Doolittle decided to get me on the Buck Owens television show up in Tacoma, Washington. Buck was just starting singing in those days and he wasn’t the big name he is today. But his show was pretty important in that part of the country. He was playing in a rough place, the Pantania Club, on weekends, and we drove up there and Doolittle started telling him how good I was. Buck kept saying I should come back for amateur night the next night but Doolittle kept saying, “Man, I can’t afford to stay over. This is our only night in Tacoma.” So Buck let me sing one song, and he must have liked it because he let me sing another. Finally he came over and sat down with us and said we should really stay over for his amateur television show on Saturday night. Doolittle decided maybe we’d better manage it somehow.
The next day I was one of thirty competitors on amateur night. It was my birthday, I remember that, and I wore my cowboy outfit. It was a fluffy black and white dress and I wore white cowboy boots. I looked like Annie Oakley or something, but I thought I was the prettiest thing that ever was.
I sang, “My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You.” And, you know what, I won the contest. The winner was supposed to be an amateur, which meant they didn’t give a money prize, just a wristwatch. I had a choice—men’s or women’s. I chose one for Doolittle, but it stopped the next day and I started crying and took it back to Buck. He explained the watch only cost a couple of dollars and he didn’t have the money to get it fixed. I didn’t complain. Poor Buck was as broke as we were. He couldn’t afford a coat and it was cold in Tacoma. He was nice to us, and I’m still his biggest fan. I’ll guarantee you, Buck made it the hard way and he deserves every good thing he gets.
One other lucky thing came out of that television show. It was broadcast up in Canada—Vancouver, British Columbia, where a man named Norm Burley heard me. He had been in the lumber business and was real wealthy. But he lost his wife and he was lonely. Doo and I were just like a couple of kids, and Norm Burley kind of adopted us. He said he wanted to help us by giving us a contract to make a record. He didn’t wear any red suit or black boots, but that man sure looked like Santa Claus to us.
13
An Honest-to-Goodness Record
Ever since you left me, I’ve done nothing but wrong.
Many nights I’ve laid awake and cried.
We once were happy, my heart was in a whirl,
But now I’m a honky tonk girl.…
—“I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” by Loretta Lynn
Mr. Burley wanted to help but he didn’t know any more about the recording business than we did. He left it up to us what song we would record. I’d written this song called, “Honky Tonk Girl.” It was mostly about a girl I used to see in Bill’s Tavern drinking beer and crying. I don’t think she recognized that song was about her.
The way I started writing those songs, I went down to the candy store and bought a copy of Country Song Roundup, the magazine with the words to the hit songs. I figured it looked so simple in these books that, since everyone else was writing songs, I might as well, too. There was nothing to it, really. I’d think up a title first, then write some words, then pick out a tune on my little old rhythm guitar. Mr. Burley liked “Honky Tonk Girl,” and he gave us the money to take it to Los Angeles. That was the biggest city to go to on the West Coast to get a record made.
Me and Doo left the kids with my brother and his wife, and we drove down to Los Angeles. A couple of studios wouldn’t even let Doo past the front secretary, even though he had money from Mr. Burley. See, Mr. Burley had different companies, so it was no trick for him to start a new record company. We called it Zero Records. But none of us knew anything about the record business. There was one fellow named Don Grashey who had some business sense, and he ran the record company for Mr. Burley.
We didn’t have any studio or a band so we went to these studios in Los Angeles. I’d sit outside and wait for Doo to come out. Each time he’d get this sad look on his face and I figured, “we can’t even pay to get me on a record. Nobody will even take our money.” But then Doo went up to this studio where Speedy West worked. He was well known in country music. Somehow they agreed to let me make my record.
I went inside to this little studio about half the size of a motel room. But I saw these men and machines and a few musicians, and I got all scared. I still didn’t know about notes or anything, but I showed ’em the words and hummed the tune and they started to fiddle around. After I sang a few lines, Speedy West said, “Hey, let’s hold it up a few hours and get a few more pickers.”
