Day 94: Loretta Lynn – Coal Miner’s Daughter
I am the first to admit that I don’t know anything about country music. What can I say, I’m European. Sometimes I might cry along to some Dolly Parton and maybe listen to some Johnny Cash here and there, but this is one genre where I just have absolutely zero information in the internal Kat Rolodex of Music Knowledge. I figured I need to start working on that with some of the classics of the genre, so I thought I’d start with Loretta Lynn.
Album cover courtesy of Decca Records
Loretta Lynn was born in 1932 in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky. She grew up in a mining community in the Appalachians as a coal miner’s daughter, living in a log cabin in her childhood during the great depression. When she was 15 years old, she got married and moved with her husband to Custer, Washington. There, she wrote the song “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” which prompted her and her husband to drive her around the country, convincing radio stations to play it. Their effort paid off, as the song became a hit shortly after.
Coal Miner’s Daughter is Lynn’s sixth studio album, released in 1971, cemented her status as a country music legend, as the title track reached 1 on the Billboard Country Chart. The album also spawned an autobiography and an Oscar-winning film starring Sissy Spacek.
I don’t know why I’ve never really gotten into country. I love good music, I love guitars and I love hearing a good story. I don’t particularly know what took me so long, I’ve really enjoyed today’s record.
Loretta Lynn is the first person to say that she’s not a feminist, famously quipping that she’s not a “big fan of women's liberation”, but her songs are about a life and relationship from a woman’s point of view in a way that’s pretty fearless for the time, with all the difficulties, pain and mistakes that come with it. She seems like a woman who’s been through a lot and won’t take any shit from anyone.
The opening song is about her past, looking back at growing up poor in Appalachia with her mother reading the bible by an oil lamp and washing their clothes until her fingers bled, and it really is a lovely song. Most of the other ones are about her relationships – one about how she’ll have her head examined because something must be wrong with how she’s letting her partner treat her, while another laments how her partner is never home.
Then there’s the ample material about cheating. If there’s one criticism I have here, it’s that lyrically, the lady just doesn’t have a consistent view on extramarital affairs. One minute, she’s saying something along the lines of “Listen, I know he’s your husband but I’ll just keep bumpin’ uglies with him even if it’s wrong, try and stop me”, and then a few songs later she’s saying she’ll hunt some lady down for flirting with her husband? Loretta, please be serious.
I like the record. Her version of her collaborator Conway Twitty’s “Hello Darlin’” could probably stir some kind of emotion even in the coldest person. Coal Miner’s Daughter is an 8/10.