Loretta Lynn Part II

Some of her best known songs were about having a difficult husband or marriage, not schmaltzy love ballads. Loretta’s husband was not always faithful and she wrote some of her songs about fighting for her man, or telling him off for drinking and fooling around. They included “Fist City” and “You ain’t woman enough to take my Man”, and “Don’t come home a drinking, with loving on your Mind”. Other songs she wrote or sang were considered scandalous and not played on the radio. She had a wryly comic song, (“One’s on the Way”) written by Shel Silverstein, about a woman, who is stuck at home, with too many kids, a husband who is out with his buddies, and another baby on the way. She was aware of “Women’s Lib” and she wasn’t hostile to it... But she clearly felt that while well to do women were starting to have careers, and comfortable liberated lives, it wasn’t that way for working class women. There were plenty of women in America who were still a long way from “Freedom”. They still married too young, had too many pregnancies, and didn’t have careers. If they worked outside the home, it was probably in a low paid part time job. And Loretta’s songs spoke to these women. Her song “The Pill” was considered shocking and was banned on radio. But she wasn’t afraid to push the boundaries of what a woman artiste could sing about. She spoke up for women, just as Dolly Parton fought for women’s rights to be sexy and free, and not just dutiful housebound housewives. Both women were feisty and feminist, in their way. while in the 50’s women in country were often decried for being sexual, in the 60’s and 70’s, Loretta was singing about women who loved their kids but were tired at times and cross... Or who told off the women who tried to flirt with their husbands. In 1980, Loretta’s first autobiography “Coal Miner’s Daughter” became a hit film with Sissy Spacek In the lead. Tommy Lee Jones played Doolittle. She also formed a singing partnership, with Conway Twitty, and they duetted for many years.