What he did, really, was to get better pickers. He must of heard something he liked, because he brought in some good musicians from around town and they picked up on my song real well. By the end of the day we had both sides recorded—“Whispering Sea” was the other side. And a few weeks later they sent us a shipment of records with the Zero label.
The record was fine, but we were pitiful. We didn’t know anything about releasing a record, but we tried our best. Doolittle had a hobby of photography at the time, so he made up a picture of me. We mailed out 3,500 copies of the record and my picture and sent them to every radio station we could find. We had a list of all the country stations—I don’t know how we got that. We even wrote a little bit about my life.
We’d call up the disc jockeys and ask ’em to play the record, and most of ’em did. Those boys have always been on our side. But we couldn’t get the records to the stores fast enough. Someone would hear the record on the jukebox or the radio, then go into a store and ask to buy it—and the owner wouldn’t have it. It was a big mess, but we really tried to get those records out. And all that time, Doolittle was still working at his full-time auto-mechanic’s job in the garage, paying our bills and keeping us alive.
One day in the summer, our steel-guitar man came over to the house and said, “Hey, your record is on the charts.” We were so stupid we didn’t know what the charts meant. But it meant we were in the top ten in some places, based on jukebox plays. The July 25, 1960 Billboard listed us as number fourteen in the national country music charts.
Mr. Burley was pleased with our success and said he would pay for us to go on a promotion trip across the country, all the way to Nashville. And then Mr. Burley said one of the kindest things I’ve ever heard. He said he thought I had a lot of talent and he wanted me to learn as much about the business as I could. And he said that if I ever got a chance to go with a major recording company, he would release me from our contract. He said he never wanted to stand in our way. But I didn’t believe it would ever come to that.
So we took off in our old Mercury, trying to promote the record. We went down the West Coast, too poor to stay in motels, sleeping in the car and eating baloney and cheese sandwiches. To this day I can’t stand any sandwiches for that reason. I ate too many of ’em when I was young. I only had one good dress. When we were driving, I’d just wear jeans or something. We had this list of radio stations and we’d keep turning the dial as we drove. When we got near a station, I’d hop in the back of the car and change into my dress. Then we’d go inside the radio station.
We didn’t care if it was a 500-watt local station or a 50,000-watt clear channel station, we’d hit ’em all. The little stations were better for us. When you’re little, you appreciate someone else who’s little. I was just a nobody. I’d walk into the station and introduce myself. That was hard at first, because I was so bashful. But those disc jockeys were nice to me everywhere. I looked like a kid—my hair was curly back in those days and Doolittle never let me wear any makeup.
At one place I asked if they had my record, and they said no. I looked out of the corner of my eye and spotted it in the garbage can. I asked politely if I could give ’em a copy. They said all right. I walked over to the garbage can and handed ’em the record. They smiled kind of sheepish-like, but ever since then, this studio has been behind me all the way.
I’d stay in those radio stations as long as they let me talk on the air—and there was Doolittle sitting
out in the car, listening to me on the radio, getting burned up if I said something dumb. But you know something, I was starting to enjoy myself, meeting all those boys. It was more exciting then than it is now. Nowadays I never stop at country stations anymore because of our tight schedule. And besides, my bus wouldn’t fit in the driveway. It’s such a different deal now.
I remember going into a station in Tucson, Arizona, where the disc jockey was a little boy, same age as me, pimples on his face, greasy hair. He was so nice to me that we used to write letters back and forth until he got into singing, too. Waylon Jennings, that’s who it was. One disc jockey who remembers me is Hugh Cherry. He was working an all-night show on KFOX in Long Beach, California. One evening I rang his buzzer and said to him, “A disc jockey in Seattle said if someone wants to get a hillbilly record to break in California, you are the man to see. Well, I’ve got one here, ‘Honky Tonk Girl.’ It’s mine.”
He played it and liked it. We told him we were distributing it ourselves to every disc jockey on our way to Nashville to get on the Grand Ole Opry. He couldn’t believe it when I said Doo was waiting in the car. He said, “But honey, don’t you know it takes three or four years to get on the Opry?” I told him, “Maybe so, but I can’t wait that long.”
