30
On the Road
I hear her voice, in the morning hours she calls me;
The radio reminds me of my home far away;
Driving down the road I get a feeling
That I should have been home yesterday—yesterday…
—“Take Me Home, Country Roads,” by John Denver, Bill Danoff, and Taffy Nivert
Now that I’ve told you just about everything in my life, maybe it’s time to take you along with me for a few days, so you’ll see all about my “glamorous” life as a country singer. Usually the way that works, people get all excited about traveling in my bus. But after a day and a half they start asking, “Hey, where can I catch a plane out of here?”
Our schedule is a bunch of one-night stands. It isn’t good business to sit in one place too long. You figure all your fans are gonna make an effort to see you one night. But there may not be enough for two nights. Plus, I’d rather keep moving than stay in one town. It makes the time go faster. You stay in one place for a week and you swear you’ve been there a month. But the traveling can get pretty rough, too.
Let’s take a weekend in May, the first weekend when my writer, George, was traveling with us. After a couple of days with my boys and me, George didn’t know which end was up.
We were in the middle of a long tour. We try to make the dates as close as possible, in a straight line, but we can’t always do it. When you get a good offer in Toronto on a Thursday night, you take it. That’s why we have the bus, so we don’t have to depend on airplanes. We can go a thousand miles between shows if we have to. On this trip, we’d gone from West Virginia to Toronto and back into Ohio again. I had this migraine headache, and my doctor had just told me my blood pressure was up. So I was a little scared and got to thinking about giving up this business, and I was missing my twins, like I do, as this weekend started.
Friday, May 5, Cincinnati, Ohio: It’s four o’clock in the afternoon and I’m trying to take a nap in my hotel room. We’ve been driving all night from Toronto and I’m exhausted. I just took a nice, long bath and I’d love to sleep some more, but my fans are running up and down the hallways, giggling and banging on doors. We try to keep our hotel a secret, but it’s not hard to spot our big bus with my name on the side. The hotel’s not supposed to give out our room numbers, but the fans find out somehow. Bless ’em, I love ’em all, but I wish they wouldn’t disturb me and my boys when we’re trying to sleep.
At times like this, I really feel sorry for Jim Webb. He’s been with me a couple of years now. He used to drive for Continental Trailways, but he never had a schedule like this. He’s expected to drive all night, though Dave Thornhill, my lead guitar man, takes over on long hauls like last night. Jim is trying to sleep in the next room, and they’re banging on his door.
There’s no sense trying to sleep. I look out the window, at the interstate highway over the river into Kentucky. The bridge is jammed with mountain people heading home for the weekend. I start thinking about the hollers in May, how they’re just bursting with green leaves. Then I remember the old Depression days, and I decide I ain’t so homesick after all.
Jim Webb gives up sleeping, too. He bangs on my door and wanders in—he’s a big boy, around six foot four, from Laurel, Mississippi. His hair is styled just like Elvis Presley’s. Jim is a very important part of my tour. In addition to driving the bus, he takes all the telephone calls and makes travel arrangements. I depend on him, particularly when Doo’s not around, like now.
“Did you eat yet?” Jim says. That’s one of his jobs—to make sure I remember to eat. We’re always worried about keeping my weight up, so he orders me a steak and baked potato with string beans and salad and pie and ice cream. He watches over me until I finish eating. Then it’s time to leave for the show. I just wear my regular travel slacks and go down to the bus.
That bus is important to us. We sleep in it and I do all my dressing in it. We found it was better to have a bus with a dressing room, instead of counting on using whatever they give us at the auditoriums. Sometimes they’ve got good rooms, and sometimes just a bathroom without even a mirror. But we’ve always got the bus.
We got our first bus in 1967, after my babies were born. It was better than traveling by car with Doolittle or Jay Lee driving. Now it’s like a second home. Truck drivers see my name on the bus and wave as they go past. Last year when there were gasoline shortages and the truckers went on strike, people were shooting out windows on trucks. But we didn’t have any trouble. In fact, that crazy Tom T. Hall had bought my old bus with the sign “Loretta Lynn” still on the front, and he didn’t have no trouble, either.
