MOULTRIE, Ga. — A musical artist deems her childhood in Moultrie as the start of her music career.

Patsy McGlamry-Dean lived in Moultrie until she was 18. She attended local schools, from Okapilco Elementary up through Moultrie High School.

“Whenever I was coming up in Moultrie, I studied piano and so I had that background. Of course, we had a piano when I was little. I remember having trouble climbing up on the stool. That’s how little that was,” McGlamry-Dean said in an interview Thursday.

Her sisters helped her progress with the piano until they could afford music lessons when she attended Moultrie High School.

After graduation in 1960, she moved to New York City, where she studied the guitar. She then began writing songs, performing in nightclubs with her first husband and singing in stage productions.

“I was there for six years. I studied fashion design,[and] I studied guitar. That’s when I started writing songs. People asked me ‘Where do they come from, [referring to] the music…?’ If something comes in your mind, it just comes in your mind, and so I just would write it down.” she said.

McGlamry-Dean returned to Moultrie in 1972 and shortly moved to Thomasville. During her time here, she remarried and attended Valdosta State College. She received a nursing degree while continuing to pursue her musical career with her second husband, Raymond Dean.

“My heart and soul have always been in music. I was older when we got started doing this. So don’t let anybody tell you [that] you can’t because you can,” she said by phone.

She’s released two albums during her career including “Heartaches” and “Patsy’s Country Collection.” Both albums received much airplay in Europe and Australia, she said.

Most of the songs from her favorite album, “Heartaches,” are written about her experiences and time in Moultrie. The song “There’s Old Familiar Memories In This Place,” from the “Heartaches” album is vividly based on her previous home in Moultrie.

“My greatest thing is to write a song and record it, or tell somebody about it,” she said.

Her musical style includes country and gospel music with some rock and roll. Her musical influences are American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen.

She was nominated alongside Dolly Parton for the European Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year award in the early 2000s, and she’s currently a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers non-profit organization in New York, McGlamry-Dean said.

She recently released two new songs “Let’s Have Another Coca-Cola” and “Hell’s Kitchen”.

“This Coca-Cola song I just wrote…[has been] written for a while. I thought, ‘That is a historical song.’ As you get older, you [respect] more about history…and so I thought ‘Well you know what that needs to get done.’ I had [then] written ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ about … ‘West Side Story’ in New York City. Those are both historical and so they were released June 17th,” she explained.

She said the lyrics for “Let’s Have Another Coca-Cola” just came to her while riding with her sister in Atlanta. She began writing the song after reviewing her sister’s book about the company’s history and creator John Stith Pemberton.

Her song “Hell’s Kitchen” was inspired by a book called, “Angels in Hell’s Kitchen,” written by Tom McConnon.

“I wrote this historical song about NYC’s extremely poor section located between 34th Street to the south and 59th Street to the north starting west of 8th Avenue and the north side of 43rd Street. This area was known as Hell’s Kitchen in the early 1900s. A book entitled ‘Angels in Hell’s Kitchen’ was written by a son of one of the residents. He (Tom McConnon) ended up working for one of NYC’s newspapers when he was grown. It was his mother who prayed the rosary,” according to McGlamry-Dean’s website.

Both songs were featured in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on Sunday, Jan. 8 on Radio Monalisa on Mixcloud, a British online music streaming service.

McGlamry-Dean is now a 77-year-old widow and resides in North Georgia. She is the mother of two daughters and one son.

Her music can be found on most streaming platforms or by visiting her website www.patsymcglamrydean.bandzoogle.com/.