Loretta Lynn Biography

[Music] she was the original honky-tonk girl she was born a coal miner's daughter but she has become a country music legend miss loretta lynn our first selection miss loretta lynn she was the first one that came out with the songs that pretty much told a man which which way to stand she really changed what women could sing about you set this chicken your last time cause now i've got the pill she was just mad as she could be and i thought i've got to play her loretta lynn now on biography [Music] without further ado i'd like to introduce a woman that i think is the greatest female singer songwriter of the 20th century miss loretta lynn april 2004 nashville tennessee and the world of country music is celebrating a new album by an all-time legend loretta lynn i lie here all alone in my bed of memories i'm dreaming of your sweet kiss i was sitting there listening to her thinking i haven't heard music like this in years and i didn't even realize it well i love her she's she's one of our true treasures from her very first hit record more than 40 years ago to today few singers have connected with their fans more than loretta lynn because they know that each and every one of her songs contains a piece of her life and theirs all my fans share their life with me i share mine with them and we talk about our lives to each other and that's where a lot of my songs come from she brings you in and and speaks to you as if she's known you all her life and all your life and it's an amazing gift loretta lynn's been inducted into the country music hall of fame she was the first woman to be named entertainer of the year she's had an amazing 16 number one hits you set this chicken your last time she is a fearless songwriter whose controversial lyrics broke down barriers and spoke to women everywhere loretta was the first hillbilly feminist look at her songs the pill don't come home with drinking with lovin on your mind fist city you ain't woman enough to take my man but as famous as she is there's a part of loretta lynn that will never leave the remote hills of eastern kentucky and the gritty life she lived in butcher hollow she was born loretta webb on april 14 1935 in a one-room tar paper cabin miles from the nearest town her mother named her after a movie star whose picture was pasted on the wall to keep the wind from whistling through the cracks she had betty davis and claudetta colbert and loretta and paper dab and it was the day before i was born and she said i laid down across the bed and i looked up at them three girls and i thought if this baby is a little girl i'm gonna name her after one of these women and she said there's nobody as pretty as loretta young so i'll name her after her music was a part of loretta's life from the day she was born dad played the fiddle a little bit a grandpa he played the banjo mom sang matter of fact she had a twin sister when they were younger they traveled around in different churches and and they did a duet and so so i think we got our singing from mom actually they'd play in the evening sang the songs that they wrote of course those kids would be playing around and dancing around while they were singing and telling their big stories you know loretta she always sang mom taught her to sing very young too i'm sure that she rocked me and peggy and all of us kids to sleep singing yeah you hear for a mile around she'd get out on the front porch in the swing and all the neighbors could hear loretta was born in the middle of the depression and was six by the time the second world war began she grew up in a large family the second of eight brothers and sisters their mother clara webb supported the family by taking in laundry and washing it by hand she had big blue eyes and dark complexion and had long black straight hair and she was ending all the way she made her own medicine if we got sick she knew how to take care of us during the depression loretta's father melvin built roads for franklin roosevelt's works progress administration after the war he supported the family by working the coal mines he worked on his hands and knees in a coal track that was three feet high he'd come home late at night with bloodied knees and a soot covered face like many coal miners he suffered from black lung a condition where the lungs become choked with coal dust loretta had a short childhood she met her husband-to-be at a pie social at the local schoolhouse she was only 11 years old he came in from the army and he was ready to go over to germany i guess the holler split off and he went he lived up in one holler and i lived up in another one and i watched him walk all the way up the hill i thought he looked like a little toy soldier was that night i went in the house humming and mommy said lordy who brought you home tonight and i said do little lynn and mommy said don't you ever let me hear of that ever happening again he's too old and he's too wild for you but it happened despite her parents objections loretta married doolittle lynn when she was just 13. but right from their wedding night their marriage was troubled he threw all my meals out everything i cook and throw out no matter how good they were he just threw him out but he had another girlfriend he wasn't fooling me when loretta was three months pregnant with her first child doolittle left her for another woman loretta returned to her parents home in butcher hollow we stayed separated till i was almost seven months pregnant every night i cried myself to sleep and every day i'd find every four leaf clover i could and mommy would always say if you uh put four leave clovers in the