I’d been saying to my daughter Patsy that I wanted to get back in the studio to make another album. We started going through the house, gathering up my old songs to find some new stuff to record. That’s when Nancy called and asked if I wanted to do a show in New York with Jack and Meg. I said sure. Why not? So, I went up and did a show with them. I told Jack that I was wanting to record again. He said he’d like to produce me. I said yes right away. I knew Jack would do a good job.
So, Jack came to Nashville. Jack was like Owen. He wanted me to record my own songs in my own words. He asked me if I had any written. ’Course I had, like, fifty. I brought a bunch in, all in a file marked “Songs.” They were from all during my career—scraps of paper. Some were just titles and others were whole songs I’d been working on over the years. When Jack saw how many I had, he was surprised. He picked some out for us to record. We demoed eight songs all in one day to get a feel for them. He hired the musicians and did the arrangements.
We recorded in this old house on Basket Bell Street in East Nashville. We’d do about a song or two a day. Jack worried he was working me to death. He kept checkin’ on me, asking, “Am I wearing you out?” I told him it wasn’t nothing for me. Besides, we were doing something different. Something good. While we were working, sometimes I’d take hold of Jack’s hand and say, “This is really going to shake them up, Jack.”
Together we made one of my favorite country records of my career. He’s a smart cookie. He is so smart in a way that I ain’t, and I’m smart in a way he ain’t. So together, it’s good. We had such a nice time. That album came out in 2004—Van Lear Rose for the title track I’d wrote about my mommy.
“Miss Being Mrs.” is one of my favorites. I wrote it about missing Doo. It hurts my heart to sing. It was good to get that off my chest. Kinda bittersweet. We sure had good times making that record. I am real glad we did it. Some people didn’t like it. Country radio wouldn’t play it. They thought I was going too rock ’n’ roll. But it’s not. It’s as country as anything I ever cut. Maybe more. We got two Grammys for it, too: Best Country Album and Best Country Collaboration for the song called “Portland, Oregon.”
“Portland, Oregon” was a song I started back around 1974. I had a little crush on one of our United Artists singers named Cal Smith. Now, I never did fool around on Doo, but if I had, it’d have been with Cal. He wasn’t hard to look at; plus, me and him liked to cut up. The boys would always drink and carry on, but me—I hardly ever went to the bars. One day Ernest Tubb and Cal talked me into going out to watch them play golf. But we had fun. That day me and Cal worked up a plan. We went to the hotel bar that night where the guys in the band were. We made a big show of holding hands and cooing over each other. We had a bet about how long it’d take for word to get back to Doo. I never drank so I asked Cal what to order. Then I said real loud, “I’ll have me a sloe gin fizz!” Every head turned. We laughed ’cause we knew the rumors were flying already!
I liked that sloe gin fizz. After just one I was feeling tipsy and thought I’d order another. “The bar’s about to close, hon,” Cal said. So I hollered to the waitress to bring me one for the road. We headed out, Cal walking me back to my room, with the boys in the band following behind to make sure I got back safely. Then I went in and scribbled down the start to a song that began, “Portland, Oregon, and sloe gin fizz / if that ain’t love, then tell me what is.” The rest is history. We won a Grammy for that one and a Grammy for the album.
38
Fake News
Stay with me, a little bit longer
Stay with me, if you can
Stay with me, a little bit longer
Ain’t no time to go, darlin’…
—“Ain’t No Time to Go,” by Loretta Lynn and Patsy Lynn Russell
If I’d have had an affair with Cal Smith or anybody else, you can bet it would have been all over the news. Stories like that sell magazines and newspapers, whether they’re true or not. Maybe there’s a little bit of truth in them but you gotta take most of that so-called news as pure entertainment. My fans care about me and they care what happens to me, so they put my face on the cover of a magazine with a headline about me being in trouble—that gets the cash register to ringing. Ten years ago, I bought a magazine that said I was dead. Well, then who bought the dang thing?
I used to always get Star magazine. That was a good one. They were always good to me. My friend Jeane Dixon was Star magazine’s psychic. I met Jeane in 1981, and we stayed friends till she passed. After we met that first time, she sent me a letter. She told me things that showed she had the gift. My momma had the sight. I have it, too. I just don’t always want to see.
