While working on her 45th album, Wouldn’t It Be Great, Loretta Lynn suffered a stroke in May 2017 at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, forcing her to postpone the album. By early 2018, Lynn was faced with another setback when she fractured her hip after a fall at her home, delaying the album once again.
“Before my stroke last year, I had been working hard on a new album and was so excited about it,” said Lynn in 2018. “This new record means so much to me, but this last year I had to focus on my health and decided to hold up the release. It’s been a tough year, but I’m feelin’ good now and look forward to it comin’ out.”
By July 2018, Lynn had already started shooting music videos at her ranch before the album release in September of that year and pulled its title from the song she recorded 25 years earlier with Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette for their collaborative album, Honky Tonk Angels.
Videos by American Songwriter
[RELATED: 3 Songs You Didn’t Know Loretta Lynn’s Husband Oliver “Doo” Lynn Wrote]
“Ain’t No Time to Go”
Along with the nostalgic “These Ole Blue,” Lynn and her daughter, Patsy Lynn Russell, who produced the album with Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash‘s son John Carter Cash, also co-wrote another song on Wouldn’t It Be Great, “Ain’t No Time to Go.”
Disguised in its mid-tempo toe-tapping bluegrass movement, the lyrics touch on mortality with Lynn listing all the reasons she wants to stick around a little longer.
Spring is just around the bend
Ain’t no time to go darlin’
Fields need plowin’ and the fences mend
Ain’t no time to go darlin’
Stay with me, a little bit longer
Stay with me, if you can
Stay with me, a little bit longer
Ain’t no time to go darlin’
The children need your guiding hand
Ain’t no time to go darlin’
Your son’s too young to be a man
Ain’t no time to go darlin’
Stay with me, a little bit longer
Stay with me, if you can
Stay with me, a little bit longer
Ain’t no time to go darlin’
I ain’t as strong as you think I am
Ain’t no time to go darlin’
And I’ll be doin’ the best I can
Ain’t no time to go darlin’
Stay with me, a little bit longer
Stay with me, if you can
Stay with me, a little bit longer
Ain’t no time to go darlin’
I know heaven called your name
Ask the Lord if he’ll please wait
Stay with me, a little bit longer
Stay with me, if you can
Stay with me, a little bit longer
Ain’t no time to go darlin’
Along with Wouldn’t It Be Great, from 2016 onward, Patsy also wrote and co-produced all of her mother’s albums with Cash, including Full Circle and White Christmas Blue in 2016, and Lynn’s final release, Still Woman Enough, in 2021.
“She’s a producer and a songwriter,” said Lynn of Patsy, “and helps keep so much of my world running.”
“I’m in every song I’ve written.”
In 2018, Lynn also revealed that the title track of Wouldn’t It Be Great was the last song she sang to her husband Oliver Lynn before he passed away in 1996.
Lynn, who died October 4, 2022, at age 90, went on to say that songwriting is “more important to her now” and added, “because it’s my life. And I write about my life. I’m in every song I’ve written.”
Photo: Loretta Lynn at the 16th Annual Americana Music Festival & Conference, September 19, 2015, in Nashville, Tennessee. (Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for Americana Music)
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