bible where it says and this shall come to pass if you open up the bible and it says that and you put your four-leaf clover in there it'll come to pass so the bible was stuck full of four-leaf clovers two months before the baby was to be born doolittle begged loretta to come back he was determined not to follow in their father's footsteps down into the coal mines so he hitchhiked to washington state where he found a job on a farm when do sent for loretta she sadly packed her things preparing to leave butcher hollow for the first time in her life i can remember i was about three or four years old i was at the foot of the bed and daddy was going to have to take the red out to meet the train there i said and she was packing her things and for a while i thought she was going to pack mine and take me with her loretta arrived at the farm in washington only to find doolittle running a moonshine operation on the side he was so successful at it that he was given the nickname mooney while he peddled home brewed whiskey loretta cooked and cleaned for the farmhands i've worked and cleaned house for people and i pick strawberries and i work for the green brothers so that we got to live there for nothing there was 36 ranch hands that they had so their ain't lived with them and i'd help her cook in 1949 loretta gave birth to her first child she was still a child herself only 14 years old i'd bathe her and i'd change her clothes it was like me playing with my little dog the second one came along and this got a little rougher and then the next one and the next one i knew then it wasn't no game in fact by the time loretta was 18 she had four children she and doolittle constantly struggled to support their new family and he didn't make it any easier by drinking carousing with women and even hitting loretta he never hit me one time that i didn't hit him back twice loretta's memories both good and bad would become the inspiration for her songs but at age 18 she had no thought about becoming a singer until one day when dew came home with a birthday present that would change her life and country music forever as an 18 year old mother of four a career in country music was the furthest thing from loretta lynn's mind but her husband dew saw something special in her when i started singing dude never really heard me sing a song all the way through he just told me he thought i could sing as good as anybody that's out there making money when i'd come home she'd say honey listen this song i wrote today and she'd sang me this song that she wrote you know didn't have no guitar or anything so i thought it sounded real good to me and so i was going into town bellingham washington and i looked in the pawn shop and i seen this guitar in there and i went and bought the guitar and brought it to her but it wasn't until loretta was in her mid-20s that dew pushed her to take the next step he said i'm going to have you sing we'll make enough money to buy us a new home and then you can quit you know it don't work that way loretta struggled to teach herself how to play the guitar better by following a mail-order correspondence course after only two months dew arranged an audition with a local group they were so impressed by her raw talent and taken by her youth and shyness that they offered her a job performing with them at the grange hall in linden washington well they had a show every saturday night they gave her five dollars a night to sing with him so she was starting out pretty good i mean getting a little money that was pretty big to her at that time i'm sure word spread quickly about the new local singer soon the grange hall was so packed that it couldn't contain all her fans doolittle decided that it was time to take the act on the road hand made me a handmade sign to put out in front said loretta lynn and the trailblazers we named the band we put it out on the road pretty soon he's working there six days a week loretta's reputation reached across the canadian border where a wealthy lumberman named norm burley saw her on a tv show he came to see her play in person and her performance of whispering c touched him so deeply that he vowed to share loretta's extraordinary talent with the world he lost his wife and he'd go out at night and sit by the sea on a big road and he said he'd always talk to his wife and that reminded him of his wife and he wanted me to record that he said that he wanted to start a label and he won't know if i'd be interested in it and i told him sure he gave me some money and a couple of credit cards and told me to go to california and make a record in 1960 loretta and doolittle packed a few changes of clothes and headed for california when they got to los angeles they began knocking on studio doors most wouldn't give the young couple from kentucky the time of day i went to several studios and they wasn't interested in anything you know because you know they were busy and they didn't care about making it so finally went this one studio and i told that old boy in there and he said i was a guy back there might be interested in that he was talking about speedy west once speedy west a well-known producer heard loretta sing he knew that fate had delivered something very special to his doorstep keeping her word to norm burley she recorded whispering c but for the flip side she chose another song that she had written i'm a honky tonk girl ever since [Music] norm burley was so happy with loretta's success that he offered to pay for a promotional trip across the country loretta and dew left their children with relatives and set out to promote her new record to djs all over the