#440: Loretta Lynn, ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’

DECCA, 1971

Miss Loretta Lynn had four kids by the time she was 18 years old. She met her husband either when she was 11 years old or 13 years old, different articles say different things. She was pregnant with her first child by 15 and quickly realized that her older husband, Doolittle Lynn, had a drinking problem that held hands with his cheating problem. It was a hard life in Butcher Holler, Kentucky. 

In order to make a little extra money for the family, Doolittle Lynn pushed her into singing in public. He also encouraged her to learn to play the guitar, which she taught herself in just two months. From that point on, things moved quickly. Her songwriting skills along with her singing won her a regular spot at the Grand Ole Opry in 1960 at 28 years old. 

It sometimes feels like Country music and Rap are the only genres where meritocracy is respected. Loretta Lynn really was a coal miner’s daughter. Her father died young before Loretta made it in music, of black lung. Her tragedy mingled with her early days in poverty bleeds authenticity into each song and also gives her an edge that makes a gal like me believe in the American dream. 

Her music is real, she tells the stories of real life and real issues that women experience. During the Doris Day era of blond bobs and cute freckles and getting all flustered over workplace sexism but giggling it off, she sang about her own marriage. She sang about being in an abuse, about stepping out in your marriage, about God, about respecting women, and most shockingly about the empowerment birth control first provided to women in the 1970s in her song, “The Pill.”   

These are all themes we would later hear women like Queen Latifah, Sheryl Crow and Taylor Swift write about. (It is so weird that I put Queen Latifah and Taylor Swift in the same sentence.) But Loretta Lynn showed us what was in a female songwriter’s brain and she showed us that she could be direct and still be a hit record. 

But somehow, even though she was sang such feminist anthems, she, just like Dolly Parton, really wanted to make sure that she was not considered a feminist. In fact, she was a big fan of Trump and other far-right politicians before she died last year. People are multi-dimensional and Miss Loretta is the most unique of them all. Not only was she not an activist nor was she participating in social movements, but she was also simply writing music about her life.

That is what is so radical about authenticity, it always moves the dial for the marginalized. Being real about her marital troubles just made great records. But the impact was real. Her stories were recorded and used to give others the courage to record their own and therefore justify change. 

I am so grateful for that coal miner’s daughter. I think she is wonderful and I am grateful she chose to sing.