Her latest album, the Jack White-produced Van Lear Rose, is poised now to remind the world yet again of Lynn’s power as a vocalist and her skill as a songwriter. As she puts it on Story of My Life, the new album’s closing track: Not half bad for this ol’ KY girl, I guess, Here’s the story of my life. Listen close, I’ll tell it twice.
Loretta was born in Butcher Holler, Kentucky, the second of Clara and Ted Webb’s eight children. Just as she would later sing in Coal Miner’s Daughter, Loretta’s family eked out a living during the Depression on the poor man’s dollar her father managed to earn work{ing] all night in the Van Leer coal mine [and] all day long in the field a-hoein’ corn. As she also notes in that song, I never thought of leavin’ Butcher Holler. But that was before she met Oliver Lynn (aka Doolittle or Doo, or Mooney for moonshine), a handsome 21-year-old fresh from the service who swept the young Loretta Webb off her feet. The couple married when Loretta was barely 14.
Looking for a future that didn’t require him to work the mines, Doo found work in Custer, Washington, and Loretta joined him in 1951. During one televised talent contest in Tacoma, hosted by Buck Owens, Loretta was spotted by Norm Burley who was so impressed he started Zero Records just to record her. Before long, Loretta was in the studio cutting sides with Owen Bradley, producer at the time not only for Lee but Patsy Cline, Bill Anderson, and Webb Pierce. Loretta’s delivery on I’m a Honky Tonk Girl was twangy and nasal, rhythmically straight up and down, plainspoken and emotionally understated. Such a down-home vocal style was Loretta’s birthright; it was more or less the way she had sang back in Kentucky, it was the style she took with her to Washington, and it was a vocal approach particularly well-suited to the duet sides she soon made in Nashville with honky-tonk legend Ernest Tubb. (Mr. and Mrs. Used to Be, from 1964, was the pair’s first and biggest hit.) It’s not surprising then that Success, the 1962 single that became Loretta’s first Top Ten hit showcased Loretta in a full-throated, string-backed setting that’s more than a little reminiscent of Patsy Cline.
Out of these influences, Lynn soon fashioned her distinctive style a mature fusion of twang, grit, energy and libido an approach she first perfected in the songs of other writers. In Wine, Women, and Song, Happy Birthday, and Blue Kentucky Girl, each a Top Ten hit in 1964, Loretta played a plucky young woman who alternated between waiting for her wayward man to walk back in the door and threatening to walk out herself. Such hits were early hints of Loretta’s undeniably strong female point of view a perspective unique at the time both to country music specifically and to pop music generally and a trend in her music that became further pronounced as she began to write more of her own songs. In her first self-penned song to crack the Top Ten, 1966’s Dear Uncle Sam, Loretta presented herself as a woman who was going to fight to keep what was important to her, even if that meant questioning the wisdom of her government. Indeed, Dear Uncle Sam was among the very first recordings to recount the human costs of the Vietnam War.
Over the next few years, Loretta wrote a string of hits unprecedented for their take-no-crap women narrators. In You Ain’t Woman Enough (to Take My Man) [#2, 1966], Don’t Come Home A’Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind) [#1, 1967], and Fist City [#1, 1968], among others, Loretta presented a new character on the country scene: a woman unafraid to stand up for herself, just like real women did.
Each of the above songs was a Top Three country hit between 1968 and 1975, and Loretta Lynn (to paraphrase the title of a 1970 album) both wrote eem and sang eem. The same was true, of course, of her signature song, the 1970 chart- topper Coal Miner’s Daughter, which chronicled for all time the strides women were making in these years from country to city, from home to workforce and, in Lynn’s case, from girl-singer to superstar.
The immense popularity of these songs, as well as other straight-shooting hits like Your Squaw Is on the Warpath, Women of the World (Leave My World Alone), and You’re Looking at Country, culminated in 1972 when Lynn won her second Best Female Vocalist award from the Country Music Association and when she became the first woman to win the CMA’s most prestigious award, Entertainer of the Year.
Through the next decade, Loretta scored more and more hits and became more and more famous beyond her country base. In 1973, she appeared on the cover of Newsweek; in 1976 her autobiography (written with journalist George Vescey) became a New York Times Bestseller; in 1980 the book was made into a hit film starring Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones. By the time of her last major hit I Lie, in 1982 Lynn could count 52 Top 10 hits and 16 #1’s.
Van Lear Rose, with its moody, propulsive arrangements, loud and rocking guitars and intimate songwriting, can only extend Lynn’s profound influence into a new century and to a new generation of fans.