united states as they entered each new town they'd flip the radio dial until they found the local country station next they'd spot the tower and follow it to the source loretta would slip her way past the receptionist and head right for the dj yeah i met loretta she came to town i was a disc jockey in a little town named coolidge arizona and she looked like she was about 12 years old you just wanted to shut up and listen to her talk she had that little kentucky accent and she wasn't bigger than a nickel i said hello my name is loretta lynn and i brought me i've got a record here called honky tonk girl it's on a zero label and i brought you a picture too my husband took the picture and i brought you a card i've even wrote a card for you she was really shy and it took her you know it took her a little while she said you know that she'd cut this record and she and uh she acted like she thought i was going to give it back to her and tell her to go on on her way you know he looked at me like well here's a nut but i didn't let that stop me you know i couldn't let that stop me from peddling my record loretta and dew would drive all day at night they would sleep in a cheap hotel or in the car to save money they stopped at every radio station in their path no matter how small loretta was determined to get her song on the airwaves time we got back home and her record was 14 on the charts and billboard i didn't really know what that meant and when i got home the boys in the workforce are in that joint they come running out and they you know you're 14 and billboard you're 14 and billboard in that school well i said that good that mean that mean it's good sadly though loretta's father had not lived long enough to enjoy her good fortune he had died the year before of a stroke but the success of i'm a honky tonk girl inspired loretta to pursue even bigger dreams she decided to head for the home of country music itself the grand ole opry i'd tell all the disc jockeys i'm going to nashville i'm going to be on the grand ole opry and they laughed at me and i wondered why they left loretta tell us a little something about yourself if you will where were you performing before you came to the optic i had a little band of my own up in the state of washington a little place called blaine washington and we played there six nights a week and my brother played lead guitar and uh about six months ago we moved back here it's my first time on the grand ole opry i can't remember anything patting my foot and then running off stage and hugging do you know and telling him i'd sung on the grand old operator that's the biggest you can get loretta was so popular that the opry kept asking her back for a total of 18 consecutive weeks the grand ole opry show introduced loretta lynn to millions of new fans and now with her first hit record she had taken a giant step on the long road to national fame by 1960 loretta lynn's career was taking off she had a hit record i'm a honky tonk girl she had performed on the grand old opry yet even with her success loretta was still without a record deal loretta's managers doyle and teddy wilburn hoped to sign her with deca records but decker producer owen bradley was more impressed with loretta's songwriting than her singing the wilman brothers were kind of pressuring me to take an act and they played me this song and i needed a song for brenda lee i said why don't you give me that song and owen said i'll take that one song called fool number one and doyle said i'm not here to push a song i'm here to push an artist owen says well i'll tell you what doyle we'll make a trade here give me pool number one for brenda lee and i'll record loretta and he said that was the best trade he ever made loretta's popularity grew so quickly that in 1961 she was named the most promising female artist by the country western disc jockey pole don't come [Music] can home loretta wrote songs about what she knew best her hard life growing up in kentucky her family and most of all her troubled marriage to the hard drinking womanizing do little lynn he did all the things that you ain't willing to take my man squad's on the warpath don't come home with drinking you know she wrote all them songs about [Music] him don't come home drinking love it on your mouth i thought that's great every man in the world has come home in some kind of shape you know and thinking oh yeah here i am the lover of the world you know you've been waiting all this time for me i know i've done that men are a mess and she told us about it she was the first one that came out with the songs that you know pretty much told a man which which way to stand loretta wrote songs for women everywhere she challenged convention and confronted social taboos in a string of number one hits like rated x they thought since it was going to be ready to x it had to be real bad and it was taken up for the uh girl unless she'd been married you know it started out well if you've been a married woman things didn't seem to work out divorces are key to being loose and free so you're gonna be talked about so it was taken up for the divorced lady not one thing in there was bad but they got a lot of bellyaching about it but it was still a hit for me as loretta's fame grew so did the controversy over her songs some were condemned by religious groups others were banned by radio stations but none caused a bigger uproar than her song about birth control the pill the old years i stayed home while you had [Music] [Music] people were complaining about how in the world can you sing a song like that on the air you know you just can't have uh you can't