This week, Leah is going a little bit country and telling the story of one of the most banned artists we’ve ever talked about: Loretta Lynn. We follow her upbringing in Kentucky, her marriage at a young age, iconic duets with Conway Twitty, banned songs and everything in between!
Episode Transcription
True. Well, will I was transitioning into country. I sold a country limb if at all out. Ah, okay. Now we had a month off, we did, we did. And took that time. You were moving into a house. I had a shit ton of work stuff that was happening, um, and then taking some time, so, you know, rest and hang out and we got our episodes done.
Do you think I would have came up with a cold open.
That time of the month? No, no, I did it, it wasn’t until after that I read the view. I realized shit, it’s my turn for a cold open. Isn’t it. And so the trend continues. Um, so here’s the first question off the top of my head. Is there a 20, 22 artists that you were, let’s say you heard some of their singles in 2021 and you have your eye on them for 2022.
Um, the first one that pops to my head is social. I’ve been obsessed with them since the beginning of the pandemic. Uh, they have maybe five singles on Spotify. Um, something happened in their first couple of singles got booted off Spotify, but they’re coming back, but I have high hopes for what the release in 2022, they’re supposed to be coming to Richmond in February.
Or Dedrick the lead singer as a solo tour. So I will be there. I don’t know where they’re playing yet, but he assures me that they will be in Richmond. So there you go, check out social animals. It’s like, I tweeted it on the other day and I said, social animals as the music you put on when you’re driving at night and contemplating life.
And he said, yes, that’s why I wrote it at all. So that makes sense. I love that. Um, shit. I need my phone cause I have it in front of you. I’ve been known to lose my phone cause I need to go to my Spotify. Hold on sec. Cause I literally pinned them for this. You bend them for the cold open that you didn’t prepare.
Well, I mean, I pinned them to listen to later, but they were on my mind. I am looking forward to, okay. There’s a French artist I’ve been listening to. We’ve talked about this. Yes. Her name is melody Gardot. Now she has been around for a while, so I’m late to the game on this, but her music is so good. I would love to see her actually start breaking out and cause right now she’s more in Europe.
I would love to see her actually start branching out in 2022 into America market. A little bit more. So that’s who I choose. I had an artist of mine and then I forgot it mainly because I’m halfway through my mimosa. I was very generous in the most before and now this is. Easily the worst intro that we have recorded in 2022.
Thanks to your champagne pouring skills. So the bar is very low.
We got plenty of other time for me to fuck up another one. Don’t worry. Um, I’m Bethann. And this is, she will rock you in 2022.
pull up before how you let me turn down.
Uh, once again, there’s no new business items to discuss, but please leave us a review. It would mean a lot. Thank you. we’re going to ask every show, so just get used to it. All right. So we kicked off 20 and 21 with the Dali, so I thought it was only appropriate to go back to the country realm, understandable and pull out another group.
So we’re talking about Loretta Lynn. Good choice. I have a Loretta Lynn record. Let me go see,
I have.
Anyway, I have several, I don’t know if I have any a hundred percent Loretta Lynn albums, but I recently inherited my grandparents’ entire record collection from like the late sixties. Early seventies has several Conway, Twitty, Loretta Lynn albums on it, which we’ll talk about, but that was the inspiration for this episode.
And in this episode I have now reentered my country, music obsession, fully blown. So thank you, Loretta, for that. Um, I’m going to say it was very early on, similar to your last disclosure. Loretta has over 70 at home. So I will not be naming music gets busy, man. Yes. Yes. I will not be naming them all in this presentation.
I’m sorry. It ain’t happen. All right. So let’s talk about Loretta. She was born Loretta web on April 14. We’re not sure what year, because this was the depression. They weren’t keeping calendars on. They weren’t keeping records. She was born at home. They couldn’t afford to go to the hospital. Ooh. Um, they, she later paperwork on me.
Let me Google it later paperwork. They think they got it. Right. Um, but for the longest time they had no idea what she know, how old she was. She didn’t for the longest time. So it’s really suspected. She was born April 14th, 1932. What’s your maker? 89, but no, one’s a hundred percent sure on that date because she was one of, uh, I closed my outline shit.
