Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [49]
I’ve got one of the biggest fan clubs in the country. They pay dues of a few dollars a year, and they help run the activities. There is also the International Fan Club Association, run by those three Johnson girls. There’s around 20,000 members in that club, and most of them really root for me, and I appreciate it.
Let me show you what the fans have done for my career. I was just trying to get established, making a trip to Colorado on my own, without Doolittle. The Johnson girls had heard my record and they had pestered some club in Aurora, Colorado, to hire me for one night for fifteen dollars. I didn’t know them from the Rocky Mountains, but I got on the bus and went.
That bus driver was the meanest man, telling me how great George Jones was and how he never heard of me. I didn’t mind that, but I kept telling him that I was supposed to get off the bus in Aurora and he insisted I had to go to downtown Denver. All of a sudden, looking out the window, I saw the club I was supposed to play in, the Four Seasons, and a road sign that said Aurora. I hollered for him to let me off. He finally did and I had to walk back to the club with my guitar, my purse and my overnight bag. That was Loretta Lynn, making it in the Big Time.
I got to this club and I was so nervous, just pacing around and stuff, and I was looking for a friendly face. I kept saying, “They ain’t here, they ain’t here.” But then a disc jockey pointed out these three girls standing around backstage. And we were so friendly, you could have sworn we knew each other all our lives.
Loudilla is the oldest. She’s very smart and we’ll-spoken, and she’s a writer, too. Then there’s Loretta. You’ve got to look out for her, she’s kind of unpredictable. She’ll say whatever she feels like. But she’s a very warm girl who’ll do anything for you—she just likes to act crazy. And then there’s Kay, the youngest. She’s kind of quiet, but she’s a big help to her sisters with all the details and hard work, and she’s always quick with a kind word to people. They adopted me as a sister in that first meeting. Besides, we had a lot in common.
Just standing there backstage, we discovered they are part Indian, just like me. And they came from a poor background, too. They moved from Oklahoma because their Daddy was trying to get a better farm and they used to get snubbed when they arrived in Colorado.
People used to call them “sod-busters” and “suitcase farmers” and “trailer trash.” But their Daddy, Mack Johnson, worked hard and built up his farm in Wild Horse. He used to listen to Roy Acuff on the radio, just like my Daddy used to listen to Ernest Tubb. They remember sitting around the old farmhouse on Saturday night, eating popcorn and listening to the Grand Ole Opry. So you’d have to say we had a lot in common. Loretta, she’s crazy like me. She’d say, “How come whenever the white man won it was called a victory, but whenever the Indians won it was called a massacre?” Even though I was supposed to be in show business, those girls were more worldly than me.
They asked me if I was going to get made up for the show. Patsy Cline, the leading woman singer, had just played the club the week before, and I guess she knew how to dress herself. Doolittle always thought I looked more natural without makeup, but he wasn’t on this trip, so the girls put a little eye makeup on me for the first time in my life. I thought I looked nice.
The show was a big success. When it was over I slept at the motel, and in the morning they even drove me to my next place. I felt so good about having friends that I told ’em they were my friends for life. And that’s the way it’s worked out. I get to see ’em about four times a year. I just love to go to their ranch and go riding around in a farm truck. They’ve got antelopes running wild. It helps me a lot just to spend a day there. I can just giggle and talk with those girls.