talk about things like that when they told her you know that she shouldn't be talking about the pill i mean she'd get on carson or whatever and she said well why i take it don't you the preacher would preach about it on sunday and then the women go out and bite to see how bad it was i never dreamed that women would take this the wrong way and they didn't they bought enough of them to make number one the song was blacklisted by radio stations from boston to tulsa but that didn't stop the pill from soaring straight to the top of the charts it resonated with all of us and i'd be in my 57 chevy going to the grocery store and i'd be going amen sister tell it tell it tell it well you know i never even thought about the feminist deal and all this kind of stuff when i put out the pill and put out ones on the way and the underground papers began coming out they uh wanted to know if i was a woman's lib and i said hey you know i believe in if a woman does a man's job she ought to get paid the same price he does but i ain't going down the street burning my bra if that's what you're talking about i need that thing loretta had become an outspoken headliner who could write number one songs with the best of them in the male dominated world of country music she was busting down barriers she really changed what women could sing about and did it very straightforwardly with no apologies and really kicked down a lot of doors for the rest of us through it all i think we come through and i think we're making a big a big statement now there's a lot of women out there that are selling out the concert halls and a lot of women that are running record labels and and television production i think it's about time i'm glad to see it go girls by the time she was 29 loretta lynn was one of the most popular country music performers in america in 1964 she was voted favored female artists by billboard magazine during the 60s and 70s music city news named her female artist of the year an incredible 12 years in a row i don't think she ever thought she could make money doing it i know i didn't i just want to do it it was just a love for music when we started working and making some money i mean it was just what a thrill to be able to do what you've always dreamed of doing and make money doing that but as loretta's career blossomed she was spending less and less time at home with her children it only became more difficult when in 1964 she gave birth to twin girls named patsy and peggy when we were growing up we did not have her very few times i can actually remember her being home and it being you know feeling like you had a mother there dew stayed home and really did a great job with the twins and i used to get so sorry for loretta because she would say my oldest four kids know me and i'm a mommy but to the twins she said it's so hard because i haven't been around them while they were little nearly as much as she was the other one and they just considered do mommy and daddy for a while you know and that really put loretta on a guilt trip so it went against all of her raising to do what she did loretta worked hard barely ever taking a day off she performed each evening often doing two shows back to back she would travel to a new city after the show each night sleeping in the back of the bus the demanding schedule soon took its toll on loretta's health i've been with her when she's been very sick where she's had to be on stage and she's actually i mean had to leave stage and i remember i was just there and she pushes me out go sing a few songs and this was way before i even started loretta suffered from migraines and then had to fight off a dependence on pills that were prescribed for the pain she was hospitalized over and over for exhaustion try to get her to quit and not do so much on the road and stuff and and so we'd knock off for a month and hell she'd get itchy you know she'd want to go she want to know how the boys are eating how everybody's doing and she wanted to get back on the road and she did loretta knew how much she owed to her career she lived in a 14-room mansion in tennessee she had become the first female millionaire in country music yet she never forgot her childhood as a poor coal miner's daughter my early childhood memories probably are some of my best they stuck with me more because they taught me more and i think if they if they didn't i would be who i was today because if you don't remember who you are and where you come from you get lost in the shuffle as you grow older loretta turned those childhood memories into the song that became her signature coal miner's daughter [Music] the album featuring coal miner's daughter sold more than a million copies despite loretta's struggle with exhaustion and illness her success was at a peak and in 1972 loretta was selected to receive one of the most prestigious honors in country music the country music entertainer of the year is loretta lynch [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] i'd like to say that i've won a lot of awards and this is one that i have been nominated for but i never did get and this i think is the only one that i haven't gotten the only thing i'm real happy but the only thing that i'm kind of sad about is my husband is going hunting he couldn't make it back in to share my happiness with me thank you america couldn't get enough of loretta's rags to riches story she even became the first country star to make the cover of newsweek new york times columnist george vesey became so fascinated with loretta that he offered to help write her autobiography i really didn't want to write a book because i felt i