Where did it go? She was one of,
I didn’t put the total count. Oh, eight children total. She’s the oldest daughter, second child. Um, so they weren’t really keeping records. She was born in butcher holler, Kentucky. That’s a great name, which is actually hollow, but everyone from holler Busher holler says holler. So saying holler. Um, they were dirt.
Poor dad was, uh, almost a dirt farmer. Good God. The coal, coal miner farmer. Uh, sh they had no money. So she had none, like no one in that family was born in a hospital. Um, I think of the eight children, one of them had to be born in the hospital, but they couldn’t afford to stay overnight. So like once the baby popped out, they just walked the four or five miles, please.
Um, this is depression, era, coal mining country in Kentucky. She did not ride in an automobile until she was 12. Wow. And she didn’t know where babies came from until it happened to her later in life. She did not see you. It comes a big part of her story. So pin that for later, she did not see a toilet with running water until she was 14.
She cause they just had an outhouse. Um, to, to further just explain the medical situation that was happening in this town. When she was about one year old, she got an ear infection so bad. That in order to fix it a trigger warning. If you don’t like medical stuff, they had to drill holes and do her head every day to like drain the infection.
But her parents couldn’t afford to keep her in the hospital overnight. They would walk her five miles to the hospital every day back and forth like piggyback riding. Um, she almost died. She got so sick. She stopped walking until about the age of four. Oh my gosh. But then she got better. Like it’s, it’s honestly a miracle that she survived.
Yeah. Cause not only was the healthcare terrible. Late thirties, but like they were so broke. Ha uh, there’s a story in her book about her dad had 38 cents to go between all eight children, one Christmas. Oh. And still managed to get them all something from the general store. But, uh, yeah. Jeez, very, they didn’t get a lot of visitors.
So she was really shy growing up when it came to like meeting new people. Um, She only had about an eight or about a fourth grade education. She went to a one-room school house, uh, enjoyed eighth grade so much that she repeated it twice, but eighth grade in that school house was about fourth grade now.
So she has about a fourth grade education. Wow. So when Loretta’s 15 ish, January 10th, 1948, she marries Oliver Veneta, Doolittle Lynn 14. She has 14. Um, so he’s better known as Doolittle or do or Mooney cause he used to run moonshine. Uh, he lived most of his childhood in Washington state working around a different mining camp and his aunts and uncles made moonshine and he would do the milk deliveries to the mining camp and they would just fill some of those bottles of moonshine and just hope no one noticed.
And because he was so young, no one really questioned him running moonshine. He got the name Mooney, but she calls him do. And most of her stuff, her do little. Um, so yeah, let’s go back to the fact that Loretta is 15. He’s about 20. I thought, I mean, this is how people were getting married back then. When you got eight kids, you got.
Mary I’m off for lack of a better term to get them out of your house. So you can stop paying to feed them. But everyone thought that Loretta was older than she was. And everyone thought that Doolittle was younger than he was. Because look at these children, I brought a book for a visual. We’re gonna have to put this up, look out, oh, she’s 14 in that photo.
And he’s 18, the right hand side. He looks like a baby and his little army uniform. And she looks like a full grown woman. That’s wild. So like no one really questioned it because he wasn’t the army he could provide for himself. He had some connections and she looks like an adult, like she’s gorgeous. Yeah.
Um, they left Kentucky really quickly after they got married and moved to the logging community of Custer, Washington. Sorry. It was a logging camp, not a mining camp in watching. And they, when they made this move, Loretta was seven months pregnant with their first of what would ultimately be six children.
She didn’t even know how she got pregnant. This was, I mean, the sex education in the thirties was very lacking. She just thought that that’s what happened. You got married. Like she didn’t even know how she got pregnant. So very quickly. She pops out for kids because as soon as she’d finish nursing one, she’d get pregnant again.
She literally had no idea how this was happening. So they have Betty Sue, then Jack Benny, Ernest Ray, and then Claire Marie, who were all born by the time June 20. Oh, my God. And she, she talks in her book about, she finally went to the doctor and was like, how do I make this stop? And they were like, you know, that you can use this birth control.
Right. And she was like, how does this work? No one’s ever told me this in my life. Please make me stop having children because she was just a baby. Like she never even got a chance to do anything until she started having, she moved out of her parents’ house to stop taking care of her younger siblings and then immediately got pregnant.
