Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner's Daughter

by Loretta Lynn;George Vecsey

  I don’t think television has country down right yet. They’ve had me on variety shows, but there’s always some guy from Los Angeles or New York running around behind those sunglasses telling us just where to stand. What you see on television is a bunch of poor old country boys and girls hunching up their shoulders and looking like they wished they were never born. Now that’s not country. I say, let us out there with our own bands, not those television bands with their saxophones and clarinets, If you just put me in front of that camera, I’d say, “Let ’er rip, Flip!” And we’d give ’em a good show. But television’s not ready for us yet to be ourselves.

  I’m still unhappy because we didn’t get a national television show. They had me and George Lindsey—Goober—on the “Orange Blossom Special USA” on Thursday, November 15, 1973, right after “The Waltons.” They were going to see if I could be the first female country singer to have her own national show.

  I’ve always said that if you want to be a success, you have to be yourself. Sure, you need writers, but you’ve got to take what they give you and turn it into you. I do my own shows, where I ain’t afraid of saying what I think. But when I get on television, they’re always passing those cards at you with those big words. Yes, I admit I have trouble reading those big words, but when I did that show, I was just myself. We just didn’t get enough rating points to get the show. But you can’t argue with them. I figure it will come up again some time.

  After I did the benefit for Hyden, I got a letter from the then President Nixon. I thought that was nice of him. I thought about writing back to him to ask him why they put Kelly in jail. I meant Lt. William Calley, the guy they convicted in the massacres of My-Lai. I thought his name was Kelly. I don’t know too much about it but it seemed strange they should pin everything on one little lieutenant. Maybe he did wrong, but there were a lot of other people who should have known better, too. Either everybody who was guilty should be put in jail or nobody should be put in jail.

  Anyway, before I got a chance to write, I got invited to Washington myself, for a dinner. I mean, not just me, but around a thousand people who worked for the United Way in the United States and Canada. They were honoring Mrs. Nixon for her work in the charity. I made a commercial that raised enough money to put up a new building, so I got invited. Well, I figured as long as I was going to be singing there, I might as well speak my piece. When I got on the stage I said: “Pat, I’ve been wanting to write a letter to tell Richard to let Kelly go. We brought Kelly home from Vietnam and put him in jail. Why don’t we stop picking on just that one little man or else let him go?”

  I could tell that shook some people up. But I didn’t have time to think about it because I had to sing my song. I didn’t think anything of it until I saw it the next day on the front page of the Washington Post. They acted like I did something bad calling her husband Richard.

  The next day we flew to Chicago for a show, and this television announcer met me at the airport. He asked me why I addressed the president of the United States as “Richard.” I said, “They called Jesus ‘Jesus,’ didn’t they?” That guy took one look at me and started running. I never learned his name or I might have called him by his first name, too.

  It seems funny that anyone would mind what I was saying. That’s why I appreciate my fans; they accept me for being myself. The only bad publicity I’ve ever gotten was in my home state when some people said I should pay for paving the road up to Butcher Holler. But mostly I get good stories because I tell the truth. Whenever I get involved in anything, I get in touch with a columnist in Nashville named Red O’Donnell. I call him up and tell him exactly what it’s all about. I trust him to get the true facts out, whatever they are.

  Since I struck out on my own, lots of different things have happened to me. Why I was even in Penthouse magazine with all those naked women. I didn’t know what kind of magazine it was. This reporter came in and said he was gonna do a story on me. Well, that was just fine with me.

  Then one day we were sitting in the airport and I wandered over to see if they had the magazine. I took one look at the cover and, boy, was I shocked! I didn’t know it was that kind of magazine. I wanted to see it but I was too bashful to buy it from the lady. So I got my bus driver, Jim Webb, to buy it. I was afraid maybe they caught me in some picture without my clothes on, except I’m so skinny, they’d be out of luck. As far as I know, there’s only one set of nude pictures of me in the world. They were taken by Doolittle when I was around sixteen. He had converted one of our rooms into a darkroom, and he got me to pose for him. We’ve talked about burning ’em, but we decided to keep ’em under lock and key. We take ’em out once in a while, just for a laugh. But Penthouse didn’t get a-hold of them, and their story was pretty nice.

