Coal Miner's Daughter

I bloodied my husband’s nose the other night. I didn’t know I was doing it—I just woke up at three in the morning, and Doolittle was holding a towel to his nose. He told me I sat straight up, in my sleep, yelling, “Do you see this ring? Do you see this ring?” And I was a-throwing my hands around until my fingers dug into his nose.

“Loretta, what in the world were you talking about?” Doo asked me.

I said I was dreaming about some old guy that tried to make a date with me when I first started singing. I didn’t have no ring at the time—we were too poor for that kind of stuff—but now in my dream I was showing that old buzzard I had a ring.

What does it mean when you carry on in your sleep like that? Somebody said it means you’ve got something on your mind. I said, “I know that.” I ain’t got much education, but I got some sense.

To me, this talking is almost like I’ve got things inside me that never came out before. Usually, when something is bothering me, I write a song that tells my feelings, like, “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind).” That’s really about me and my marriage.

I’ve still got things inside me—sad things, happy things—that people don’t know about. I’ve had so many changes in my life, and I feel like there’s more to come. I’m superstitious; I believe in reincarnation and extrasensory perception; and I’ve got this feeling about more changes in my life. It’s like a girl feels when her body starts to grow up, or a woman feels when a baby starts to grow inside her. You know it’s there; you feel the stirrings, but it’s deeper than words.

People know the basic facts about me—how I was married when I wasn’t quite fourteen and had four babies by the time I was eighteen. Sometimes my husband tells me, “I raised you the way I wanted you to be.” And it’s true. I went from Daddy to Doo, and there’s always been a man telling me what to do.

I was just a kid—didn’t know nothing—picking strawberries in the fields with my babies on a blanket, under an umbrella. I’d change a few diapers, my fingers all rough and dirty, give ’em a few bottles, and go back to picking. So when I sing those country songs about women struggling to keep things going, you could say I’ve been there.

It’s like that hit record I had in 1975, “The Pill,” about this woman who’s taking birth control pills so she won’t have no more babies. Well, they didn’t have none of them pills when I was younger, or I’d have been swallowing ’em like popcorn. See, the men who run some of the radio stations, they banned the record because they didn’t like what I was saying. But the women knew. Like I say, I know what it’s like to be pregnant and nervous and poor.

Now I’ve got this huge ranch in Tennessee, and I’ve been on the cover of Newsweek magazine, and I was the first woman ever named Entertainer of the Year in country music. I also got honorable mention in the Gallup poll as one of the “most admired women” in the United States. Lordy, I even got to meet Gregory Peck!

But some of my friends who know me best say they wouldn’t trade places with me for a million dollars because of the pace I lead. I’m still a-traveling nearly two hundred nights a year to meet my fans who’ve given me everything I’ve got. In one way, I’m still working as hard as when I was working in the fields. But I’d have to admit the stakes are higher.

When I first came to Nashville, people called us “hillbilly singers” and hardly gave country music any respect. We lived in old cars and dirty hotels, and we ate when we could. Now country music is a big business. You go around the country, there’s a thousand radio stations broadcasting our music. Why, they’ve even got a country station in New York City, where I played in that big building—what’s it called, some kind of garden? Yeah, Madison Square Garden, that’s right. So I’ve seen country music go uptown, like we say, and I’m proud I was there when it happened.

They’ve also made a movie called Nashville that people tell me was one of the biggest movies of 1975. Well, I ain’t seen it, so I can’t tell you whether it’s any good or not. I don’t follow the movies much, and I’d much rather see a Walt Disney movie if I do go.

But some of my friends told me there’s two characters in there that resemble me and Doolittle—at least somewhat. Well, I met that girl who played the top country singer in the movie. She came to Nashville and talked to me and watched me perform for a few weeks. If she tried to imitate me in the movie, that’s their problem. If they really wanted me, why didn’t they just ask me?

But I ain’t worrying about no movies. My records are still selling, and I get more offers for shows than I can handle. So if you’re wondering whether that character in the movie is me, it ain’t. This book is me. I’ve got my own life to lead.

And my life hasn’t been easy, not even now. I’ve had chest surgery (nonmalignant, thank God) and blood poisoning, and sometimes I pass out on stage from migraine headaches. You hear all kinds of rumors about my sick spells, and also some rumors about me having trouble with aspirin pills. It wasn’t what people thought—but I’ll get to that later.

Also, I’ve had a bunch of death threats that we managed to keep secret. For a while, there was one or two people following me around until the police got ’em. Now I’ve got people protecting me all the time. Growing up in eastern Kentucky like I did, I’m used to having a few guns around to protect me (not that I’m crazy about waking up in the morning and seeing Doolittle’s pistol right there on the dressing table).

You’ve heard my husband’s name is “Mooney,” right? Well, I call him “Doolittle” because that’s his old Kentucky nickname. Everybody else calls him “Mooney,” which is what they called him in Washington State when they found out he used to run moonshine.

You’ll hear a lot of stories about Doolittle if you hang around Nashville long enough. Some of ’em are true and some of ’em ain’t. Doo is a smart man in a lot of ways. We’ve been married for more than twenty-five years, but we’ve still got some problems that I don’t know if we’ll ever straighten out.

When we started on this book, me and Doolittle talked it over about how much we should tell about ourselves. Suppose I don’t like the way he acts when he’s drinking. Or suppose Doo thinks I’m meaner than a snake. Should we tell our troubles to other people in a book?

Well, Doo leaned back in his chair and thought about it for a minute. Then he said, “Hell’s fire, Loretta, just tell the story the way it happened. I’ve always said you should never try to cover up things. Look, we’re not perfect. Let’s not pretend we are.”

