Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [102]
I spend half an hour at the vanity, just making up. A writer named Carol Offen once asked me why I got dressed up so fancy in these days when a lot of women are wearing blue jeans and letting their hair just hang. I said that’s all right for other women, but I think my fans expect me to look a certain way. It’s part of my personality on stage. Also, I enjoy seeing me change from Loretta, the gal in jeans, to Loretta, the woman in the long gown. It’s a little like seeing one of the Hollywood stars appear before my own eyes. I guess my Mommy should never have let me sit looking at pictures of movie stars when I was a baby.
But lately I’ve been cutting down on all the phony stuff. I’m tired of all that work, pretending I’m something I ain’t. I’m tired of the rollers and the creams, the eyelash curlers, the lipsticks, the powder. I still use hot curlers to get my hair curly, then I spray it. I must use a truckload of it every year. I used to wear a fall made out of Korean hair, after some fans cut off my curls with a pocket knife. But the hairpiece was giving me a headache, so I gave it up this year. I don’t wear false eyelashes anymore. Too many fans were pulling them off. From now on, what you see is what I’ve got.
I keep fussing in front of the mirror, curl by curl. It still ain’t right, but there’s Jim Webb knocking at the door.
“Five minutes, Mom,” he says. Then he takes my arm and we rush off the bus, through a stage door, and we’re backstage. I take one look around me—same old theater, just like always, a few familiar faces backstage. Then I hear the announcer say, “Ladies and gentlemen, the first lady of country music, Miss Loretta Lynn.” And I see a spotlight out there, and I wobble out in my high-heel shoes, as clumsy as ever. Dave Thornhill kicks over the first notes to “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and we’re off.
We’ve been starting with the same four or five songs—“Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “The Squaw’s on the Warpath,” “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” “Me and Bobby McGee,” and “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man.”
It’s always the same songs, and sometimes people ask me if I get tired of singing ’em. Yes, I do. At first it’s good, but you go for years and you really get tired of ’em. But people want to hear your hit songs, so you’ve got to.
After the opening songs, I introduce my band. I never know what they’re going to do next. After we’re on the road a while, our biggest kick is making each other laugh. After it gets real bad, I’ll say, “Boys, you’d better pay your way in tomorrow, because you ain’t performing for the audience tonight.” But I’m as bad as they are.
It’s real dangerous when you’ve got a man like Don Ballinger around. Don’s my “front man”—the one with the big smile who warms up the audience at the start of the show. He’s always telling the audience how bad he’s paid, or he pretends he’s scouting for pretty girls in the crowd. He’s got his good points, though. When I’m not feeling well, he’ll start clowning around until I’ve got my strength back.
Tonight he starts talking about the girls he saw from the bus.
“There was a bunch of tanks,” Don says. “Real big ones. Sherman tanks.”
I put my hand in front of my face. Only one way to hush that boy up—that’s to sing. So we sing a few numbers, then I introduce my other musicians. Gene Dunlap, our Louisiana piano man, sings in that deep “country soul” voice, just like a white Ray Charles. Then it’s time for me and Ernest to sing “Sweet Thang.”
You never know what’s gonna happen. But fortunately, there’s no stunt this time. And it ain’t Hoot, Ernest’s bus driver walking on stage, but it’s really Ernest. Thank goodness, because this is still one of my favorite songs.
Now we’re getting toward the end. I do “They Don’t Make 'Em Like My Daddy.