AARP Hearing Center
When I sat down with Loretta Lynn in her spacious home in Hurricane Mills, Tenn. (she owns the entire town), she had just finished recording Full Circle, a joyous album that combines new material with some favorite old songs, revisited. After six decades in the spotlight, Lynn has no plans to retire: "I just don't think you're ever through singin'."
On gratitude … and grit
I almost died from mastoiditis when I was real little — I didn't walk till I was 4 — but God was on my side, and I thank him every day for that. We lived in a one-room cabin in Butcher Holler, Ky., till I was 9 years old. Then Daddy bought an old house for $600, and we thought we was in a mansion. It wasn't an easy life. But as long as we had beans and fried potatoes, we thought we was living great.
The apple of his eye
Mommy would pack Daddy's lunch for the mines. When I was 7 or 8 years old, I'd set out on the hill and wait for him to come home from work. He'd have on his hard-shell cap, and he'd be so covered with coal dust that all you could see was the whites of his eyes. Daddy always saved a bite of apple or a little bit of sandwich in his dinner bucket for me. I wouldn't trade nothing for that.
Snake in the grass?
There was no roads and no cars in the Holler when I lived there — just a little path about this wide, and we walked that path to school every day. I was always scared a snake would jump out of the weeds and grab us.
We all sang
My mommy sang. My daddy sang. Whatever instrument they picked up — fiddle, mandolin, guitar — they could play it. I thought everybody lived that way, singing and playing whatever they wanted. When I got married and moved to Washington [state, in 1949], I found out otherwise.
When times get tough, the tough get sewing
I made my own dresses and, let me tell you, they was tight, short little things at first, 'cause I didn't have the money to buy much material. Or frills: I'd sit in the back of the club and take the fringe off one, then sew it on the other (I only had two) and go onstage in a different color.
The accidental hit
During a dinner break in a Wilburn Brothers show, I took my guitar back to the bathroom, sat down and strummed, "Well, I was born a coal miner's daughter." I didn't really mean to write about it, but as soon as I sang that, I remember thinking to myself, You know, that could be a good song!
Siren of the times
"The Pill," "Rated X," "One's on the Way" — those songs I wrote in the '70s — I was just singing what a lot of women lived, you know?