  By now, my career was really rolling along. I had little singing parts in four movies: Forty Acre Feud, Music City, USA, Nashville Rebel, and Nashville Sound, and I was the first woman country artist to receive a Gold Album for one million sales—for “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind),” which I wrote with my sister.

  But I don’t always write all my songs. Sometimes we get songs from fellows like Shel Silverstein. Now, he isn’t what I’d call country. He’s bald and he’s got a beard and from what I hear he spends a lot of time at Playboy king Hugh Hefner’s houses in Chicago and Los Angeles. Plus, he’s got himself a houseboat out in Sausalito, California. But he knows how to write country songs. Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” is one of Shel’s songs, and he wrote “One’s on the Way.” I recorded that one, and it turned out to be a smash. Shel also wrote “Hey, Loretta,” which I didn’t like because I don’t care for songs about myself. He heard that I wasn’t going to do it and flew in from Alaska. We finally put it on an album, but the disc jockeys demanded that we also make it a single. I got to like it—especially when it got to be Number One.

  But people got to know me best after I wrote my life story on that song “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” That really made me familiar to people—it gave me a title they could remember. And it told everybody that I could write about something else besides marriage problems.

  I’m proud that other writers like that song. I’d always wanted to write a song about growing up, but I never believed anybody would care about it. One day I was sitting around the television studio at WSIX, waiting to rehearse a show. I figured this was a good time to work on a song. I went off to the dressing room and just wrote the first words that came into my head.

  It started “Well, I was borned a coal miner’s daughter …” which was nothing but the truth. And I went on from there. I made up the melody at the same time, line by line, like I always do. It started out as a bluegrass thing, ’cause that’s the way I was raised, with the guitar and the banjo just following along. Really, the way you hear it on the record is the way I imagined it.

  I had a little trouble with the rhymes. I had to match up words like “holler” and “daughter” and “water.” But after it was all done, the rhymes weren’t so important.

  In a couple of hours, I had nine of the best verses I ever wrote. The next time I had a recording session, I did that song. But you know what? We kept it in the can for a year. I didn’t believe anybody would buy a song just about me.

  When they finally released it and had to cut three verses, like I said before, it just about broke my heart. One verse was about Mommy papering the walls with magazines, right above my head, with pictures of movie stars and such. Another was how the creek would rise every time it rained, and Daddy would have to cut logs across, so we could get downhill. The third was about hog-killing day in December, so we’d have fresh meat for Christmas. I can remember Mommy yelling, “backbones and ribs,” while Daddy was a-scraping the hair off the hog.

  Well, they released that record around the start of 1971, and three weeks later somebody called up to say it was a smash. I said, “Ahhhh, come on,” because I never believed it. But they made an album called “Coal Miner’s Daughter” an
d it made me so popular, it led to the biggest award of my life.

  Everyone knows about the Oscars for the movies and the Emmys for television. Well, country music has its own awards. They give ’em out every October in Nashville, on national television, on the same week as the Grand Ole Opry’s birthday. That’s the week they have the big Disc Jockey Convention, when all those boys from around the country flock to Nashville to listen to all the musicians. It’s all sponsored by the Country Music Association, which is a big collection of publishers, promoters, record companies, disc jockeys, writers—everybody in country music, really. Everybody has one vote and they go for the top singers, the top songs, the best duet of the year. But the biggest award of all is “Entertainer of the Year.”

  The Entertainer of the Year Award goes to the performer who puts on the best shows on tour and on television, plus putting out good records. It’s the best, really. For the first five years that award went to the men—Eddy Arnold, Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Charley Pride—which was all right with me.