I had to take care of four babies all at the same time. Um, so this period in her life was not the most fun period she’s living away from home. Uh, her dad dies at some point. Like it’s really sad, but she’s also really happy because she has this life with her new husband and. They don’t get along all the time, but they do love each other.
Um, and so it’s like a constant up and down of happiness and heartache, which really shows itself in her song writing when she starts performing, she says in her book that she went straight from having her dad tell her what to do and to having her husband tell her what to do and never really got a chance to be your own person.
And it probably would have been that way for the rest of her life. But in 1953 for her birthday, Do little bought her a little $17 harmony guitar, and she taught herself to play overtly the course of three years. And so do it all was like, you know, you’re really good at this. Like you, we can make something of this.
And so he helps her make a band Loretta and the trailblazers, they get her brother, Jay Lee playing lead guitar, and she would start playing at Bill’s Tavern in Blaine, Washington, and at the dining hall in this logging community. And she’s like 23 at this point. So she’s starting this career very late in life compared to most people.
I’ve talked about. She does so well in these like contests and, uh, Like playing in these dining halls that she had entered a talent contest in Tacoma, hosted by buck Owens. She wins, she wins a wristwatch and she was given the choice between a ladies watch or a men’s watch. She chose the men men’s watch for do little and it broke the next day and she cried about it.
Um, but this performance was televised kind of in the Washington, uh, whatever Canadian part is right above Washington, Vancouver. Yeah. And a Canadian named norm Burley. He sees Loretta Singh and he kinda had just founded this record company called zero records, which he actually founded after hearing Loretta sing.
So he could sign her to it. Wow. In order to give her enough capital to go record something so that she could, you know, make a name for her. He does this zero. He owns your records or forms your records with, uh, another guy named Don grassy and they, two of them arrange a recording session in Hollywood where they end up recording four of Loretta’s original compositions.
So she signed that contract on February 2nd, 1968. They immediately did those records and started touring the country, like literally going door to door to all the country radio stations. They’ve just happened the car and drive and find these ladies like DJs who were putting stuff on the radio, which was honestly the best way to go about it.
It’s kind of what you had to do at the time, but Loretta was still super shy. Literally growing up in the woods. So this gave her a chance to work on her people skills sure. As well. Uh, when there, while they were in Tucson, she really hit it off with the DJ there. He was a batter age. She said he was really greasy covered in zits.
Um, but they were super friendly, hit it off. Immediately started writing letters back and forth. Um, eventually this kid got into singing too. His name was Waylon Jennings. He makes another. Yeah. She was really good friends. The Waylon Jennings before he did anything, he was just deejaying and Tucson. Well, that makes sense.
Cause I know he started as a DJ and think it was going to be Waylon. Yep. Literally when I read that in the book, I was like, huh, how is it that I made an audible noise? Uh, so they eventually ended up in Nashville. Where one of her songs, I didn’t know which one apparently was a hit. It actually hit, climbed up to number 14 on the billboard country, in Western charts.
And this gave her enough momentum to start cutting more demo records for the Wilburn brothers. They own a publishing company. Um, and then through them, she ends up with a contract with Decca records where she will stay for like the next 40 years. So she starts this relationship with the Wilburn Bronner brothers.
They kind of act as a manager, but also Doolittle’s doing some managing too. So like she’s got all these men telling her what to do. It’s a thing, you know, whatever. Uh, and they S they get her an appearance on the grand old Opry in 1960, which. Booster up to number one immediately, the people that are going to operate love her so much.
She ends up coming back every week for like two years or something. Ridiculous. Um, and she very quickly became the number one female recording artist in country music at the time. But that contract with the Wilburn brothers gave them the publishing rights to her material. See these fucking companies in the nineties.
What year is it 60 to 60 in the 1960s? Did the shittiest deals for artists? Yep. They were set up very differently. Um, so for the next 30 years, she would pretty much fight them to regain the publishing rights to her son. Oh, sorry that D for 30 years, she eventually breaks the contract with them and goes her own way.
But she fights with them for a very long time to get her publishing rights back because she wrote that shit. She deserves it. She actually stopped writing music in the 1970s for awhile because of the way these contracts were negotiated and in turmoil. And it’s a whole thing. And someone really needs to make a legal side of the music industry podcast.
