In 1980, Dottie West scored her first No. 1 single as a solo artist, with “A Lesson In Leavin’”. By the time the song was released, West had already been to the top of the charts with “Every Time Two Fools Collide”, her duet with Kenny Rogers. But it’s “A Lesson In Leavin’” that gave West her first solo No. 1 single, coming a full 20 years after her debut “Angel On Paper” single came out.
Although West had other hit singles, including “Would You Hold It Against Me”, “Country Sunshine”, and “Last Time I Saw Him”, a No. 1 single had eluded West until “A Lesson In Leavin’”.
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“A Lesson In Leavin’” is written by Randy Goodrum and Brent Maher, but Wynette became the song’s inspiration.
“We were trying to fashion some sort of new sound for Dottie,” Goodrum tells Songfacts. “And we had gotten to know Dottie, and she was this sassy, tongue-in-cheek southern woman with a real character to her voice. She was a good singer, but she had tons of character. So we thought, we’ve got to give her some meat on the bones here. We’ve got to go find some songs, and then write the ones we can’t find. And that day that I wrote ‘A Lesson In Leavin” with Brent.”
How Randy Goodrum and Brent Maher Wrote “A Lesson In Leavin’” for Dottie West
On the day that “A Lesson In Leavin’” was written, the two were in Goodrum’s studio when Maher started tapping out a beat on his legs. As Goodrum started to play along, they had a specific visual of West, one that brought the song to life.
“We thought about Dottie,” Goodrum recalls. “We imagined her standing in the back door with a frying pan in her hand, and a wink in the eye, and a tongue in the cheek. And the song just sort of fell onto the page. In about an hour, maybe, we had the whole thing pretty much written. We took that to Dottie, and she just flipped out. And that ended up being the core of the sound we were trying to create for her. We did build around it. We did some really nice sort of intelligent ballads for her.”
After “A Lesson In Leavin’”, West only had one more solo single to reach No. 1. In 1981, she hit No. 1 with “Are You Happy Baby”. In 1999, Jo Dee Messina had a Top 5 single with “A Lesson In Leavin’”.
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