Coal Miner's Daughter

by Coal Miner's Daughter (Expanded

  The Johnsons understand my moods, but it’s hard to explain to somebody who’s driven five hundred miles to see you that you’re tired and you’ve got company and you can’t squeeze anyone else around the kitchen table. Other times I’ll be on the road somewhere and someone’ll say they’ve been waiting five years to see me. Last year I was feeling sick until I saw this old man, about eighty, near my bus. All I could think about was sleeping in my bus, when his daughter said he was going to die soon, but he wanted to meet me first. I gave him a hug and signed an autograph, and he said, “Take me home, boys, I’m ready to die now.” I got back in the bus and told my boys, “Boys, I ain’t sick. I just learned what courage is.”

  I don’t care what anyone says, it helps an artist to know that people love you. When I hear people cheering for my hit songs, even though I’ve sung them a thousand times, I want to put everything I have into the songs. I know that sometimes we goof off, just play for ourselves, but those fans have saved up their money and you’ve got to give them your very best.

  There are some things you can’t do for the fans. For one thing, I can’t have all of them on the bus because the insurance company won’t allow it. But the fans don’t understand that. They get this hurt look if you don’t come out and sign an autograph. Maybe there’s a poor gal who’s driven a hundred miles and she doesn’t have a ticket for my show; all she wants to do is to give me a little sewing kit as a present or something. And I’m too tired to get off my couch. It happens. I’ve done it. And it breaks my heart. But there has got to be a limit sometimes. These are things I learned the hard way. When I started out in show business, I didn’t know what to expect. The next chapter may give you some idea of how much I had to learn.

  15

  The Education of a Country Singer

  The women all look at you like you’re bad,

  The men all hope you are.

  But if you go too far, you’re gonna wear the scar,

  Of a woman that’s rated “X”…

  —“Rated ‘X,’” by Loretta Lynn

  It’s a good thing I had my husband and the Johnson girls because I never would have survived without them. I wasn’t innocent like when I got married. Me and Doo had enough problems by then, so I knew that men and women didn’t always get along. But now I was out every night in these clubs, and I couldn’t believe what I saw.

  One time out in Colorado, just after I met the Johnsons, I got a call to my motel room from a man who asked me if I would like to make some money. I said, “Oh yeah!” I was thinking I could go home and show Doo I made some money on my own. What did the man want me to sing? In this little sneaky voice, he says, “Forget about the singing; there’s a bunch of guys who want to be entertained.”

  I didn’t know much, so I yelled across the room to the Johnson girls, “Hey, there’s this guy on the phone, and he wants me to entertain ’em, but he don’t want me to sing. What’s he want me to do?” Loudilla took the phone from my hand and hung it up real hard. Then she slowly explained to me what he wanted. All I could say was, “Is that right?”

  But it wasn’t just telephone calls. I’d get offers right in the clubs. I’d be up on the stage singing, and guys would be writing their room numbers on slips of paper or asking me to have a drink with ’em after the show. I didn’t have a wedding ring, and besides, people told me men liked your singing better if they didn’t know you were married. Later I started wearing a ring, but that didn’t slow ’em down any.

  Another time we were working a club in Chicago for twenty-five dollars a night. It was the roughest place I ever worked. They had no stage, just this poor little two-man band, and you had to stand up on the bar to sing. Fortunately, Doo was traveling with me. He came into the bar and saw what was happening, and he grabbed one guy and walked him outside. I hope Doo didn’t hurt him.

  At first, I had to work clubs to sell for the jukeboxes, to get known. You’d have to work three or four shows a night to make any money, and that was hard work. Also, you’d get guys who’d been drinking and think that gave ’em the right to grab you and hug you. I don’t mind some old boy if he’s with his family or something. But the way some guys in those drinking clubs grab you—now, that’s not family!

  I don’t have anything against people drinking, as long as they don’t mess up other people’s lives. But I’ve got to be honest and say I don’t like playing clubs because of the hard work and the way a few guys carry on.

  I was still kind of backward when I got to Nashville for the first time. Doo had to stay back with the babies, so Mr. Burley hired me a girl to travel with. She was a big redhead—I think her name was Mack—and she was something else. She was supposed to promote me and my record, but she had other ideas about how to attract attention.

  The first thing she did was to hire convertibles and get us bikini bathing suits. I never had one in my life and I wouldn’t wear it. She said you had to show off what you got. I said I wouldn’t have it. That’s not the way my mommy and my daddy raised me, and my husband would die if he found out, after killing me first.

  “That’s the way everybody does it,” the redhead said.

  “If it is, I better get out right now,” I replied. But I didn’t get out, and things were getting worse.

  We were in some towns where she would go out on a date with some disc jockey. I didn’t know what was going on. Then she said, “You better go out on dates with disc jockeys, too. That’s the way it’s done.” I said I was married and didn’t go out on dates with nobody. It was a shaky situation.

  We got to Nashville and this redhead had me on a radio station. I’m not gonna mention the station, but it wasn’t WSM. I figured we were done with the town, but Mack said if we stayed around until Tuesday, they’d play my record.