Well, we got to the Opry that same year, the year we started singing. And in that same year, I was listed right behind Jan Howard, Margie Bowes, and Connie Hall as “Most Promising Girl Singer.” The next time I saw Hugh Cherry he said, “Well, you made it—lots sooner than I expected!”
14
Fans
I listen to you singing to me on the radio;
I hear you every Saturday on the Grand Ole Opry show;
They put your records on the jukebox at the Truck Stop Inn,
And I spend a dollar on you every night, Loretta Lynn.…
—“I Love You, Loretta Lynn,” by Johnny Durham
The disc jockeys were important to my career, but there’s one bunch of people that was even more important—my fans. They’ve heard me say this a million times, I’m sure, but I wouldn’t have nothing if it wasn’t for my fans.
They started noticing me when I made my first record, “Honky Tonk Girl,” and then they started pestering the stores and the radio stations to get more of my records. Only there wasn’t more at the time. Even before I got established in Nashville, I had loyal fans like the three Johnson sisters from Wild Horse, Colorado. If I hadn’t met these three girls, there’s no telling what would have happened—or maybe I mean what wouldn’t have happened.
You can’t believe how loyal country fans are. They’re just not like any other music fans. Country fans like a singer on personality and on voice and not because of a short-lived fad. They’ll buy anything you put out as long as you give them good quality. They’re fans for life. My manager, David Skepner, used to work for some of the pop and rock musicians for the Music Corporation of America, and he really knows the record business. He says that rock fans may buy a million copies of an album by some rock group. But if they think a rock group puts out a bad album, the fans will forget ’em forever. Well, that’s not the way it is in country music. Once they like you, it’s for life.
A good country musician can figure on selling three albums a year at 300,000 sales per album—and doing it for fifteen or twenty years. There’s dozens of country musicians who’ve done that, with some luck and some talent. But the secret is getting loyal fans; they’ll write letters and send out fan-club bulletins just pestering each other to buy your albums. I know it sounds strange for a lot of hardworking folks to be out bugging each other to “help Loretta out,” but that’s how loyal they are.
I’ve got so many fans that I recognize all around the country. If I go to the West Coast, there’re the same faces from last year. If I’m up North somewhere, there’re my same fans. I’d list all of ’em, but I know I can’t. Most of my fan club is women, which is how I want it. The men have enough things going for ’em in this life. We women have got to stick together. My shows are really geared to women fans, if you think about it—to the hardworking housewife who’s afraid some girl down at the factory is going to steal her husband, or wishing she could bust out of her shell a little bit. Those are things most women feel, and that’s who I’m thinking about and singing to during my shows. And the girls know it.
A lot of people believe that fan clubs are a bunch of hussies who go around sleeping with the male performers or making spectacles of themselves. Well, there’s a few like that in country music, I guess, but most of my fans are real ladies. We joke around and call the fans “bugs” because of the way they cluster around my bus. But those “bugs” don’t bug me. I’m proud of my fans, and I hope that they’ll always be proud of me.
I’ve got one of the biggest fan clubs in the country. They pay dues of a few dollars a year, and they help run the activities. There is also the International Fan Club Association, run by those three Johnson girls. There’s around 20,000 members in that club, and most of them really root for me, and I appreciate it.
Let me show you what the fans have done for my career. I was just trying to get established, making a trip to Colorado on my own, without Doolittle. The Johnson girls had heard my record and they had pestered some club in Aurora, Colorado, to hire me for one night for fifteen dollars. I didn’t know them from the Rocky Mountains, but I got on the bus and went.
That bus driver was the meanest man, telling me how great George Jones was and how he never heard of me. I didn’t mind that, but I kept telling him that I was supposed to get off the bus in Aurora and he insisted I had to go to downtown Denver. All of a sudden, looking out the window, I saw the club I was supposed to play in, the Four Seasons, and a road sign that said Aurora. I hollered for him to let me off. He finally did and I had to walk back to the club with my guitar, my purse and my overnight bag. That was Loretta Lynn, making it in the Big Time.
