Remember When Loretta Lynn Scored Her First No. 1 Hit?
Loretta Lynn is one of the most important singer-songwriters in the history of country music, but even legends have to start somewhere. Lynn was already a veteran country singer when she scored her first No. 1 hit with Don t Come Home A-Drinkin (With Lovin on Your Mind) on Feb. 11, 1967.
Lynn co-wrote the song with her sister, Peggy Sue Wright. Owen Bradley produced the track, which was the first of a number of controversial songs Lynn would write and record that came to include Rated X, The Pill and more. Lynn s own turbulent marriage to her husband, Oliver Doolittle Lynn, inspired the song, which depicts a married woman rejecting her husband s sexual advances when he comes home very drunk.
50 Years Later: Loretta Lynn’s ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ Album
Get ready for the vinyl reissue of Lynn s classic, February 12.
February 9, 2021 CIRCA 1972: Loretta Lynn poses for a portrait wearing a blue denim suit with cows in the background leaning up against a fence in circa 1972. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Loretta Lynn’s 1970 single “Coal Miner’s Daughter” showed a master storyteller at work. Through well-observed and finely detailed verses, Lynn told the story of her hardscrabble Kentucky childhood in a sincere, warmhearted manner that touched all listeners, regardless of their own personal upbringing. Lynn described how her father labored in the Kentucky coal mines, raising “eight kids on a miner’s pay,” while her mother worked tirelessly to keep the family washed and nourished, in all senses of that term. ‘
David McClister
When writers, like myself, criticize Music Row’s stewardship of country music, it’s usually with the best interests of artists like Brit Taylor in mind. It’s never been about “pop” country. It’s about a business model that tells pure hearts and great voices to adapt or die, to fake it until they make it - and thereafter. The title of Taylor’s debut album
Real Me
rebukes this coercion at several levels, but the one that comes through the speakers is a voice of uncompromised grace, a voice The Biz couldn’t or wouldn’t let be.
K.D. Lang
Pulling out all the Nashville stops, k.d. lang s 1988 album is a meticulously crafted work, her bid for mainstream country acceptance, and an homage to her idol Patsy Cline. Surrounded by the brilliance of Owen Bradley s s.
more »tring-laced production and a host of legendary pickers (Buddy Emmons and Pete Wade) and singers (Kitty Wells, Brenda Lee, Loretta Lynn), lang s voice soars and moans like a dove. After the lush Chris Isaak-penned opener Western Stars, lang follows with more-familiar country writers, from Roger Miller ( Lock, Stock and Teardrops ) to Harlan Howard ( I m Down to My Last Cigarette ). Both a commercial (the album went gold) and artistic success, Shadowland ranks as one of the best country records of the 1980s. Roy Francis Kasten
Still Woman Enough, due in March, with a reissue on black vinyl of
Coal Miner’s Daughter.
MCA Nashville/UMe will release
the new edition of the vintage 1971 set on February 12. “It feels like it was just yesterday,” Lynn mused on social media. “50 years since I released the
Coal Miner’s Daughter album.”
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The original LP came out in the first week of 1971, following the appearance the previous October of its title song. The autobiographical song became the title of Lynn’s 1976 autobiography (also due for a new edition in February) and inspired the 1980 film about her life starring Sissy Spacek. She won an Oscar for her portrayal of the country star and her humble origins; the film went on to be the seventh highest-grossing picture of the year, and its soundtrack was certified gold.