What you have to remember is the news is just people talking. I don’t think a thing about it anymore, unless they show a picture of me I don’t like. Truth is I worry if they’re not writing about me! If that happens, I probably will be dead. Ha!
You’ll still see me in the news plenty. I stirred up a bunch of talk not long ago when I did an interview with my friend Martina McBride. I told her I think country music is dead. Listen, folks, nobody loves country music more than I do. It makes me sad when country music isn’t on the radio anymore. They’d be better off playing real country. Real country music is pure. It’s simple. It’s real. When a song ain’t real, how’s it supposed to get anybody through anything? They try to play music that crosses over, whatever that means. That’s not country.
My friends got together for a celebration at Bridgestone Arena for my eighty-eighth birthday—now, that was country! All them artists are country—Garth, Trisha, Tanya, Darius, Keith, Miranda. Any one of them could’ve played their own songs and that would’ve been a country show. They sang all my biggest hits and a few of their own. The Highwomen played that night: Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris, and Amanda Shires. If country radio stations have a lick of sense, they’ll play the hell out of those girls’ new record. They sang Kitty Wells’s “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” Right then I closed my eyes and I was backstage at the Ryman with Kitty singing that song live on the Grand Ole Opry. Then I went back further, to Washington State, when I was hearing Kitty’s song playing on the radio. To the first time I had a little pocket money of my own from picking strawberries. My heart got so full. So full it felt like it might break.
See, that’s what I mean. When you hear country music, you know it. Country music takes me right back to those strawberry fields. Or further back, to that little house in the holler where Momma sang to me.
Country will always take you back. And it’ll always feel like home, no matter what.
Acknowledgments
Permission granted to quote from the following (all rights reserved):
“I Wanna Be Free,” by Loretta Lynn, copyright © 1970 Sure-Fire Music Co. Inc., Nashville, TN 37203; “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” by Loretta Lynn, copyright © 1969 Sure-Fire Music Co. Inc.; “They Don’t Make ’Em Like My Daddy,” by Jerry Chesnut, copyright © 1972 Passkey Music Inc., Nashville, TN; “When You’re Poor,” by Tracey Lee, copyright © 1971 Coal Miners Music Inc., 7 Music Circle N, Nashville, TN; “Where I Learned to Pray,” by Loretta Lynn, copyright © 1965 Sure-Fire Music Co. Inc.; “You’re Looking at Country,” by Loretta Lynn, copyright © 1970 Sure-Fire Music Co. Inc.; “I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am,” by Merle Haggard, copyright © 1968 Blue Book Music, Bakersfield, CA 93308; “I’ve Never Been This Far Before,” by Conway Twitty, copyright © 1973 Twitty Bird Music Publishing Co.; “Two Steps Forward,” by Loretta Lynn, copyright © 1965 Sure-Fire Music Co. Inc.; “One’s on the Way,” by Shel Silverstein, copyright © 1971 Evil Eye Music Inc., New York, NY; “Mama, Why?,” by Loretta Lynn, copyright © 1968 by Sure-Fire Music Co. Inc.; “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” by J. D. Miller, copyright © 1952 Peer International Corp.; “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” by Loretta Lynn, copyright © 1968 Sure-Fire Music Co. Inc.; “I Love You, Loretta Lynn,” by Johnny Durham, copyright © 1969 Sure-Fire Music Co. Inc.; “