  I told her I didn’t have to do that. Then I asked her, “What do they expect from us if we stay?” She shrugged her shoulders, and I knew what she meant—if you want to make it in this business, you’ve got to sleep with those men.

  I got real scared. I was over my head with this girl. I picked up the phone and started calling my husband. Mack got mad and started throwing ashtrays around the room, yelling, “Do that and I’ll tear up your contract.”

  Finally I got Doo on the phone, and I was crying. He told me if I didn’t quit crying, he was gonna make me quit the business. I started telling him what was going on. Doo said I shouldn’t do nothing, just move on to the next town, which was Cincinnati, and he’d join me. So I told Mack I wasn’t gonna sleep with no disc jockeys this time or any time, and we should go to Cincinnati. When Doo arrived, he told me Mr. Burley said, “You tell that redheaded bitch Loretta doesn’t have to sleep with anybody.” And they fired the redhead. I’ve tried to forget about her. I don’t like to remember bad situations.

  That kind of thing never happened to me again, I’m glad to say. My husband stayed closer to me after that, and other people like the Johnsons watched out for me, too. But I was getting some kind of education in the ways of the world.

  I guess growing up in Butcher Holler just didn’t prepare me for the facts of life, just like I didn’t know anything about sex when I got married. In fact, I was still pretty ignorant even with four kids. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a lesbian until my daughter came home from grade school and told me. I couldn’t believe it then—but now I can.

  I think there’s a few of my fans who are lesbians—maybe more than a few. But they’re my fans, and they visit me, just like anybody else, and it don’t bother me. I’ve even got one friend who tells me about her personal life, and she’ll even fix my hair or something. But she would never do anything that would upset me. It’s not your friends who are the problem anyway. I’ve had a couple of women I didn’t know proposition me, or even try something. That’s why I’ve gotten more careful about seeing a lot of strangers.

  Working in those clubs I got to see it all. I’d see a husband coming in with someone else’s wife. A wife coming in with someone else’s hu
sband. It was all the same, the public and the musicians. It started to seem like the whole world was like that. Then I got to worrying if Doo was doing the same thing, see, because everyone else was. It was a bad time for me in that respect, because of what I saw.

  The only good thing was I started writing more songs. Everyone says all my songs are about myself. That’s not completely true, because if I did all the things I write about, I wouldn’t be here—I’d be all worn out in some old people’s home. But I’ve seen things, and that’s almost the same as doing ’em.

  Like one of my songs was “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man.” This one I didn’t really write about myself. There was a little girl, she was a bit on the plump side, not much. She came backstage one night, crying, and she said, “Loretta, my husband is going with another woman, so he brought her here tonight. See that guy sitting out there? See that girl sitting beside him?”

  I looked at that other girl and I thought, “My God, don’t tell me you’re going to let something like that take your husband away from you!” ’Cause, to me, she was twice the woman that other gal was. So I looked back at her and said, “Why, she ain’t woman enough to take your man!” Just like that, as soon as I said it, I knew I had a hit song. She was all prepared to take a back seat because her husband fell for another woman. But that’s not something I’d let myself do. By the way, that girl fought for her man, and a few months later she wrote to me and said they were back together again. I still see her, and she’s still married to that same guy.

  That’s the same way I wrote “Fist City.” There was a gal in Tennessee who was after my man, like I said before. I was up singing every night and she’d come around to the clubs and she’d hang around him. So finally I wrote this song that said, “You better lay off my man…or I’ll grab you by the hair of your head and lift you off of the ground.”

  And I would. I’ve been in a couple of fights in my life. I fight like a woman. I scratch and kick and bite and punch. Women are much meaner than men. So I warned any girl making eyes at Doo then, and I’m still jealous enough to warn ’em today—if you see this cute little old boy near me wearing his cowboy hat, you’d better walk a circle around us if you don’t want to go to Fist City. (Although I guess I’d better be careful what I say. For all I know, there might be a dozen gals out there ready to take me on.)

  Doolittle knows he don’t have to worry about me, even if we’re not together on the road all the time. Once in a while he’ll pick up some rumor, but Nashville is famous for rumors. After twenty-five years of being married, I ain’t cheated on him.

  People ask me sometimes, “Doesn’t it get lonely on the road? Don’t you ever meet a man you’d like to spend some time with?” Usually I just answer a flat-out no. But that’s really too simple an answer. The truth is everybody finds themselves attracted to different people at different times. Anybody who says that ain’t true is just a liar. I’m normal in that respect. I’ve met men I could like—but I haven’t ever seen one yet who could take the place of my family. So I stay out of trouble.

  I wrote a song about that once called “I’m Dynamite,” and in it was a line, “Please don’t light the fuse.” See, the way I look at it, it’s up to the woman to keep out of trouble. Maybe if I was the type who liked to go to parties and drink, I’d get in trouble. That’s why I don’t condemn Doo for what he’s done. As long as you keep up with this traveling life, with all the people and parties, there’re bound to be temptations. As for what Doo has done, it’s not anything I haven’t thought about doing myself.

  But I’ve seen what happened to women when they started messing around. They lost their families and they went downhill in a hurry. I’ve had friends like that. I’d rather write a song about it—that’s my way of staying out of trouble. My marriage means too much to take a chance.

