Fifty-one years ago, Patti Page topped the pop and country charts with "Tennessee Waltz." Now, she's back with "Brand New Tennessee Waltz" and a Nashville album of the same name.

Joining her on the album is a whole new generation of country women — from Kathy Mattea to Emmylou Harris to Trisha Yearwood to Victoria Shaw. It all came about by coincidence, Page said.

"My manager had worked with Victoria [Shaw] in New York with a song she had written for 'The Young and the Restless.' He thought she had done a wonderful job with her own album, which she was selling on the Internet, and he wanted us to meet. I was coming down to Nashville to accept an award, and we had dinner. She brought her producer, Jon Vezner. We kind of hit it off, and it went from there."

Vezner, a well-known songwriter as well as a producer, is also married to Mattea. "It was also a personal thing on Jon's part," Page said, "because I was one of his father's favorite singers, and he's very close to his dad. I had sung to his dad after the war, when I sang to the boys in a military hospital."

As they picked songs and put an album together, Vezner — who was producing — and executive producer Shaw also brought onboard as background singers such Nashville fixtures as Mattea, Harris, Yearwood, Alison Krauss and Suzy Bogguss. Jessie Winchester, who wrote "Brand New Tennessee Waltz" (RealAudio excerpt), also sings on the album.

Page covers such material as Mattea's "Where've You Been" (Real Audio excerpt), a remake of the original "Tennessee Waltz" (RealAudio except) and Vezner's "One Less Rose in Texas" (RealAudio excerpt).

"I'm hoping to get that song to President Bush," Page said with a laugh. "I think it would fit him."

The record company issuing the album is Gold Label, a Nashville pop label run by former pop star Pat Boone.

These days, Page said, she's playing mostly at performing arts centers. "And I'm playing a lot of little towns I've never really been in before, usually at a community college. They're just beautiful — it seems to be a new trend. I've followed Kathy Mattea into those, and Willie Nelson, and a lot of big country singers into those places. So that's basically what I'll be doing, unless something sensational happens with the album, and then I might be seen in some of those haunts that I was in years before, like Vegas and Atlantic City. They're a little afraid to book me now, afraid no one will come in."

Page looks at today's country music scene diplomatically. "There's a lot of talent out there," she said. "But I think that more emphasis could be put on how you sound, rather than how you look. But I loved the song that George Strait did with Alan Jackson, 'Murder on Music Row.' "