We’re not going to do that. No, I don’t have the brain to handle them. That’s why someone else needs to do. Yeah. Um, so around this time she’s getting established in Nashville, figuring out the music world, raising four children, um, and she meets Patsy Cline and the two become best use, like immediately Patsy’s a little bit more established and kind of mentors Loretta through it.
She’s been in the entertainment industry longer. But they don’t get to be best friends for a very long time, because in 1963, we all know Patsy suddenly died in a plane crash. And in an interview with entertainment weekly, Loretta told them when Patsy died, my God, not only did I lose my best girlfriend, but I lost a great person who was taking care of me.
I thought now somebody is going to whip me for sure. She credits Patsy as being her mentor and best friend. Um, at another interview in 2010, she got interviewed for a biography about Tammy Wynette, but about Patsy and said’s best friends were like husbands, you only need one at a time. That’s the truth.
She said she didn’t really want to put in a lot of effort into making a new best friend. Um, Going back to her contract with Decca. She releases her first success success. Her first single was Dhaka called success. Just a great name for your first single success sets. The tone, um, that was released in 1962, went straight to number six and started a string of top 10 singles that would run for like the next 10 years.
Her first album like full album with DECA is called Loretta Lynn St. And it reached number two on the country charts and includes songs like blue Kentucky girl and wine women and song, which is a great song title. So she started to record her own material. Most of what she’d recording was covers or written by other artists.
And she really honed in on this specific. Sub genre of country music for capturing the everyday struggles of wives and mothers, but also just like being funny while doing it. She’s a very funny person. Yeah. Um, but. Unlike some like that wasn’t necessarily the unique part about her. Like plenty of women in country music do that.
She takes it one step further and write songs. They get her band on the radio. That’s what you gotta do her first, very first. Self written song that would go top 10 is, uh, her 1966 song, dear uncle Sam, which is considered one of the first recordings to recount like the human cost of the Vietnam war while the, I skipped this bullet for some reason.
Oh no, it was a stolen of this bullet. It’s she? Her dear uncle Sam is singing. The like terrified wife or lover of a draftee who she doesn’t want to go to war. So she’s dealing with, you know, the cultural upheaval of the Vietnam war and then surprise she’s pregnant again. What does she know? I don’t know her mind.
She, she was using birth control. I think this was more of an intentional pregnancy. But it’s twins. Oh shit. So she gives birth to Peggy Jean and Patsy Eileen in 1964. She named after Patsy Cline. She did. She did. That’s so sweet. That’s going to be the favorite twin. I guarantee you Patsy. She can’t. So it’s actually kind of sad.
I didn’t talk about this in my outline, but in her book, she didn’t really do much to raise the twins because she was very successful at the point when they were born. So do little is the one that would stay home with them and she would come visit. They would just treat her. And aunt that was there to visit.
Oh, because he did all the raising and he could tell them apart. But pat, uh, Loretta always struggled to tell them apart because they’re identical twins and they get really mad when she couldn’t tell them part because as their mother, she, you know, quote, should be able to tell them apart. And she didn’t, she doesn’t have the best relationship with the twins for that reason.
And she feels really bad about it, but it was either. Make money for the family. Cause it’s their only source of income at this point. Doolittle’s quit his job to be a stay at home. Dad, basically just kind of cool or stay at home, be a stay at home mom and have no money. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. So dear uncle Sam was in 1966.
Also in 1966, she wrote a song. You ain’t want enough to take my man and it made her the first country female recording artists to write her their own. Number one, hit. Hmm, which is pretty cool, but kind of sad. It took till 1966 for that to happen. Yeah. Um,
in 1967, she started a string of 16 number one hits out of 1770 charted songs. Um, that one was don’t come home. Don’t don’t come home and drink in with Levin on your mind. Um, so then we in 1975, I guess we’re jumping ahead because I don’t know what I did to this, or it’s going to talk about other songs that got banned from Loretta Lynn’s cat category.
That’s not a catalog. The is hit hard. Y’all um, so she writes a song in 1975 called the pill, the piddle, the pill, the pill, the pill. Oh, the pill. Um, as you can remember, she did not know where babies came from, nor how to, um, prevent them until the pill became a thing. And let me just read you some of the lyrics from the song, cause this.