I got to this club and I was so nervous, just pacing around and stuff, and I was looking for a friendly face. I kept saying, “They ain’t here, they ain’t here.” But then a disc jockey pointed out these three girls standing around backstage. And we were so friendly, you could have sworn we knew each other all our lives.
Loudilla is the oldest. She’s very smart and we’ll-spoken, and she’s a writer, too. Then there’s Loretta. You’ve got to look out for her, she’s kind of unpredictable. She’ll say whatever she feels like. But she’s a very warm girl who’ll do anything for you—she just likes to act crazy. And then there’s Kay, the youngest. She’s kind of quiet, but she’s a big help to her sisters with all the details and hard work, and she’s always quick with a kind word to people. They adopted me as a sister in that first meeting. Besides, we had a lot in common.
Just standing there backstage, we discovered they are part Indian, just like me. And they came from a poor background, too. They moved from Oklahoma because their Daddy was trying to get a better farm and they used to get snubbed when they arrived in Colorado.
People used to call them “sod-busters” and “suitcase farmers” and “trailer trash.” But their Daddy, Mack Johnson, worked hard and built up his farm in Wild Horse. He used to listen to Roy Acuff on the radio, just like my Daddy used to listen to Ernest Tubb. They remember sitting around the old farmhouse on Saturday night, eating popcorn and listening to the Grand Ole Opry. So you’d have to say we had a lot in common. Loretta, she’s crazy like me. She’d say, “How come whenever the white man won it was called a victory, but whenever the Indians won it was called a massacre?” Even though I was supposed to be in show business, those girls were more worldly than me.
They asked me if I was going to get made up for the show. Patsy Cline, the leading woman singer, had just played the club the week before, and I guess she knew how to dress herself. Doolittle always thought I looked more natural without makeup, but he wasn’t on this trip, so the girls put a little eye makeup on me for the first time in my life. I thought I looked nice.
The show wa
s a big success. When it was over I slept at the motel, and in the morning they even drove me to my next place. I felt so good about having friends that I told ’em they were my friends for life. And that’s the way it’s worked out. I get to see ’em about four times a year. I just love to go to their ranch and go riding around in a farm truck. They’ve got antelopes running wild. It helps me a lot just to spend a day there. I can just giggle and talk with those girls. They don’t demand anything from me. They’re not fans anymore, they’re friends.
When I’m around them girls, we just sit around and tease each other something fierce. Loretta sings in shows sometimes, and I’ll swear she acts more like she was in show business than I do. She’ll dress up with sexy halters and tight clothes and stuff—things I won’t do. They’re always trying to talk me into wearing more modern clothes. I know what they mean by “modern.” They’d poke fun at those long dresses I used to wear, with their high necklines. Loretta bought me a short skirt one time. She still makes fun of the way I looked in the mirror and said, “Oh, my God, you can see my kneecaps!”
Loretta just does whatever comes into her mind. My writer, George, won’t ever forget the first time he met her at my ranch. She brought some homemade pecan pie from Colorado and asked him if he wanted some. He said he did. She made him hold out his hand, no plate, no napkin, just sticky pecan pie. She laughed for an hour.
Those girls have done everything for me. Sometimes I love to travel with ’em in their car, just like in the old days. Just them and their Daddy. We’ll follow my bus from one place to another. We’ll even go into a restaurant, just the five of us, and maybe nobody will even recognize me. Then we’ll have a good time just drinking Coke and eating cheeseburgers and talking about the old days when I was breaking in. And if someone comes over for an autograph, Loretta will say, “Hey, can’t you see we’re eating?” Or maybe Loudilla and Kay will talk to that person, so I can finish eating. They are very protective of me. I wish I could take ’em with me full time. But they have their own lives, running the ranch for their Daddy. I call him “Daddy” myself.
Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner's Daughter Page 11