Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner's Daughter

by Loretta Lynn;George Vecsey

  FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2010

  Copyright © 1976, 2010 by Loretta Lynn

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in slightly different form in hardcover in the United States by Henry Regnery Company, Chicago, in 1976.

  Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Due to limitations of space, permissions to reprint previously published material can be found on this page.

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data for Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner’s Daughter is on file at the Library of Congress.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-74268-1

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.1

  To Doo, who had an idea

  And to Owen, who helped make that idea come true

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Preface to the Vintage Edition

  About Me and This Book

  1 Butcher Holler

  2 Daddy

  3 Mommy

  4 Family Style

  5 School Days

  6 The Pie Social

  7 Doolittle

  8 Hey, You Ain’t Supposed to Wear Clothes Under Your Nightgown

  9 Doo Kicks Me Out

  10 Two Thousand Miles From Home

  11 A Death in the Family

  12 Beginner’s Luck

  13 An Honest-to-Goodness Record

  14 Fans

  15 The Education of a Country Singer

  16 Music City, U.S.A.

  Photo Insert

  17 Patsy

  18 My Kids

  19 Performer

  20 Songwriter

  21 We Bought the Whole Town

  22 Me and Doo

  23 The Hyden Widows

  24 The Truth about My Health

  25 Mexico

  26 Entertainer of the Year

  27 Death Threats

  28 Baptized at Last

  29 Confessions of a Bug

  30 On the Road

  31 What’s Next?

  Acknowledgments

  Preface to the Vintage Edition

  I can hardly believe that it’s been over thirty-four years since Coal Miner’s Daughter first came out. A lot has happened since then, but I don’t know if I’ve changed all that much. I’ve kind of stuck to what I always done—write songs, sing, live as honest a life as I can live. But one thing I’ve been really grateful for all these years is my fans.

  I have to say, I don’t even think of them as fans, I think of them as friends, because they’re always so close to me. They’re a part of my life, same as my family. People come up to me all the time and say, “Hey, your story’s the story of my life, too. What you went through, I know what that is, I’m goin’ through it now.” I think reading about my life has helped them and that makes me feel good. Just like it makes me feel good to be on stage and talk to them, just like I would if they were sitting next to me in my living room. That’s what I think I’m doing with my songs—talking to my friends. And, Lord, I do have a lot of friends! We just got back from a solo tour and we had a sold-out house everywhere we went. I can’t ask for more than that. So I want all my friends to know that I love them and I’m so proud that they’ve stuck with me all this time. This is my chance to say thank you.

  It’s also been thirty years since the movie Coal Miner’s Daughter came out. When someone told me that recently, I thought: You gotta be kiddin’ me! Thirty years! It really is amazing to think about. I handpicked Sissy Spacek to play me in the movie. She followed me around for a whole year to learn how I talked and sang. My daughters, Patsy and Peggy, used to ask me why I talked like Sissy Spacek! So I guess she did a great job playing me. And bless her heart, she won the Academy Award.

  I was dumbfounded the first time I saw the movie. It was hard to watch my life flashing before my eyes. I brought Mommy to the premiere in Nashville and when we got back to the motel after seeing it, I said, “Well, Mommy, what did you think of the movie?” Now … Mommy was real funny. At first, she didn’t say a word. And then she said, “I thought it was great. You didn’t wander off the truth nowhere. You told it like it was.” That really made me proud. I’ve seen it maybe three or four times now (I don’t have to keep watching—I know what happens before it happens!) and I still am proud. It’s a good movie. And they’ve been talking about another one. I think they should have done it right after that first one came out. But they didn’t so, oh well, we’ll just have to see what happens.

  I’m still writing songs, of course. As you know, I’ve written most of my songs. I like to write; it’s what makes me happy. I’d rather write than sing, which is a surprise to most people. But it seems to me like I get a lot out of my system when I write. People often say, “Where do you come up with all of these songs?” Well, I don’t come up with them! I’ve lived them! I tell it like it is. In the hills, we don’t write songs, we just tell the truth, that’s what I always say. And I still believe that. It’s just life. I don’t think I could sing a song if it didn’t fit and if it wasn’t true. Even all my cheating songs. It all happened. And let me tell you, my old man got the devil for it!

  When I write, it just takes me over. I remember when I was writing “Fist City” (“You’ve been makin’ your brags around town That you’ve been a lovin’ my man But the man I love, when he picks up trash: He puts it in a garbage can”); I was writing away, which means all I was thinking about was that song, and I was getting in my car to drive home to the ranch from my birthday party in Nashville. I wasn’t paying any attention to what I was doing—’cause I was just thinking about that song!—when I saw this light and I thought: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a light like this between Nashville and my house. Guess what? I never saw such a light ’cause I was all the way in the middle of Memphis! I had to run around and come back home and by the time I got there it was three o’clock in the morning! That’s how I wrote “Fist City.” I don’t know no other way to do it. People always say they love the way I communicate. But I’m just talking about my life, that’s really all I’m doing. Maybe that’s why I love writing so much, ’cause I love tellin’ it like it is. I have a little writing room that’s beside my house where I usually work. And just thinking about that room, I’m realizing it’s writing time again. I gotta get back in there and go to work.