was too young to write about my life i hadn't lived when i was 15 is 35 when i was 35 i was 15. but george bessie was a good writer and he talked me into doing it there really are no secrets with loretta that what people saw what they thought they saw on stage or the interview that she'd given some small town or the way she'd be on television was exactly the way she was but in fact her life was was an open book before we did the book the book appropriately titled coal miner's daughter was a huge success spending 20 weeks on the bestseller list loretta hoped the book would finally quell the public's curiosity about her private life but interest in her story only exploded and hollywood came knocking on her door by the late 1970s loretta lynn the coal miner's daughter from kentucky was already a country music legend so it was no wonder that her best-selling autobiography caught the interest of hollywood loretta signed a contract with universal pictures and hand-picked spacek to play her i was handed a big stack of pictures probably a foot deep i got about halfway down that stack and this blonde headed girl long blonde and freckled face then it was a glamour picture i just threw it out and i said this is the coal miner's daughter and she decided i was going to do it and nobody else and she started saying on television little sissy's basic she's going to play me and i i just couldn't believe that this woman was going on national television telling the world that i was going to do her movie when i hadn't accepted it yet so i was mortified and and was determined not to do it i saw her for the first time and all of her band members and her managers and agents were all behind her like little ducks following her she had on a flaming red dress and i remember she was just mad as she could be and she was going bam bam bam bam bam bam couldn't hear nothing but them dead burn drums beating in my ear and i thought i've got to play her while tommy lee jones prepared for the role of loretta's husband doolittle took on the awesome task of filling loretta's shoes she watched loretta at work to learn how to act and sing like her she was with me off and on for the whole year he'd like to kill me because i was doing two shows a night and then i'd work almost the rest of the night with we knew each other inside and out i knew as much about her as she did about me i felt that the way it had to be coal miner's daughter premiered in march 1980 to critical acclaim and spacek won an oscar for best actress [Music] i feel like i'm all fight well that's why you're supposed to feel when you're loved the book in the movie was a big career move for my sister but you know it was perfect because that is my sister and i just i think it put her in a place where they really saw my sister you know she's the coal miner's daughter loretta attended the movies premiere with her mother clara it was one of the last happy times they would spend together in public on thanksgiving day in 1982 clara passed away i went to kentucky when her mom died and that was a very terrible experience and loretta's saying all night we stayed there all night and the the one thing that she would sing all night long was if i could hear my mother pray again beautiful beautiful song and that seemed to help her get over the grief she would just sing and think of her mom and and she'd laugh and tell stories about her mom for loretta it seemed there was sadness around every corner in july 1984 she had a seizure while touring and had to be hospitalized she had no idea that at the exact same time she was losing her eldest son 34 year old jack benny lynn an experienced rider drowned while crossing a river on horseback when you lose a child that's something you don't ever think of ever doing and it leaves a hole in your heart that never is refilled it it's still there and that night i just asked god to hold him for me till i get there in times of crisis loretta would always rely on her husband due for support to outsiders their marriage was a puzzle how could someone whose songs were all about strong independent women stay with a man who drank heavily and had affairs something happened i would write a song and i could set to him in some where i couldn't just stand up and say it to him you know without a fight and it always helped me i felt that it did daddy worshiped her beyond anything he worshipped her and she did daddy i don't care what people think or what they say their love was special as do got older he seemed mellow but the drinking never got better i felt sometimes it was better to be on the bus than it was to be home because he was drinking so much you know dew wouldn't go after a while because he did not want the public to see him drink and i understand because he he had this problem and he it's a disease by the early 1990s dew was seriously ill with heart failure and diabetes both of his legs had to be amputated loretta largely put her career on hold to take care of him and it was in a sense killing mom i mean it was literally killing her watching it and sitting with him and it was it was the most awful four years and she was that anybody could ever go through in august 1996 the end came do little lynn who married loretta when she was just 13 who bought her that first guitar and believed she could be a great singer died at the age of 69. they loved each other dearly and you know they're i think about it they stayed together 48 years and then they would be together today if he was alive i loved all this life i've loved him and i miss him today i love him still today to this day no matter how hard we got along and no