Rated ‘X,’” by Loretta Lynn, copyright © 1971 Sure-Fire Music Co. Inc.; “Hey, Loretta,” by Shel Silverstein, copyright © 1973 and 1974 Evil Eye Music Inc.; “I Miss You More Today,” by Loretta Lynn and Lorene Allen, copyright © 1972 Sure-Fire Music Co. Inc.; “One Little Reason,” by Loretta Lynn, copyright © 1969 Sure-Fire Music Co. Inc.; “Blue-Eyed Kentucky Girl,” by Bobby Harden, copyright © 1973 King Coal Music Inc., 7 Music Circle N, Nashville, TN; “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind),” by Peggy Sue Wells and Loretta Lynn, copyright © 1966 Sure-Fire Music Co. Inc.; “Back to the Country,” by Tracey Lee, copyright © 1975 Coal Miners Music Inc.; “I Only See the Things I Wanna See,” by Loretta Lynn and Loudilla Johnson, copyright © 1968 Sure-Fire Music Co. Inc.; “Trip to Hyden,” by Tom T. Hall, copyright © 1971 Newkeys Music Inc., Nashville, TN; “What Makes Me Tick,” by Loretta Lynn, copyright © 1970 Sure-Fire Music Co. Inc.; “Red, White and Blue,” by Loretta Lynn, copyright © 1975 Sure-Fire Music Co. Inc.; “Why Me?,” by Kris Kristofferson, copyright © 1972 (BMI) Resaca Music Publishing Co.; “Five Fingers Left,” by Loretta Lynn, copyright © 1969 Sure-Fire Music Co. Inc.; “I Believe,” by Ervin Drake, Irvin Graham, Jimmy Shirl, Al Stillman, TRO-copyright © 1952 and 1953 Cromwell Music Inc., New York, NY; “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” by John Denver, Bill Danoff, Taffy Nivert, copyright © 1971 Cherry Lane Music Co.; “Love Is the Foundation,” by William C. Hall, copyright © 1973 Coal Miners Music Inc.; “High on a Mountain Top,” by Loretta Lynn and Patsy Lynn Russell, copyright © 2004 Coal Miners Music Inc., Thunderground Music; “Fist City,” by Loretta Lynn, copyright © 1968 Sure-Fire Music Co. Inc.; “Miss Being Mrs.,” by Loretta Lynn and Phillip John Russell, copyright © 2004 lnterscope Records; “Portland, Oregon,” by Loretta Lynn and Jack White, copyright © 2004 lnterscope Records; “Ain’t No Time to Go,” by Loretta Lynn and Patsy Lynn Russell, copyright © 2018 Sony Music Entertainment Inc.; “Who’s Gonna Miss Me?,” by Loretta Lynn, copyright © 2016 Loretta Lynn Enterprises Inc. c/o Decosimo & Vaden, 1600 Division Street, Suite 225, Nashville, TN, 37203.
Photos
My life has run from misery to happiness—and sometimes back to misery. This was one of the best times. I had just come to Nashville, had been on the Grand Ole Opry, and my first record had hit number one on the charts. The photographer told me to burst out of the Opry door and hug Doolittle and look happy. That wasn’t hard to do right then. (The reason I look so tall is that I’m standing on a higher step than Doolittle.)
Me and my cousin Marie Castle were closer than sisters—and we still are. This was taken when I was around four years old. We were so poor, I had to borrow the dress from Marie so I’d look nicer.
Right before I got married, they took this picture of me. It was along the railroad tracks up in Butcher Holler, right where they hauled the coal down from the mines. Those tracks ain’t there anymore—and neither is that thirteen-year-old girl you see. What ever became of her?
Doolittle looked just like a little toy soldier the first time I ever saw him. The army took this picture, and they ran it in the Paintsville Herald. He was around seventeen at the time—but he looks younger, doesn’t he? Right after this, he got shipped to Europe for the last part of the war.
Sometime during the war, Mommy and Daddy posed outside Daddy’s father’s house, right up the holler from our place. You can see the rough logs from the house, right above Daddy’s head, and you can see the hills slanting off to the side. That’s real Kentucky mountain country.
On the night I announced I was getting married, Daddy paced for hours on the porch you see here. He and Mommy told me it was the worst decision I could ever make. Whenever I visit the old home now, I can feel Daddy’s presence very strongly on that porch—and other people have told me the same thing.
Daddy was real gentle with kids. That’s why I expected so much out of marriage, figuring that all men should be steady and pleasant, like my daddy. He sure looks big and strong, don’t he? But actually he was only around 117 pounds and five feet eight inches tall.
I bought my first stage outfit when I was making five dollars a night at Bill’s Tavern in Washington State. Doolittle gave me that Gibson guitar—that got me started—for my birthday. I used to wear cowboy hats in those days. I was real country.
That cute little guy I’m cuddling up with is my husband, folks. I sure look different myself, don’t I? Well, I was around twenty-one years old and was taking care of four kids and didn’t have much time or money for myself. Heck, I had just about figured out what was causing all them kids.