Our bus cost around $147,000 to fix up. I designed it myself. It’s regulation length. The front is for the driver and has couches for sitting. The upholstery is purple velvet, and there’s a violet-patterned carpet and a ceiling of white leatherette. There are some little gold tassels and stuff to give it a fancy feeling. The boys say it looks like a hearse. Up front we’ve got a little refrigerator, a television set, and a tape deck, plus a table where the boys can play cards. Just recently we installed a microwave oven for cooking hamburgers and stuff. In the middle there’re eight bunks. The back part is for me.
The boys all crowd into the bus at 5 p.m. It’s the middle of the rush hour and we just squeeze our way across town. People line up on the sidewalks, waiting for city buses, and point their fingers at us. My boys wave back at the pretty girls.
“Now, boys, behave yourselves. You got two shows tonight,” I tell ’em.
“Ain’t no harm in looking, Mom,” says Don Ballinger in the little-boy voice he uses onstage when I scold him.
We get lost for a minute, as all the musicians give Jim different directions to the Taft Theatre. But Jim finds the place finally despite their help, and he maneuvers the bus halfway up on the curb, right next to the stage door. The boys start loading all their instruments and sound equipment onto the stage. Then they run a test, to make sure everything sounds right. Then they get into their stage uniforms. Tonight they’re wearing their brown suits that I designed for ’em. They’ve got an hour before the show to sell albums and pictures in the lobby.
The boys share some of the profits from selling the souvenirs. Ken Riley, the tall drummer who used to be a tap dancer, is in charge of dividing the money. They call him “Bread Man” on account of money being called “bread” in my boys’ language. I feel real comfortable seeing my boys working around the bus. Those boys are just like a family to me. I remember one time, when I was having all those death threats, my dentist came to visit me at the bus. I looked out the window and saw my boys had him backed up against a wall. I said, “Boys, what in the world are you doing? That’s my dentist.” But they didn’t know. They were just a little jumpy.
Most people say, “The band would kill for Loretta,” and I guess that’s true. When I see ’em get an award, like Music City News voting ’em the top band last year, I’m as happy as they are.
I’ve had my band since I started breaking up with the Wilburns. Before that, I’d have to play with the house band wherever I went. If the band was good, I’d sound fine. But if it was bad, I’d get real nervous and couldn’t sing at all. One night the house band took off in one key and I took off in another. They were just a sorry little country band—steel guitar, bass, and fiddle. I told Doolittle, “Either I’m getting a band or I’m quitting.” So he got me a band.
I never told this story before, but I almost got an all-girl band. You don’t see too many women in country music. Sure, there’re the big stars, but all the bands and studio musicians are men, just about. And you know there’re women around that can play just as good as men. I used to have Leona Williams playing bass in my band and singing harmony. She’s one of the best musicians in Nashville, and now she’s out trying to make it on her own. I bet she does, too.
I was going to hold tryouts for women and call ’em “The Lynnettes.” But people started saying you can’t have a traveling gi
rl band—if you had one incident, people would start gossiping about it. It was that old double standard again. If a man goes out on a date, people smile and say, “Well, that’s how men are.” But if some woman goes out on a date, people say, “She’s a loose woman.” And it wouldn’t be good for business if that kind of stuff got started. So we hired an all-man band, and I ain’t been sorry to this date because I love my boys. But an all-girl band would have been fantastic.
Right away, my band made my act better. I always knew what music they were playing, and if I started to get sick, they could keep the show going.
It’s not hard to find great musicians in Nashville. It’s the truth—the streets are packed with ’em. But I’ve got a certain kind of boy I like to hire—somebody who’s worked in the factories up north. They can appreciate being in my band a little more after working the shifts in the factories.
You take a boy like my lead guitar, Dave Thornhill. His daddy was a real coal miner in Kentucky, and then they moved up to Ohio, where he worked in a factory. On the weekends, he’d play in country music places and dream about going to Nashville. Finally, he chucked his job and moved to Nashville—broke, without a penny. He heard that I was looking to hire a guitar man, so he tried out.
