream of working, at least briefly, with Bradley.

Coming out of retirement to work with Barnett, the producer envisioned a contemporary album featuring lush, orchestrated settings that would remind listeners of classic torch records from the ‘50s, as well as the cosmopolitan country recordings of Cline.

In its way, it would adhere to a style Bradley had used with great success on Cline and later with lang on her 1988 album, “Shadowlands,” which was also released by Stein’s Sire label and was the last major-label effort Bradley had produced before agreeing to work with Barnett.

“It was the most inspiring session I’ve ever been on in my life,” Barnett says of her three-hour session with Bradley. “Everything was perfect. We couldn’t wait to keep going and do another session, but Owen was very careful about choosing songs and getting the arrangements right before we recorded. One of the last times I talked to him, on Christmas Day, he said he thought we were ready. He was real excited about the songs we had.”

After Bradley’s death, the album was finished by the producer’s brother, guitarist Harold Bradley, and Harold’s son Bobby Bradley, Owen’s longtime engineer.

“Owen was proceeding very methodically with the album,” says Harold Bradley, who, along with Chet Atkins, is considered one of the most recorded guitarists in Nashville music history. When we stepped in, we felt like we had a very clear picture of what Owen wanted to do with the rest of the album. We tried to do what we thought he would want to do.”

Still, despite all the encouragement and praise, a question hounds Barnett: Will people get a chance to hear her music?

The question resonates deeply for Barnett, who has endured repeated disappointments. This time, though, she can take comfort in knowing one thing: “I’ve finally made the album I’ve always wanted to make,” she says.*