Pissed conservative America off and got banned from the radio because it has lyrics such as okay. But if you just Google the pill, you get birth control ads.
You wined and dined me when I was your girl promise. If I’d be your wife, you’d show me the world, but I’ve seen all this old world, but all I’ve seen of this old world is a bed and a doctor, bill. I’m tearing down your brooder house. Cause now I’ve got the pill all these years. I’ve stayed at home while you’ve had your fun.
And every year that’s gone by another baby’s come. There’s going to be some changes made right here on nursery hits. You’ve set this chicken your last time. Cause now I’ve got the pill. Ooh. This old maternity dress I’ve got is going in the garbage, the clothes I’m wearing from now on won’t take up so much yardage, miniskirts, hot pants, and a few little Francy feels yeah.
Making up for all those years since I’ve got the pill. I love it. So, um, As you can imagine men did not take that well. Oh, I’m so sorry. I feel so bad. Here’s what she says about that song in her book, we recorded it and held onto it for three years, figuring that people weren’t ready to accept it. But when we released it, the people.
I mean, the women loved it, but the men who run the radio stations were scared to death. It’s like a challenge. The man’s way of thinking. See the play a song about making love in a field because that’s sexy from a man’s point of view, but something that’s really important to women like birth control.
They don’t want no part of least away is not on the air. Well, my fans played the record and bought so many copies that it forced most of the radio stations to play well played well played. Um, other band songs include ones on the way, which is about repeated childbirth as well and rated X, which is about double standards for men and women.
So she was just a big, old fuck you to the patriarchy of country music. Um, she ended up getting nine songs banned over her career, which that’s a triumph I respect. So in 1970, she released. Coal miner’s daughter, the album, not the biography, which I think is probably her Magnum Opus. And what she’s most known for this peaked at number one on the billboard country charts in 1970, um, became her first single on the billboard hot 100, not just like the country hot 100, it reached 83.
She wrote the song, uh, after she was encouraged by her record, producer Owen, Brad. But when she originally wrote it, the song contained 10. And they were like, that’s too long. You can’t release 10 verse song to which I have to say, Loretta, the time has come. Taylor has released a 10 minute song. You can do it.
Let them release the full version before you, before you can’t record music anymore. Me sitting in the background doing Prague release 15 minutes songs. Yes. This was not 1970, though. That’s true. It just wouldn’t fit on a record, but, um, we’ll just make a one record. The, the reason that Marty gave her.
Other than just it’s too long. Was there was already a song that was that long. It was Marty Robbins hit El Paso and there couldn’t be another El Paso. Oh sure. As fucking hell. There can be a better El Paso. So they may an Austin. Yes. They made her cut versus which she said she cried the whole time because she didn’t want to cut anything.
Cause I mean, she wrote the song about her dad at the time. I think your dad had already passed and just like growing up. In her childhood and it meant a lot to her and it was really hard to cut songs. But one of the verses she removed was about killing a pig during the annual hog killing day. So what the fuck, maybe some of them did not need to be in the full song, but what are they doing these days?
Um, she ended up cutting for some. From the original version to make the version that we have now. And this is considered probably her most important song that she’s ever written in 2001, the recording industry association of America named it. One of the songs that center. Rolling stone has ranked it on their list of hundred greatest country songs of all time, time magazine named it among the hundred all-time songs.
The 20 2500 greatest albums list ranks it at four 40 coal miner’s daughter would go on to become the title. Uh, I attribute album that her, her label, I guess, put together of other artists covering her songs, which includes artists such as the white stripes, Reba McEntire, and pair more. And let me say a paramour song on that album slaps what song they cover?
I don’t remember. I can’t look it up right now. That’s and find it later. I thought I wrote it down, but I didn’t. So this album would, all this album man song would go on to just like inspire the rest of her. In 1976, she wrote her first of what would be three autobiographies title, coal miner’s daughter.
It’s the one that I read for this research and the following. What that doesn’t say that this was followed in 1980 by a biopic of the same name, starring sissy spaces. Which became a critical and commercial success and received seven nominations at the academy awards that year, including best picture.