Right after Daddy died, Mommy drove out with the family to visit us in Washington. That’s Brenda (now called Crystal Gayle), Betty Ruth, Peggy Sue, me, Mommy, and Jay Lee.
The Bellingham newspaper sent out a photographer after I won all the blue ribbons for canning at the state fair. If I knew how I’d done it, I would have told ’em.
Who did you expect Doolittle would name his boat after? He hadn’t seen Dolly Parton yet! We used to go fishing along the coast of Washington. Jack and Ernest Ray helped hold up the fish, while Betty Sue kind of watched.
Doolittle took this picture of me and developed it himself. Then we passed out a copy to every disc jockey from Washington to Nashville. I didn’t know nothing about makeup in those days—Doo wouldn’t even let me use it.
That’s history being made on October 15, 1960—my first time on the Grand Ole Opry. Everybody else was so casual, playing for that audience, but I was scared to death. The fans cheered so hard, I got invited back, week after week, and that was how I got to stay in Nashville.
We really thought we had it made in 1962. We rented this little house in Madison, Tennessee, for $100 a month, and we sent for our four kids up in Indiana. I was getting $50 a date then, and we saved up $600 to buy this car. We thought we were flying high—and we were very grateful.
Here I am with Doyle and Teddy Wilburn, back in 1963, when I was starting to travel with ’em. I made that little white outfit myself, and they were trying to get me to wear high heels.
Two of the greatest people I have ever met, Owen Bradley and Ernest Tubb, join me during a recording session in 1964. I don’t remember what song I was singing, but it wasn’t “One’s on the Way.” In fact, as it turned out, two were on the way. I was eight months pregnant with my twins.
Once in a while I’d get inspired to finish my act with the “hillbilly hoedown.” That’s how Mommy used to dance while listening to the radio back home. I guess nobody’s gonna make me an offer to dance in the ballet, but it’s fun.
I brought my gang to the Walter Reed army hospital in Washington, D.C. This one soldier joined me and Kenny Starr in a little tune. I try to visit people in hospitals when I can, smiling and joking around while I’m there. But when I leave, I just start crying.
Never mind those pictures of me laughing—somebody caught me sitting around backstage, thinking about my life. This is the way I really am inside.
We do most of our traveling in our special bus. My private bedroom is in the back, and the boys sleep in bunks in the middle. Jim Webb is the driver. You look at the size of that boy, and you know why I feel safe on that bus.
Pretty fancy bunch of coal miners, don’t you think? These are my boys: (front row, left to right) Bob Hempker, steel guitar; Don Ballinger, front man; Dave Thornhill, lead guitar; Gene Dunlap, piano; (back row) Chuck Flynn, bass; Ken Riley, drums.
They held “Loretta Lynn Day” in Georgia on February 21, 1974. They asked me to address the state legislature and I told ’em: “I don’t know what you-all are doing, but I sure hope it comes out all right!”
Three of the best friends anybody could have, Loudilla, Kay, and Loretta Johnson (left to right), are the presidents of my fan club. They are three different personalities, and I love ’em all.
At a quiet moment during rehearsal, David Skepner and I trade words of wisdom. David is my manager. He’s from Beverly Hills, California, but I think we’re making a little bit of a countr
y boy out of him.
Me and Eddy Arnold posed with Charley Pride when Charley won the Grammy Award as the best country singer. I think Charley has been one of the best things to happen to country music, to prove it belongs to everybody. He knows that I’m his biggest fan.
This was my birthday present on April 14, 1973. They marched me into this office—and there was my biggest hero, Gregory Peck. He gave me a big hug when I met him, but mostly I just sat and stared at him, while him and Doolittle talked like old friends.
Me and my partner, Conway Twitty, cleaned up at the 1972 Country Music Association Awards. We won the Vocal Duo of the Year, and I got the Female Vocalist of the Year Award. Then I was the first woman ever named Entertainer of the Year.
Of all the television shows I’ve been on, Dinah Shore’s is where I feel most comfortable. We talk so easy together, and she gives me good advice about show business. I just hope she don’t mind when I mess up her kitchen like I do.
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