  People are always asking me about Patsy Cline. I cut an album years back called I Remember Patsy, but nobody can sing Patsy’s songs like Patsy. Let’s face it. Nobody can do it. She was great and that’s the beginning and end of the story right there. She wasn’t just a person that sang. She had greatness and I think that came across in the little time that she was here. I loved her; she was my girlfriend—the only girlfriend I had when I first came to Nashville. And she kind of tucked me under her wing. The age difference wasn’t that much apart; I was a couple of years younger, that’s all. But she knew a lot more than me. And we stuck together until she was gone. That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through. Patsy had two little kids, a little girl and little boy. For her to just up and leave this world, that was awful. Awful for her, awful for me, awful for the world.

  A few years back, Jack White, the rock ’n’ roll singer, me and him worked on an album together—Van Lear Rose. Jack told me he went and saw the Coal Miner’s Daughter movie—when he was a lot younger—and that he sat in the theater all day long and wouldn’t leave. They just let him stay in there and he watched the movie over and over. Years later, I met Jack and
Meg; they’re a duo called The White Stripes. I made them chicken ’n’ dumplings out at my house. And then I did a show with them up in New York City. So me and Jack got together to try a few songs in the studio. Well, we ended up doing a whole record. And we did that in just ten days in this studio in an old house over in east Nashville. And me and Jack won two Grammys for that record!

  The first song on Van Lear Rose is about Mommy. She died before it came out, of course, but she would have loved it. You know, Mommy sang a lot, too. Of course, she just sang at home, but she was good. Real good. Her twin sister was a singer, too. They had a whole thing going. They sung “The Great Titanic” and “In the Pines.” Like I said, back in them hills, you don’t just make up a song, you sing true stuff. And that’s what Mommy did. She’s the one that taught me how to sing. And I still sing those songs—“The Great Titanic” and “In the Pines.” It’s like they’re a part of me.

  Butcher Holler still means a lot to me. That’s something that’ll never change. My brother lives back there, right down from the old home, and he takes people on trips to the old house. When I was a little girl, Daddy had an old battery radio—I wonder if people even know what that is nowadays!—that he bought when he got his job in the coal mines. And every Saturday night we sat around and listened to the Grand Ole Opry. I know everybody’s listening to iPods now but in a lot of ways, I still feel like I’m living back in those times. It just doesn’t seem to me like that time has passed. Everyone from my past is still with me—either right here with me or with me in my memory—so really, I’m still in Kentucky. I think that affects my music and I think you can hear that in the songs I write and sing. There was a time, when I first started singing country music, that everybody was trying to go pop. Everybody was going pop on me and I was just about as country as I could get. I thought: Hold it! Don’t run off and leave me! But I’m still around and still doing what I do and love. Some of these new country singers aren’t really country. I think some of them ought to be singing pop music and just leave country alone. You don’t have to see them, you can hear it. It is what it is, I guess, but I’d still rather they just let the ones that sing country sing country.

  I’m still touring. You know, a lot of entertainers think it’s so rough—that the road is hard. I never felt that way. Going on the road to perform, that’s my job. That’s what I do, same as people who go to an office or work in a store or who still work in the mines. I get tired now and then—but, come on, at my age I’m allowed to get a little tired. Hey, life can make you tired sometimes. Mommy would always tell me, “You can be somebody if you work hard.” And she was right. Mommy was always right. I don’t overdo it anymore, I kind of keep down the number of tour dates, so maybe I don’t work quite as hard as I used to. But when I work, I work hard. My twins come on the road with me, and my son. Singing and performing are just in the family, I guess. In the blood. I don’t know what I’d do if they weren’t there. I never had it any other way. My sister Crystal still sings on her own tours. And my sister Peggy Sue does harmony with her. Like I said: in the blood.

  Since I’m telling y’all how my life has changed in the last thirty years, you should know—and you probably already heard—that my husband, Doo, passed away in 1996. I really miss Doo, and it’s too bad he didn’t live to be with me when I can spend more time at home. Before he passed, I had to work a lot. And I mean a lot. Somebody had to pay the bills, that’s the way life is. But I wish he was still with us so we could spend some time together. He’d like what’s going on at the ranch. I spend more time with my family. My kids make me happy. So do my grandkids. My house is like Grand Central Station, but I don’t mind. I was raised with seven kids; there were eight of us when I was little, so I’ve always had a big family around and it makes me happy to be surrounded by family. And don’t be thinking we live some fancy existence. We don’t. I ain’t no different from anybody else. I’m my own cook. And I do my own gardening. I plant my vegetables myself. I’m growing radishes and onions and a lot of other good stuff out of it right now.

