In 1968, Loretta Lynn had a No.1 single with “Fist City”, the title track of an album she also released that year. Considering the subject matter, Lynn is not surprisingly the sole writer of the song.
“Fist City” is a first-person account of what Lynn threatens to do to a woman who is having an affair with her husband. The song says, “If you don’t wanna go to Fist City / You’d better detour around my town / ‘Cause I’ll grab you by the hair of your head / And I’ll lift you off of the ground / I’m not a-sayin’ my baby is a saint, ’cause he ain’t / And that he won’t cat around with a kitty / I’m here to tell you, gal, to lay off of my man / If you don’t wanna go to Fist City.”
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Lynn didn’t hide that her husband, Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn, was known to be a philanderer.
“He never took me nowhere,” Lynn later acknowledges. “I had four babies, one after the other. He walked by and pulled one of my pin curlers, and it hurt — he was drinking a little bit. I turned around to hit him on the shoulder, but I ended up hitting him in the mouth. Teeth flew everywhere.”
How Loretta Lynn Surprised Her Husband With “Fist City”
The singer knew Oliver Lynn was cheating on her, but that didn’t mean he got away with it. Lynn found out about her husband’s affair while she was recording in Nashville. By the time she drove the 75 miles home, “Fist City” was completed. But unlike much of her music, Lynn didn’t play “Fist City” for him ahead of time. Instead, he got to hear it with everyone else when she debuted the feisty tune at the Grand Ole Opry.
“I think my story sounded a little familiar,” Lynn reveals.
Apparently, Oliver Lynn’s mistress also thought “Fist City” sounded familiar. The song brought an end to their relationship, at least for a while.
“After the record came out, she stayed away for a good long time,” Lynn shares. “Then, in 1996, when Doo was on his deathbed, and I was taking care of him, the bell rang. When I opened the front door, this woman walked right past me. I didn’t know who she was at first, but then I realized it was her. She found Doo in his bed and was talking to him. Can you imagine? Honestly, I felt like killing her. As you can probably tell, I still don’t like her to this day.”
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