  The way I see it, the men travel with bands and they put on a complete show. They have good women singers with ’em, plus extra male singers, plus maybe a comic or a musical act. But they are the stars. They get right out there and tell stories and run the whole show. But the women, the way it always was, just sing their songs and act more ladylike.

  Now that’s changing. You’ve got a lot of us with our own bands and leading our own shows. I give around two hours of a show every time I put my name on the program. I’ll dance and tell jokes and let my boys play their instruments. And we give an extra good show whenever I have Ernest Tubb, Cal Smith, Conway Twitty on with me. So I feel like I’m an entertainer, just like the men.

  Well, in 1972, I got nominated for “Entertainer of the Year.” I didn’t care if I won it. I was just proud to be the first woman ever nominated. We always schedule ourselves into Nashville for that DJ Convention, but this year it was especially important, because I wanted to be there for the awards. When we looked at our calendar, though, Doo realized he’d arranged to take a bunch of his friends out to Colorado to go hunting. Doo said he would cancel but I said, “Go ahead and go hunting,” because I knew he’d rather be out in the woods than sitting indoors. I felt bad that he wasn’t going to be there, but I understand what he needs to do.

  When the night came, we put on our shiny outfits and went over to the old Ryman Auditorium. I was with David Skepner, and we stood around backstage just hoping I’d win one of the other awards. That’s some sight, all of us country bumpkins in our velvet and sequins and tuxedos, with the diamonds sparkling. I can remember when we were all wearing dungarees, with a little fringe on it—if we were fancy.

  I was wearing a long green gown which I had just bought. Since then, I stopped buying gowns in Nashville because I got tired of going to some big ceremony and seeing one of the other girls in the same exact dress. That happened once to me and Dotty West and it wasn’t funny. Now if I make it myself, it may look homemade, but at least it’s not gonna look like anything else, you can bet on that.

  Then they started giving out awards. First they gave me and Conway the award for “Vocal Duo of the Year.” Then they named me “Female Vocalist of the Year,” which I was pleased about. I won it the first year the award was presented, and Tammy Wynette won it three times after that, followed by Lynn Anderson. So I was glad to get it back.

  They saved the biggest award for the end of the show, with Chet Atkins and Minnie Pearl presenting the “Entertainer of the Year.” When I heard ’em call out my name, I thought I was gonna flip. I was somewhere else the rest of the evening. I just kept saying “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it.” People kept telling me they were glad I won.

  I kept waiting for Doo to call that night, but he was out in this little tavern in Colorado, listening to the news on television. When they announced I won, he got so excited that he bought a round for everybody. Then he said he couldn’t reach me on the telephone because a big bolt of lightning hit the wires.

  People tried to make a big thing about Doo not being there. I just made a joke about it by telling ’em, “Doo’s out hunting—but I don’t know what he’s hunting.” That’s how I handle things usually, by making a joke out of it.

  The next day, Doo got on a plane to Nashville. I was about worn out from being on the “Today Show” before dawn. I was glad to see him, especially when he told me how proud he was. That’s still the biggest award I can get.

  I remember people asking me if I thought the Women’s Liberation spirit had anything to do with my getting it. I told La Wayne Satterfield of Music City News, “You know better than that. The people did it and they didn’t pick the best man or the best woman—they just picked the one they thought was the best. That’s why I’m so proud.”

  But I will say this: I think it’s good for people to realize that women can do things as good as a man. And I think show business is one of the places where that’s true.

  There’re more women stars in Nashville all the time. They’ve got their own shows and their own buses, and they’re proving they can do the job the same as a man. I get along with all the women singers, but especially Dolly Parton, who was voted Female Vocalist of the Year in 1975. We’re good friends because we talk the same hillbilly language. Dolly is from Tennessee, and when we get going, nobody can understand us.

  I love Dolly, and I understand why she wears all that fancy jewelry and makeup and piles her hair up the way she does. She once told me she was poor when she was a kid and now that she can afford pretty things, she said, “I’m gonna pile it all over me.” And I say good for her.

