You simply cannot talk about 1970s country music without mentioning Loretta Lynn. The previous decade saw her become the first woman to ever top the country music charts with the 1966 single “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man.” Six years later, Lynn beat out genre heavyweights like Merle Haggard and Charley Pride to capture the CMA Entertainer of the Year crown. In between those massive milestones, she topped the country charts on this day in 1972 with her signature song “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”
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Born April 14, 1932 in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, Loretta Lynn was the oldest daughter and second child born to Clara Marie “Clary” and Melvin Theodore “Ted” Webb. Ted supported himself, his wife, and their eight children working as a subsistence farmer by day and coal miner by night.
“You know, you hear about poor people in other countries. There are a lot of poor people in our country if you go to the right places. There are a lot of hollers, not just Butcher Holler. I’ve seen them,” Lynn told American Songwriter in 2020. “I guarantee you there’s kids right to this day in the Kentucky hills that don’t have shoes.”
“Coal Miner’s Daughter” recounts the daily realities Lynn’s family, and no doubt many others, faced during the Great Depression. She recalls watching her mother’s fingers bleed from scrubbing laundry on the washboard, and helping her father by bringing in water from the well at night.
[RELATED: The Only Song ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ Star Sissy Spacek Wrote with Loretta Lynn]
Loretta Lynn’s Signature Song Was Originally Much Longer
Loretta Lynn cut the song in producer Owen Bradley’s barn. The original version of “Coal Miner’s Daughter” consisted of 10 verses, but Lynn cut about four at Bradley’s insistence. “He said, “There’s already been an ‘El Paso,’ there didn’t need to be another one. He knew it was about my life, and he didn’t care about my life and figured nobody else would,” the 14-time ACM Award winner recalled. “So I cut out, I think, four verses. And I cried the whole time. And I have lost those verses, I do not remember them. I wish I did.”
Bradley was wrong, of course. “Coal Miner’s Daughter” became Lynn’s career-fourth No. 1 single and even crossed over into the Billboard Hot 100. A decade later, a musical biopic of the same name hit the big screen. The film starred Sissy Spacek, who won the Oscar for Best Actress in 1981 for her portrayal of Lynn.
“The song doesn’t tell half of it,” Lynn told American Songwriter. “If I told the whole story, nobody would believe it now anyway.”
Featured image by Richard E. Aaron/Redferns
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