This Country Hit Convinced Loretta Lynn and Her Duet Partner to Start Listening to Lynn’s Husband

When Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty started making music together in the early 70s, they were both quite established as solo artists. It was Loretta Lynn’s husband, Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn, who thought the pair was a good idea, even if their respective record labels at the time disagreed.

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In 1973, the two released Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man. Their third record, the title track was found by Oliver Lynn. Her husband clearly wasn’t an artist like the two of them. Still, it was when he found “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” that they both started listening to him and his opinion.

“Doo loved Conway,” Lynn later said (via Songfacts). “We’d been out on tour a couple weeks, and we’d come home. We walked in, and my husband was sitting at the desk. He didn’t usually come into the office. He says, ‘I’ve got a hit for you.’ And Conway says, ‘Oh, my God, he’s got a song for us?!’ It was called ‘Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man’, and it was a No. 1 hit. We kind of listened to Doo from then on.”

Not only was “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” a chart-topping single, but it also became their first song that was certified gold. Nominated for a Grammy, “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” is written by Becki Bluefield and Jim Owen.

Why Loretta Lynn’s Husband Wanted Her To Sing With Conway Twitty

It may seem counterintuitive for two successful solo artists to release music together. But to Oliver Lynn, the pairing was a smart decision.

“It made sense to us and Mooney (Loretta’s husband), but not to anybody else,” Twitty maintained in his biography, The Conway Twitty Story. “Everybody else fought us on it. Of course, I was my own boss and stood firm. As for Loretta, she finally just had to tell everybody, ‘Hey, we’re gonna do it, and that’s the way it is.’”

Twitty and Lynn went on to have several more successful songs together. Their other hits include “As Soon As I Hang Up The Phone”, “The Letter”, and “I Can’t Love You Enough”. But it’s “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” that remains their most popular.

The uptempo song says, “Hey, Louisiana woman / Mississippi man / We get together every time we can / The Mississippi River can’t keep us apart / There’s too much love in this Mississippi heart / Too much love in this Louisiana heart.”

Twitty and Lynn released seven more records after Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man. Their final project, Two’s A Party, came out in 1981.

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