I remember at the tryout, he looked familiar to me. I said, “Ain’t I seen you before?” And he said he used to back me up whenever I played in Columbus, Ohio. So I knew he could play my music. I listened to a few notes and told him to be on the bus with his bags packed in half an hour. Dave ain’t been off my bus since.
Dave is an important part of the show. He watches me real careful and makes sure the band is following me. If I break time or something, he breaks time right with me. He’s real proud of being my lead guitar man.
My boys get paid a straight salary, fifty-two weeks a year. Plus, they get six or eight weeks off after Christmas when I go to Mexico, and time off when I’m in Nashville. The only deal is they have to be ready to go with me whenever we have a show. Most of ’em live in Nashville now. They bring their wives and kids around, and we get to know each other. I think a man works steadier when he’s got a good family.
Now the bus is nearly empty, except for a fellow from my record company. We talk business for a few minutes. Then Cal Smith gets on. Cal is one of the best singers in the business, and he’s been making this tour, along with Ernest Tubb and his band. Cal is from Oklahoma, and he used to be the front man for Ernest, so he’s having a great time with his old buddies.
“Where you been?” I ask him.
“On Ernest’s bus,” Cal says. He’s one of these people you can never tell if he’s joking or serious.
“What you been doing?” I ask.
“Getting interviewed,” Cal says.
I decide not to ask him the details. It’s probably better I don’t know. Cal has been egging Ernest’s band and my band into all kinds of crazy stunts. Lately he’s been imitating the Wilburn Brothers, something he knows I don’t like. He’ll get onstage and talk with his hands up in the air—drives me crazy. Now he’s got my whole band doing it behind my back.
Last week my boys put Ernest’s bus up on jacks and it took ’em an hour to get it off. But Ernest’s boys paid us back. They’ve got this bus driver named Hoot who looks just like Gomer Pyle and talks like him, too. Me and Ernest are supposed to sing our big record, “Sweet Thang.” Well, last week they sent Hoot out in Ernest’s clothes, about three sizes too big. Hoot starts moving his lips and his hands, while Ernest was singing offstage. The audience thought it was hilarious but I was going crazy. The whole bunch of ’em is nuts.
Luckily, there’re a few normal people left in the world—I think. About 6:30 p.m., two of my fan-club presidents from Kentucky, Jean Powers and Martha McConnell, come pecking on my door. I give ’em a big hug and we talk about the old mountain days—they both grew up in eastern Kentucky—and the fan-club activity. They put out a newsletter, plugging all my new records. Whenever I get near Kentucky, they come visit me. I’ve got a rule that I only let fan-club presidents on the bus. That avoids a lot of hard feelings. I just can’t let everybody on—the insurance company won’t let us.
Around 7 p.m., Jim Webb pops in the bus and says Ernest’s show is just beginning. That means I’ve got about an hour to get ready. Martha and Jean are welcome to stay, but I’ve got to go in the back of the bus and work some miracles.
The back of the bus is about twelve feet long and six feet wide. That’s where I spend half my life, it seems. I’ve got two purple couches that open into one king-sized bed when Doolittle is around. Far in the back, I’ve got a Hollywood vanity and sink and makeup table. There’re bright fluorescent bulbs lighting everything up. I sit on a high-back swivel makeup chair that’s white with purple trim.
On the other side, there’s a closet holding over a hundred dresses. I make some, and some are shipped by Barbara Smith, who works in my office and is a close friend. She does most of my shopping for me in Nashville so I never have to go into a store. She knows my size and what I like to wear. If I don’t like ’em, I just send ’em back. My dresses are size three or five, depending what time of year it is. After Mexico, I’m size five, or even seven. Late in the year, I’m down to size three.