matter what kind of a life we had he was still the man in my life crushed by due's death loretta withdrew from public for months she didn't tour or record my mother agreed that you go through these stages there's the angry stage you know why i'm alone you know why did he leave me alone if he wouldn't have drank all those years he wouldn't have done you know for a long time she was real depressed you know like we didn't work for a while we just stayed on the ranch and stuff and then she just said hell with it we're going to work and we just left just as she had so many times during her life loretta lynn had found the strength to bounce back and now as she was entering her fifth decade as a singer she was about to show her fans a whole new side of her life and her music loretta lynn is one of the most celebrated artists in country music history with more than 50 top 10 hits she's received more country music association nominations than anyone for all that she was inducted into the country music hall of fame in 1988 i would have dressed up if i'd known this many told me that i might get this and i said no way jose she bet me five dollars and now i've lost five dollars and 15 years later her remarkable career was celebrated at the prestigious kennedy center honors before a crowd that included president and mrs bush but loretta was never one to rest on her laurels more than 40 years after she first sang i'm a honky tonk girl on the grand old aubry she was still playing to sold out crowds across the country [Music] every day watching her perform and watching her connect with an audience it's still the most amazing thing to me and i can never get enough of it and neither could her fans they not only continue to flock to her shows thank you honey i hope you enjoy that thank you they made the second volume of her autobiography still woman enough a national best seller i idolize her i just think she's fabulous she's such a honest person from the heart in 2004 loretta gave her fans new reason to cheer earning five grammy nominations for her most critically acclaimed album in years van lear rose in an unusual pairing it was produced by a hot young rock musician jack white of the white stripes jack worked his little butt off on this record and let me sing it one time through i said don't we sing it no more than that nope that was it so i had my job over with one tape [Music] loretta wrote every song on the album including miss being misses a painful account of her life without her husband dew [Music] to be with him it was a problem now then but it's worse to be without him after due's death loretta pulled her family in around her offstage and on on any given night her son ernest would be playing guitar and trading barbs with her on stage i'm allowed gonna whip him before he gets home too any of you young girls want to whip me you know i i i'll be hot get back on your ex lord [Laughter] she wants to get her own knees and pray for you he needs it honey that'll work and loretta's twin daughters patsy and peggy also perform with her as a duo called the lens they enjoy their own successful music career are you taller than me mother you're the shortest one in our family well thanks for loretta it was a chance to grow closer to the children she so often left behind when they were growing up and she was on the road she was happy to have them near but bittersweet about the direction their lives had taken i would rather my kids would get any kind into any kind of business except the music business because it's not a very good life for a person that wants to be at home but you know it wasn't for me i love you more than my hobbies as she neared her 70th birthday loretta was still keeping a very active tour schedule but spending more time at home she does better she enjoys it more it's not a job now you know i've got to go to work if i want to go but even at home loretta was always on stage her ranch in hurricane mills tennessee have become one of the biggest tourist attractions in the state two million fans came every year to tour her museum this was what i come into nashville had it on a model of her childhood house even a replica of a coal mine i'm just lucky you know i'm a lucky girl and i think god's had me by the hand to those who know her best success never did change loretta she was and always will be the coal miner's daughter i watch her she'll count change on the back of the bus going down the road you know we're broke okay mama and i've just picked up 150 000 you know when it's in the safe on the bus but she's counting her change that's the way she is because they live poor you know in kentucky if loretta lynn never cut another record if she never played another concert her legend would be secure she was more than just one of the best selling artists of all time she was a country music original a pioneer loretta lynn still has broad appeal across generations of music fans as shown when van lea rose earned two 2004 grammys including best country album jack white was on hand to accept the awards with lynn as her collaborator and the album's producer and in april 2005 lin was honored again this time by country music television with the johnny cash visionary award though kasha died more than a year earlier it was a resonant echo to the time cash's speech welcomed lynn to join him in the country music hall of fame and further solidified her standing in the pantheon of country music legends

Channel: More Music Shows

Views: 315,504

Rating: 4.8058405 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 7P7P12Ja22w

Length: 41min 54sec (2514 seconds)

Published: Sun May 10 2020