Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [42]
Three of the boys live near Mommy and work in the factories around there. Herman, my second brother, sings with a country group in a tavern in Wabash. He’s pretty good, and one of his daughters, named Hermalee, is coming along as a singer, too. Betty Ruth is the only one of my family who lives apart from everybody. She lives in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where her husband is thinking of going into church work.
Four of us, of course, live around Nashville and work in show business. This is a difficult business to make it in, and I’ve tried to encourage ’em and open doors for ’em, but it leads to a lot of problems. There’s only so many who can make it big in show business. Mommy gets caught in the middle because she wants all her kids to get ahead, like any mother, I guess, and she don’t treat me any different from the rest, which is good. The only difference is that I’ve been able to really make it big in Nashville.
Peggy Sue has had some good records and has written some nice songs. Now she’s married to Sonny Wright, who used to be my front man. When they perform together, they’re a good duet.
Jay Lee was my front man when I first started to sing out in Washington. I brought him to Nashville with me after I moved there, and he’s making it on his own. He plays a real good fiddle, and he plays dates on the road.
And Brenda, of course, changed her name to Crystal Gayle and is making it on her own. She used to travel around with me when she was younger, but you’ve got to go on your own sooner or later. Otherwise, people are always comparing you to your big sister, and nobody likes that.
It’s a problem, being related to another performer. We knew this son of a famous man singer—not Hank Williams Junior, by the way—who told a disc jockey, “I’m strictly on my own. I don’t want anybody to judge me by my father.” He said some other things, and he was so nasty about it that, as soon as that boy left the studio, the disc jockey said, “The next sound you hear will be the record breaking.” And he broke it, right on the air. It’s a rough deal all around, them trying to make it when there’s bound to be comparisons.
I know it’s hard on Crystal Gayle, because I can see how she reacts to it. I remember one time, she and I went on the radio together and the disc jockey said to her, “Well, I guess you’re a coal miner’s daughter, too.” He was just trying to make conversation, you know. And Crystal said, “No, I’m not.”
The disc jockey sounded confused and said, well, if we had the same parents, she must be a coal miner’s daughter. But Crystal said, no, she was raised in the city, in Indiana. And it’s the truth. She don’t remember her early days in Kentucky; her ways are different from mine. She married a boy from Wabash named Bill Gotzimos who had long hair. He about scared my family half to death, them thinking Crystal was going with a hippie. But long hair didn’t bother me—I could tell he was a real nice boy from a good family. He was on the honor roll at the University of Indiana. When they got married, he put off his career in psychology to help Crystal with her career.
I’ve tried to do all I could for the three of ’em. I had ’em on Decca Records—now MCA—for a long time, but they couldn’t come up with hit songs regular. I’ve had ’em in my talent agency. But if you help ’em, they feel guilty. If you don’t help ’em, you feel guilty. And me being so close, it’s just natural to want to help.
It must be tough on them. Everywhere they go, people judge them as “Loretta Lynn’s family.” I wouldn’t want that to happen to me. I think probably the best thing is to tell everybody in Nashville that I ain’t opening no doors for my family. That way, when they make it big, they’ll be more proud of themselves. See, even if a singer opens doors for her family, she can’t guarantee they’ll be nice to the fans, or work hard, or show up on time, or write hit songs. One thing Doolittle taught me, which I never forgot, was