I agree with that. Nobody’s perfect. The only one that ever was, was crucified. And sometimes I think our problems are made worse by the kind of business we’re in.

Doo don’t really like to be cooped up. He’d rather be out on the ranch, training his bird dogs, and I don’t blame him. Heck, I don’t like being cooped up either, only it seems that’s what my life has become.

It’s a strange deal. I’m supposed to be a country singer, writing songs about marriage and family and the way normal folks live. But mostly I’m living in motel rooms and traveling on my special bus with my private bedroom in the back. I don’t even open the shades in my bus anymore. I’ve seen every highway in the United States by now, and they all look alike to me.

Playing these road shows is a weird experience. One minute I’m out on that stage, usually dressed in my long-sleeved, floor-length gowns, with my hair hanging down to my shoulders, smiling at my fans. There’s such a feeling of love between me and those people. I know it shows on my face. Being onstage is the best part of my career. I just say whatever comes into my head, and I joke with my band, and we all have a good time. It’s the only time when I really feel grown-up and in control of things.

As soon as that show is over, I sign autographs if I’m not feeling sick, and then we pull away into the darkness and the fans just melt away. Then it’s just me and Doolittle and the boys in my band rolling down the highway.

It’s kind of lonely on the road. My first four kids are kind of grown-up now, but I still miss them and my eleven-year-old twins, who mostly stay home with the housekeeper. I’ve been trying to cut back on my road dates, but we still need the money because of some of the things we’d like to do. When you’ve got around fifty people on your payroll—heck, it used to be sixty-eight—the account books tell you to keep working.

It’s getting so bad I don’t even feel comfortable in my own house anymore. I get home for a day or two, and by the time I unpack my bags and see what’s changed since I left, it’s time to get moving again. Then all my family and fans come to visit, and I start getting so nervous in my own house that I sometimes even check into a motel in Nashville.

I was fighting with Doolittle one day about what kind of wallpaper we should put in our bedroom. We do the papering ourselves. When you’re poor folks from eastern Kentucky, you don’t lose the habit of doing things for yourself. Anyway, I wanted one color and Doo wanted another. Finally he said, “Hey, I spend more time in this house than you do.” That hurt me, but it was the truth.

Being alone so much, I often get to thinking about my younger days. Things I’d like to tell somebody, if I had somebody to talk to. I can remember how poor we were—waiting to get new shoes in the fall, walking across the first frost in my bare feet, sometimes sharing shoes until your feet got bunions on ’em.

It’s funny how most of the things I remember are about being poor. When I first started making money in Nashville, I was convinced I was gonna be poor again. Now I’ve sold millions of records, and my company tells me I’ve got a million dollars just sitting in the bank. But I could survive if we got poor again. In some ways, that was the best part of my life, learning how to survive.

Somebody said I should write all these memories down. But it ain’t like writing a song. I mean, when I get a title for a song, I scribble it down on a napkin or an old paper bag—anything that’s handy. Then when I get back to my room, I just start singing those words until I’ve got me a song.

People say I can’t read or write because I’ve only got about a fourth-grade education. But I can read and write some. I’m not pretending I know how to write a book—not even a book about me. I’m too nervous to even sit in front of a tape recorder for long. I’ve always been full of nervous energy, and I’ve gotten used to clowning around onstage, and offstage, too.

But I’m not really as happy as I seem. I’ve known a lot of sad times in my life that don’t square with that lady you see clowning up on the stage. You get used to sadness, growing up in the mountains, I guess. I was given up to die when I was a baby. I came close to drowning near my ranch a few years ago. And the doctors told me my heart stopped on the operating table when I had chest surgery in 1972. Ever since then, I’ve wanted to tell my life story.

The way I did it was this: The writers have always been really nice to me, and I’ve always enjoyed sitting and talking to ’em. But we finally got together with this one writer who used to live in Kentucky, name of George. He knows my part of the country real well; he’s visited the coal mines, and he’s been up to the hollers, so he speaks my language. Now for the past year he’s been traveling with me and Doolittle. I’ve taken him to Butcher Holler and introduced him to my uncle Corman. I’ve taken him to the ranch and shown him all my scrapbooks. He’s met my best friends, like the Johnson sisters. Him and his family took me to that itty-bitty Plymouth Rock up in Massachusetts. I couldn’t believe how small it was. I got bigger rocks in my driveway.

Anyway, I told George, “We’re gonna have us a hardback book. Doggone right, it’s gonna be a good book. Anything I go at, I go at it hard, because I only do what I want. It’s gonna be the best book about country music, because I don’t take no seconds.”

The only problem is how are we gonna spice this book up? I’ve heard about movie stars who had all kinds of marriages and adventures to reveal. But I’ve been married to the same man for all this time. The way we fight sometimes, you can tell. I’m trying to lead a good Christian life, especially since I got baptized two years ago. So there ain’t too much spicy to tell about me—just the truth.

So I’m gonna start at the beginning and keep going, from Butcher Holler, where I was born, to Hurricane Mills, where I live now. By the time I get done, you’re gonna know about the good times and the bad times in my life.

You can bet your last scrip penny I checked out every word before they sent it to the book company. And if I didn’t think it was true, out it went.

The first thing I insisted was that it sound like me. When all those city folks try to fix up my talking, all they do is mess me up. Like the way I pronounce the word “holler.” That’s our word for the low space between two mountains. City people pronounce it “hollow” but that ain’t the way I pronounce it. This is my book. Instead of using Webster’s Dictionary, we’re using Webb’s Dictionary—Webb was my maiden name.

So when you’re reading this book, just try to picture me up onstage, singing my songs and clowning around, and try to hear me saying “Butcher Holler.” Then you’ll know it’s me.