  Besides, if I wasn’t married, I couldn’t do the same things I do now. I couldn’t be friendly with a lot of men, hug ’em and tell ’em I love ’em. They might take it the wrong way, and that would spoil things for me.

  But sometimes men take your personality wrong. They see me up on the stage and they think I’m just waiting for their telephone call. Like this doctor from Texas who followed me around whenever I played that part of the country. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He’d be calling up and wanting to meet me. One night I was taking a bath and he called me from the lobby and said, “Well, I’ve found you.” I didn’t know how he got my room number, but he did. He said he wanted to watch TV in my room. I said it was too late, the TV was off.

  He said he wanted to talk, so I said he could talk on the phone. Then he started telling me about his troubles with his wife, which is about the worst approach a man can use. I said, “Why don’t you write to Dear Abby?” He hung up, and I haven’t heard from him since. But he knows who he is.

  But just because you don’t go for that kind of stuff doesn’t mean it’s not there. You just look around you. That’s why I think country music is so popular with ordinary people. Because not everybody can appreciate poetry or classical music, and they don’t like words that say one thing and mean another thing. Country music is real. Country music tells the story the way things are. People fall in love and then one of ’em starts cheating around, or both of ’em sometimes. And usually there’s somebody who gets hurt. Our country songs are nothing but the truth. That’s why they’re so popular.

  It’s like that song Conway Twitty and I did in 1974, “As Soon as I Hang Up the Phone.” It starts with the phone ringing and Conway, in a choking kind of voice, tries to tell me good-bye. Now, for a while, I don’t pay any attention to what he’s saying, but he keeps bringing the subject back to him leaving. Finally he says it’s true, and I sing, “Ohhhh noooo…”

  Now, how many people have gotten bad news on the phone about their man or woman? Lots. And I bet most of ’em react the way I do in that song. Well, that song started being played on the jukeboxes over and over again because it was real.

  You just look around at the problems that people keep having. Divorces and split-ups and extra boyfriends and girlfriends all over the place. I don’t know how they find the time for it. And another reason country songs are so popular: some of the songs are about ourselves, really. We ain’t no better than anybody else.

  As for me, I ain’t slept with nobody except my husband. I’m always getting letters from Conway’s fans who say I was responsible for breaking up his marriage. Those fans hear Conway and me singing on our records, or they know that we’re partners in a talent agency. But that’s the only way we’re partners. I’ve heard rumors about me and every singer in country music. There were even rumors about me and Ernest Tubb, and he’s like a father to me. As far as I’m concerned, Ernest Tubb hung the moon. But my friends know me better than that. I also know you don’t have to sleep with anybody to make it in this business. If I do sleep with anybody, it will be for my own accord. Like I told that redhead back in 1961, that ain’t the way my mommy and my daddy raised me.

  16

  Music City, U.S.A.

  I’ll dress up like a movie star,

  And pretty up my hair

  And no one here is gonna know,

  What I’ll be doing there…

  —“Hey, Loretta,” by Shel Silverstein

  That experience with the redhead taught us to be more careful about our contacts, but it didn’t stop us from trying to make it in Nashville. I guess I went at it like a bull in a china shop, the same way I am about everything—all energy. I’d be on people’s doorsteps at eight in the morning, holding copies of my first record and of new songs I’d written.

  People started calling me “Colonel Parker” because that was the name of the man who promoted Elvis Presley. Well, I was no Colonel Parker, but I sure could have used one. I was wearing a ninety-nine-cent dress from the Salvation Army, and me and Doolittle spent more than one night sleeping in the car to save money.

  I went over to the Opry and pestered Ott Devine, the manager,
until he let me on the show. My first appearance was on October 15, 1960; the Opry paid guests fifteen dollars in those days, and we were sure glad to have the money.

  I was nervous when they took me backstage. It was kind of crowded and informal, with all sorts of people hanging around. You’d see some picker you never heard of standing right next to some great star like Roy Acuff. It seemed disorganized, but it was a radio show and only the studio audience could see people milling around backstage. On the radio, it was the most exciting thing in the world to hear. In person, you’d see those people, how exhausted they were from driving all day. But they’d come alive if they liked you. I sang “Honky Tonk Girl” and they really cheered me, and Ott Devine invited me back again.

  Somebody hinted that when you went on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry, you should wear high-heeled shoes and look a little more stylish. But I was used to low-heeled boots and didn’t want to look too fancy.

  Out of those first Opry appearances, I got an invitation to tour Alaska with Johnny Horton. Before I could, he was on his way back to Nashville when he got killed in a car wreck. Then they talked about matching me with Jim Reeves, but he, too, died before we got together.

  Me and Doo realized that we needed good advice if we were going to make it. We decided to try the Wilburn Brothers, who were a big act in country music at that time. I met them once before when I asked for their autographs. Now I looked ’em up and asked what they could do for me.

  Of course, I already had my first record on the charts and was on my way to being included in the Most Promising Female Singer category, so they didn’t have anything to do with that, or with getting me on the Opry. Plus, I was already considered for a television show, which later turned out to be their show.