Thrifty Tunes 04.04.09: Loretta Lynn

Posted by Paul Hollingsworth on 04.04.2009

Few musical rags to riches stories can compare to Loretta Lynn's. Take a trip down to Butcher Holler, Kentucky and meet country music's answer to Cinderella, in this week's Thrifty Tunes.

What Makes Me Tick - Loretta Lynn

I've been on a bit of a country music kick the last several weeks, which began, innocently enough, with this review and continued with this one. I liked both, even though country music isn't a genre I spend much time or money on. Most of the country music which has been popular during my lifetime is so influenced by whatever is happening in pop music at the time that there's no real dividing line. I want rock music, pop music or whatever to sound like it belongs with the classics of its genre. Even genre bending acts like Gnarls Barkley and Beck , which are part soul, part funk, part rock and part insanity, manage to stay true to their original influences, even if they bend and shape them into something else entirely. You can hear Sly & The Family Stone , for instance, in much of Gnarls Barkley, even though the vast majority of their songs wouldn't fit on any of Sly's records. Country, mostly, has gotten so far away from its origins that there's no connecting point to its past. Expansion and growth is one thing, but abandonment is quite another and quite disheartening.

Both Case's and Sinclair's albums are likely filed under 'alt-country' at your local record shop although there's nothing 'alt' about either. (Well, except for Neko's thirty minute field recording of what I've learned are frogs around her Vermont farm.) Both women succeeded because they crafted albums which rely almost fully on the basics of country music and none of the excess and Top 40 poppiness which plagues almost everything which comes from Nashville these days. Both women, and a handful of other musicians with similar ambitions, look for inspiration not from whatever happens to be popular at the time, but at some of the originators of traditional country music. With that in mind, I picked up Loretta Lynn's 1970 album, Coal Miner's Daughter from the recently bought pile and gave it a fresh spin.

The album begins with Lynn's signature tune, "Coal Miner's Daughter", which even a casual fan like me can rattle off the chorus to in my sleep. The details of the song are concrete and draw you in to Lynn's story. The best thing about the song is its authenticity. It's not made up, preprogrammed, or overthought. The slide guitar, the almost cliché bass line and the brush style drumming are well in the background, allowing Lynn's voice to shine alone in the spotlight. It's as earnest as a song can be, but because it's Lynn's story and her lyrics, it never crosses the line into camp or irony. This is her life, and the listener is fortunate that she's chosen to share it.

The first cover of the album, Conway Twitty's "Hello Darlin;" follows the opening track. Twitty's version was one of his biggest hits, and dripped with sensual anticipation, or rather it did. Songs like this haven't fared so well into the present day, as all the coy wordplay and innuendo is lost to younger listeners brought up on the internet and 'Sex and The City' and so forth. Lynn's version with the obvious gender reversal makes the song sound a bit fresher, but it's still a definite product of it's time.

Another cover, Glen Campbell's "The Less of Me , fares much better. It's a timeless song with a simple lyric, but Lynn sells it completely. It's a song which wouldn't sound out of place sung by a church choir. Traditional gospel music is also a tough sell to me, but songs like this help to reconnect country to gospel music, which is one of it's main influences. It's been said that country music is the soundtrack to a hangover you experience in a church pew after a wild Saturday night. ("Sunday Morning Coming Down" for instance) If that's so, then songs like this are the equal to the promises and barters you make with yourself or your deity to be better the following weekend. "For The Good Times", written by Kris Kristofferson is one of the best tracks on the album. Kristofferson, at the time, was beginning his ascent into the songwriting stratosphere. (If you think Kristofferson is only that guy from that one Barbara Streisand movie or just as bad, that guy from the first Blade movie, you owe it to yourself to pick up some of his albums. You'll thank me for it later. Anything from 1970 to 1976 or so would do, or the first Highywayman album from 1985.) Kristofferson's lyrics and Lynn's voice mesh well together and it's easily the second best song on this side of the album, after the title track.

Side two opens with Lynn's "What Makes Me Tick". Lynn, obviously writing from personal experience about her less-than-faithful husband, "Doolittle", shows a range of emotion in two short minutes that gets to the core of what made her such an influential artist. In the song, she's faithful to a fault to a man who didn't deserve it, and even she's not sure why. This isn't puppy dog love full of rainbows and cutesy sentiment - this is an adult relationship with adult problems. Lynn seldom wrote many of her songs, but when she did, she had something to say. It wasn't until Jack White helped her record Van Lear Rose in 2004, that she recorded a full album on which she wrote the majority of the songs. Lynn never backed away from tackling issues in her songs, (See, for instance "Dear Uncle Sam", written about the Vietnam War, or "Rated X" about the double standard divorced women faced at the time) but this simple song about being hurt by the one you love most is Lynn at her best.

Sometimes, however, Lynn didn't pick the best songs to cover, for after a good version of Marty Robbins' "Too Far", Lynn tried to bring some life to Anne Murray's "Snowbird." Anne Murray is directly responsible for unleashing the unholy evil that is Celine Dion on the world, so I can't pretend to like a song, even by a superior singer and musician like Lynn, that is associated with Murray. I'll never know why Lynn recorded the song, and she tries her best, but the material is so far beneath her, it's impossible for her to do anything with it.

Complete Track Listing: (1970 Release on Decca Records)

Side One:

1. Coal Miner's Daughter
2. Hello Darlin'
3. Less of Me
4. Any One, Any Worse, Any Where
5. For the Good Times
6. The Man of the House

Side Two:
1. What Makes Me Tick
2. Another Man Loved Me Last Night
3. It'll Be Open Season on You
4. Too Far
5. Snowbird



Thanks to Jack White, a whole new generation of music fans found Lynn. (If you don't have Van Lear Rose , you should go get it. Now.) If you have any interest in traditional country music, Lynn is one of its most important components. While this album isn't particularly strong except for a few songs, it serves as a good introduction to her music. Lynn is much more than just a coal miner's daughter, and finding deep album cuts of hers like "What Makes Me Tick" and "Too Far" is a special thrill. Also, next Saturday is Record Store Day. If you're lucky enough to have a local record store around, be sure to go buy and pick up something. I'll be either at WaxnFacts in Atlanta or Vinyl Fever in Tallahassee. I'm sure both will have a few Loretta albums for you to try.


Pickett Stars : Three out of Five

Next Week : Behind Closed Doors by Charlie Rich