And Cici’s basic one best actress for her portrayal of Loretta Lynn. Nice. But going back to the seventies. In 1971, Loretta was the first solo female country artists. But from the white house, unfortunately, the president she’s performing for it was Richard Nixon. Yeah. You take, you take some, you lose some, but that’s not her fault.
Uh, she actually would return there several more times to perform under the administrations of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H w and George w HW w in 1971, she began, I think the relationship that like put her next level on the country charts. And that’s when she started doing duets with Conway, Twitty, which I don’t know.
I can’t explain the choke hold that Conway, Twitty and Loretta Lynn. Had over the population in the seventies, but half the records that I have inherited from my grandparents are Conway, Twitty records. And I don’t understand. That’s hilarious. Um, but two working together had five consecutive number one hits in four years.
Wow. Between 1971 and 1975, including after the is gone, which actually won them a Grammy award lead me on Louisiana woman, Mississippi. As soon as I hang up the phone and feelings for four years in a row from 1972 to 75, Loretta Lynn and Conway, Twitty were named the vocal duo of the year at the CMA awards.
And like, nowadays that doesn’t happen because I think they try to spread the wealth a little bit. Yeah. And these award shows a four years in a row. Uh, the academy country music also named the best vocal duet in 71, 74, 75 and 76. And the American music awards say selected them as the favorite country duo in 19 75, 76 and 77.
Again, the choke hold that these two hats in America. Um, but while this is all going on, she’s still cranking out solo albums as well because it’s seventies. What else are they doing? Yeah. In 1972, Loretta Lynn became the first woman to be nominated and win entertainer of the year at the CMA awards. She also won female vocalist of the year and duo of the year, that year, which beat out George Jones and Tammy Wynette and Porter Wagoner, and Dolly Parton.
Ooh. Um, This was also the year that rated X came out and, you know, she got more controversial. This is probably more controversial than the pill, uh, includes lyrics such as well. If you’ve been a married woman and things didn’t seem to work out, divorce is the key to being loose and free. So you’re going to be talked about.
Everyone knows that you’ve loved once they think you love again, you can’t have a male friend when you’re a has of a woman you’re rated X, Ooh. Shots were fired. Um, and because of the choke hold that she had on the seventies, in, at the end of the seventies, she was named artist of the decade by the academy of country music.
And to this day, she’s the only woman to have ever won artists of the daily, which is shocking to me. Yeah. You think like, Yeah, have some kind of rolled up. I feel like after researching them, both Dolly was big at the time, but she’s much bigger in hindsight. Like you’re much more obsessive Dolly now than they were then where Loretta was much hotter at the time.
They everyone’s very into Loretta and dye was kinda on the back burner, but now the roles have switched, but they’re, they’re really good friends. The two of them, right. Um, so in the eighties country, music changed a little bit, moved more away from, you know, bandos and 22 more of a, they started playing with mainstream pop a little bit.
And because of this Loretta, Lynn’s no longer dominate in the country charts, she’s still popular and she was still successful, but she has to start like branching out what she’s doing to kind of stay on top of things. So she starts to make guest appearances on TV show. Such as the Dukes of hazard fantasy island and the Muppet show.
Oh boy, I did not have time to watch her episode, the Muppet show, but I’m going to go find it later and watch it. Um, But everything kind of comes crashing to a stop because right around this time, somewhere in the early eighties, I did not write the year. That’s my bed. Uh, her 34 year old son, Jack Benny Linn drowned.
Oh. After trying to wait across a river on horse brat, she was so. Like torn apart by this tragedy, she actually got hospitalized for exhaustion right after it because she wouldn’t eat, she wouldn’t drink. She wouldn’t do anything. And she’s passed out. Yeah. Uh, in 1987, she would do it on us or lend her voice to a song on Katie Lang’s album shadow land, which also has other country stars on it.
Um, in 1988, her album, who was that stranger, it would be her last soul album for a major record company as a solo artist. But don’t worry. She’s got more stuff planned. She got so many albums. Yeah, she’s got, she’s still making them, uh, in 1988, she was inducted to the country music hall. And she, soon after that, it had to scale back what she was doing, because do little, got really sick.