  The ranch keeps me busy. You might have heard that we had some monster floods here in Tennessee. We were surrounded by water. The only thing that the flood didn’t hit was the house because it’s way up high. But everywhere else you looked, nothing but water. It scared me to death. I’m scared of water anyway, because I can’t swim. I almost drowned once, so since then I kind of stay away from the stuff. The flood did some real damage on the ranch. It took out a big bridge. It was really something. This iron bridge that we had in this little town for over a hundred years just went out and fell in the creek. We were lucky, though, because this old mill, right on the river, across from the big house, survived. The ranch will be up and running again soon, which is great because so many people come here. They camp out, you know. It’s like it’s their home, too. They have a good time because we’re way out in the country and that’s what people want when they come to the ranch—they want real country. Everyone has a good time. They hike in the woods and pretty much do whatever they want. I like seeing everybody have a good time. It makes me happy, so come out and visit! My museum is here also, so you can come and visit that, too.

  I want to thank you all again for your support over the years. I can’t believe I’ve been in the music industry for fifty years! It’s just amazing to me. I can count fifty-two top ten hits and sixteen number one hits, which is pretty nice. But you know what? It’s still my fans—my friends—that matter most of all. So if you’re coming to it for the first time or are reading it all over again, I hope you enjoy Coal Miner’s Daughter. It’s something to look back after more than thirty years, and it made me think about all my old friends and family, all the good times and not-so-good times. I’m lucky. Lucky to have my family all around me, lucky to be writing new songs, lucky to be touring and singing. It made me think, yet again, as I put it in “Story of My Life”: Not bad for this ol’ Kentucky girl, I guess.

  —Loretta Lynn, Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, June 2010

  About Me and This Book

  Well, I look out the window and what do I see?

  The breeze is a-blowin’ the leaves from the trees

  Everything is free—everything but me.…

  —“I Wanna Be Free,” by Loretta Lynn

  I bloodied my husband’s nose the other night. I didn’t know I was doing it—I just woke up at three in the morning, and Doolittle was holding a towel to his nose. He told me I sat straight up, in my sleep, yelling, “Do you see this ring? Do you see this ring?” And I was a-throwing my hands around until my fingers dug into his nose.

  “Loretta, what in the world were you talking about?” Doo asked me.

  I said I was dreaming about some old guy that tried to make a date with me when I first started singing. I didn’t have no ring at the time—we were too poor for that kind of stuff—but now in my dream I was showing that old buzzard I had a ring.

  What does it mean when you carry on in your sleep like that? Somebody said it means you’ve got something on your mind. I said, “I know that.” I ain’t got much education, but I got some sense.

  To me, this talking is almost like I’ve got things inside me that never came out before. Usually, when something is bothering me, I write a song that tells my feelings, like: “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind).” That’s really about me and my marriage.

  I’ve still got things inside me—sad things, happy things—that people don’t know about. I’ve had so many changes in my life, and I feel like there’s more to come. I’m superstitious; I believe in reincarnation and extrasensory perception; and I’ve got this feeling about more changes in my life. It’s like a girl feels when her body starts to grow up, or a woman feels when a baby starts to grow inside her. You know it’s there, you feel the stirrings, but it’s deeper than words.

  People know the basic facts about me, how I was married when I wasn’t quite fourteen and had four babies by the time I was eighteen. Sometimes my hus
band tells me, “I raised you the way I wanted you to be.” And it’s true. I went from Daddy to Doo, and there’s always been a man telling me what to do.

  I was just a kid—didn’t know nothing—picking strawberries in the fields with my babies on a blanket, under an umbrella. I’d change a few diapers, my fingers all rough and dirty, give ’em a few bottles, and go back to picking. So when I sing those country songs about women struggling to keep things going, you could say I’ve been there.

  It’s like that hit record I had in 1975, “The Pill,” about this woman who’s taking birth-control pills so she won’t have no more babies. Well, they didn’t have none of them pills when I was younger, or I’d have been swallowing ’em like popcorn. See, the men who run some of the radio stations, they banned the record because they didn’t like what I was saying. But the women knew. Like I say, I know what it’s like to be pregnant and nervous and poor.

  Now I’ve got this huge ranch in Tennessee, and I’ve been on the cover of Newsweek magazine, and I was the first woman ever named “Entertainer of the Year” in country music. I also got honorable mention in the Gallup Poll as one of the “most admired women” in the United States. Lordy, I even got to meet Gregory Peck!

  But some of my friends, who know me best, say they wouldn’t trade places with me for a million dollars because of the pace I lead. I’m still a-traveling nearly two hundred nights a year to meet my fans who’ve given me everything I’ve got. In one way, I’m still working as hard as when I was working in the fields. But I’d have to admit, the stakes are higher.

  When I first came to Nashville, people called us “hillbilly singers” and hardly gave country music any respect. We lived in old cars and dirty hotels, and we ate when we could. Now country music is a big business. You go around the country, there’s a thousand radio stations broadcasting our music. Why, they’ve even got a country station in New York City, where I played in that big building—what’s it called, some kind of garden? Yeah, Madison Square Garden, that’s right. So I’ve seen country music go uptown, like we say, and I’m proud I was there when it happened.