  Me and Dolly like to talk about the old days when we were poor. We can remember how the snow and rain used to blow through the cracks. One time Dolly asked me, “Remember when you had company coming, how you’d shoo the flies out the door with a towel, then slam the door real fast?” That’s what it was like in those old cabins.

  But whenever we talk like that around the new Opry, I get the feeling people are nervous. Hillbillies are going out of fashion in Nashville, I think.

  I had some other wonderful honors following the Entertainer of the Year Award. I was named one of Tennessee’s top five women, along with women in college and medicine and government and business. In the Gallup Poll, in 1973, I was listed as an honorable mention, after the world’s ten most admired women. Golda Meir of Israel was first, so you could say I was in pretty good company.

  I’ve won other big awards in music since then, too. In 1973, I got the Female Vocalist of the Year Award again, which gave some of my fans the idea that I owned the award. Well, friends, nobody owns nothing in this world. Even your breath is just loaned to you. There ‘re a lot of good country singers around, and nothing goes on forever.

  That was my feeling in 1974, when they moved the awards show over to the new Opry and Johnny Cash was the master of ceremonies. I was nominated for Female Vocalist of the Year and Entertainer of the Year. Sure, I wanted to win ’em, but I was so tired of working I would rather have been on the beach in Mexico.

  I knew it wasn’t going to be easy for me to win in 1974 because my own record company, MCA—it changed its name from Decca—had two women up for the same awards—myself and Olivia Newton-John. She’s an English girl who grew up in Australia and never appeared in Nashville. But she had three hit records in 1974, and a lot of people were saying she was gonna win something.

  Some of my fans were upset because they said she wasn’t country. But her records had kind of a country sound to ’em, and they also sold big on the “pop” charts. I know MCA was glad to have her. It’s like a restaurant. Some people like steak, some people like lobster, so you sell both. And if you got something new on the menu, you advertise it a little extra.

  That didn’t bother me any, but a couple of female singers were sitting around the dressing room on the night of the awards, griping ’cause Olivia Newton-John didn’t even come to America for the
awards. She was on tour in Spain somewhere. Well, all I could remember was me winning the top female singer’s award in England four years in a row and how nice people were to me there. So I told the girls to cut it out. I hate to hear all that jealousy coming out.

  Anyway, Olivia Newton-John did win the Top Female Vocalist Award. I don’t think the applause was very big, and some of the Nashville people were still grumbling backstage.

  Later they even organized something they called the Association of Country Entertainers, to make sure country musicians get their fair share of awards. But I stayed neutral. I don’t want to get involved in politics and jealousy. Besides, I never heard people complaining when Lynn Anderson’s record of “Rose Garden” crossed over into popular music sales, or when Tammy Wynette crossed over with “Stand by Your Man,” or Johnny Cash had a big record with “A Boy Named Sue.”

  See, it’s like a double standard. If they were from Nashville, it was all right to win pop awards. But because Olivia Newton-John wasn’t from Nashville, they didn’t like her winning our awards. Well, I know that a lot of country fans—some of ’em my fans—have bought Olivia Newton-John’s records, so she must have something going for her. I’ve got no complaints. Look, she walked off with the Grammy Award for 1974 pop music. When you’re hot, you’re hot, that’s all.

  Anyway, me and Conway did get the award for top country duo from the Country Music Association. And later I won the top female singer and top duet from the Academy of Country Music.

  Besides, two nights later, I won the Music City News award for top female vocalist, and the fans vote in that one—not the big shots. They gave me that award at the United Talent show at midnight, at the Opry, and all the disc jockeys stood up and cheered. Conway got up on stage and said, “Who’s this Oliver Newton-June anyhow?” I got so embarrassed, I almost fell through the floor. I gave Conway a dirty look that said, “No more of that.” But he was being funny—he likes Olivia, he told me.