She had to kind of be there with him. He had some heart troubles and diabetes, but since she had to pull back on her solo career, she didn’t find some time to work with Dolly Parton and Tammy wine at on the 1993 album honky-tonk angels. Uh, which is the three of them. Yeah. It’s like the perfect name for the.
And in 1995, she kind of had her own TV show. It was like a very much a limited series thing called Loretta Lynn and friends. And she would play a handful of tour dates, but those kind of got stopped because in 1996, when they had been married for 48 years, unfortunately do little, did pass from complications from his diabetes, WhatsApp, and 2000.
She released her first album in several years because this is like, 10 year hiatus, let 12 year, 12 year hiatus called still country. And she on this album included a song called I can’t hear the music, which is attribute to do little. She was really sad in 2002, she published her second autobiography still woman enough, and it became a New York times best.
Hit peeking in the top 10. And in 2004, she published a cookbook, which I just need to buy this. Like I need it in my life. It’s called you’re cooking it country. You’re cooking country. I love it. In 2004, perhaps the most random thing I’m going to mention happens. She releases her album, van Lior, rose, which this is around the time that I was very into country music.
So I’m familiar with this album. But this is going to blow your mind. Are you ready? This, she did this album in collaboration and produced by Jack White. No way. Yes. That’s so cool. This album slaps. I don’t know why, but for some reason it was taken off Spotify in March. That sucks. There’s very many Reddit threads about people mad that it was taken off, but no one has an answer as to why they think it’s something to do with Jack’s label.
Probably because all of ’em Loretta stuff is still up on Spotify, but someone did upload a full version of YouTube. So go listen to that. Um, Loretta and Jack were nominated for five Grammys and one. And everyone just was like this, this pair shouldn’t work, but they work so well together. Uh, it was the vote of the second best album of 2004 in rolling stone magazine.
And that the two Grammys that it won were, oh, one of the two that one was best country album. Wow. So this kind of like brings Loretta back into the forefront of the American mind and she starts touring. Pretty extensively, but very quickly has to start canceling some tour dates. Um, just, just to do some health issues.
She has a family history of strokes. That’s actually what they think her dad died of. Um, and so she has really high blood pressure and touring is not like the kindest to your blood pressure system. Uh, in January, 2010, she played a date at the university of central Arkansas. In which her son, Ernest Ray, and the twins, Peggy and Patsy played with her, which is adorable.
That is cute. Around that time. She was given the Grammy lifetime achievement award, as well as the, um, the cover album of other artists doing her songs in 2012, she published her third autobiography honky-tonk girl, my life and lyrics in 2013, she received the presidential medal of freedom from Barack Obama.
And 2019, they made another film about her, but this time about her relationship with Patsy Cline called Patsy and Loretta in on May 4th, 2017, she actually suffered a stroke, um, at her home in Nashville. She has since made a full recovery and on March 19th, 2021, Loretta Lynn receipt really released her 50th studio album.
Still woman enough, it doesn’t include her like collab project still going, still going. She’s 89. She have an 88, I guess, and that was released, but her 50th studio album. Good. So Loretta Lynn she’s received pretty much every award that you could win as a country music artist, she’s been inducted into the Nashville songwriters hall of fame, the country music hall of fame, the songwriters hall of fame, and was honored at the 2010 country music awards with a lifetime achievement she’s recorded.
Like I said, 70 albums, including 54 studio albums, 15 compilation albums, and the one tribute album. That is the legacy of the wonderful Loretta Lynn. I think she should be a Saint as well. What’s her title? Something to do with fucking the patriarchy, but you can’t put that in her title. So Loretta Lynn, the challenger, I like that.
The challenge. That’s it because she challenged the challenger country music standards. Also in this process of research in this, I have fully awakened my country music phase, but I realized that I just don’t like country music made by men. It’s much better when done by women. Well, as we learned with a Reetha, it’s like, it’s all about tone.
It’s all about how the lyrics are nowadays. And I specifically blame Florida Georgia line. Every male song is literally about a truck or a beer that is the two subjects trucker beer. Sometimes it’s about trucks and beer. True. Occasionally it’s about a sunset. Um, but female country music is just so much more deep.
I got songs about birth control. Isn’t that something? Yeah. So that’s all. That is a good, good story.
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She Will Rock You 