I spend half an hour at the vanity, just making up. A writer named Carol Offen once asked me why I got dressed up so fancy in these days when a lot of women are wearing blue jeans and letting their hair just hang. I said that’s all right for other women, but I think my fans expect me to look a certain way. It’s part of my personality onstage. Also, I enjoy seeing me change from Loretta, the gal in jeans, to Loretta, the woman in the long gown. It’s a little like seeing one of the Hollywood stars appear before my own eyes. I guess my mommy should never have let me sit looking at pictures of movie stars when I was a baby.
But lately I’ve been cutting down on all the phony stuff. I’m tired of all that work, pretending I’m something I ain’t. I’m tired of the rollers and the creams, the eyelash curlers, the lipsticks, the powder. I still use hot curlers to get my hair curly; then I spray it. I must use a truckload of it every year. I used to wear a fall made out of Korean hair, after some fans cut off my curls with a pocketknife. But the hairpiece was giving me a headache, so I gave it up this year. I don’t wear false eyelashes anymore. Too many fans were pulling them off. From now on, what you see is what I’ve got.
I keep fussing in front of the mirror, curl by curl. It still ain’t right, but there’s Jim Webb knocking at the door.
“Five minutes, Mom,” he says. Then he takes my arm and we rush off the bus, through a stage door, and we’re backstage. I take one look around me—same old theater, just like always, a few familiar faces backstage. Then I hear the announcer say, “Ladies and gentlemen, the first lady of country music, Miss Loretta Lynn.” And I see a spotlight out there, and I wobble out in my high-heel shoes, as clumsy as ever. Dave Thornhill kicks over the first notes to “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and we’re off.
We’ve been starting with the same four or five songs—“Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “Your Squaw Is on the Warpath,” “Help Me Make It through the Night,” “Me and Bobby McGee,” and “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man.”
It’s always the same songs, and sometimes people ask me if I get tired of singing ’em. Yes, I do. At first it’s good, but you go for years and you really get tired of ’em. But people want to hear your hit songs, so you’ve got to.
After the opening songs, I introduce my band. I never know what they’re going to do next. After we’re on the road awhile, our biggest kick is making each other laugh. After it gets real bad, I’ll say, “Boys, you’d better pay your way in tomorrow, because you ain’t performing for the audience tonight.” But I’m as bad as they are.
It’s real dangerous when you’ve got a man like Don Ballinger around. Don’s my “front man”—the one with the big smile who warms up the audience at the start of the show. He’s always telling the audience how bad he’s paid, or he preten
ds he’s scouting for pretty girls in the crowd. He’s got his good points, though. When I’m not feeling well, he’ll start clowning around until I’ve got my strength back.
Tonight he starts talking about the girls he saw from the bus.
“There was a bunch of tanks,” Don says. “Real big ones. Sherman tanks.”
I put my hand in front of my face. Only one way to hush that boy up—that’s to sing. So we sing a few numbers; then I introduce my other musicians. Gene Dunlap, our Louisiana piano man, sings in that deep “country soul” voice, just like a white Ray Charles. Then it’s time for me and Ernest to sing “Sweet Thang.”
You never know what’s gonna happen. But fortunately, there’s no stunt this time. And it ain’t Hoot, Ernest’s bus driver, walking onstage, but it’s really Ernest. Thank goodness, because this is still one of my favorite songs.
Now we’re getting toward the end. I do “They Don’t Make ’Em Like My Daddy.” But while I’m singing, I see my boys doing that Wilburn bit, talking with their hands again. That makes me so mad I feel like walking off the stage. But of course, I finish the song and then “Love Is the Foundation” and, finally, “One’s on the Way.” But I don’t do any requests and I don’t do “God Bless America Again.” I just nod to Dave Thornhill that I’m finished, and they play the little hoedown number while I go offstage, still angry at them for teasing me like they did. Ever since I broke with the Wilburns, I don’t like to see any of their mannerisms. My boys just do it for meanness.
Jim Webb takes my arm and escorts me back into the bus. I start slamming things around my bedroom while Martha and Jean ask me what’s wrong; and I tell them.
“They just do it for a joke,” Martha says.
“Well, it makes me mad,” I say.
Coal Miner's Daughter Page 22