Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [86]
Doolittle has taken more interest in the management, plus we’ve hired real professionals to do the work. Me and Conway Twitty have our own booking agency called United Talent. Jimmy Jay books us the best schedules in country music.
I’ve also got an office on Music Row, where Lorene Allen is the manager. She keeps me posted on all the news and writes some of my songs.
And I’ve gotten a lot of nice publicity since we started working with a smart fellow named David Brokaw out in California. I always look forward to my trips to California to talk to him.
We’ve also got some interest in the Loretta Lynn clothing stores. We used to have a rodeo for ten years, but we got too busy and had to sell it. I know it broke Doo’s heart—but now he’s got the dude ranch on our property, with room for around 180 trailers. So that’s keeping him busy.
I don’t know if we really should have all these side businesses. Instead of just doing my own show, I’m worrying about whether it’s raining on our dude ranch, or whether Kenny Starr, the young boy who sings in our show, will have a hit record. Plus, all my companies have given us a payroll of over $350,000 a year.
There’ve been times in the past when I took on extra dates just to pump money into one of our businesses. I used to play over 200 dates a year. Now I’ve cut it back to 125, mainly because my money is being handled better.
Things have been more organized since we hired David Skepner away from the Music Corporation of America. David is a college graduate from Beverly Hills, California, who’s our business advisor. His job is to advise me and Doolittle what our choices are—and we make the decisions. Sometimes people get upset when he protects me from too much attention. I’ll tease him by saying, “I know what people are saying—‘there comes Loretta Lynn and her SOB.’ ”
David has cured me of carrying too much cash around with me. One time in New York City, I had $30,000 in cash in my pocketbook. I thought David would explode. He asked a policeman to escort us to the nearest bank, where we could convert the money into cashier’s checks. David once told a reporter, “Loretta has no idea what she’s worth. All she knows is that she has a good time every day and she gets well paid for it.”
Well, I’m getting a little smarter than that. David has given me a lot more confidence about appearing on television. He’s been able to book me on all the major shows and he always tells me, “Loretta, just act natural. Say whatever you think is right, and the people will accept it.”
And that’s what I’ve been doing, folks. I’ll never forget the time I fell asleep on the “David Frost Show,” while the Queen of Women’s Liberation was talking. It happened like this: I was back in the dressing room and this gal started cussing and arguing something terrible with a guy from a union. I didn’t know this woman from Adam. She was running on about women’s rights. I said something about “Isn’t it awful what you have to put up with in your own dressing room?” and she smarted off at me, and we were really going at it. Then I get on the show and they march her out—and I said, “Oh, my God, it’s her.” It was that Betty Friedan. Anyhow, she starts talking about women’s liberation. If I’m not interested in what somebody is saying, I let my mind wander. I must have closed my eyes for a few seconds because all of a sudden I hear David Frost say to me, “What do you think of that, Loretta?”
I guess I jumped a little bit and I said, “What?” like I was real startled. That made everyone in the audience laugh, but I didn’t mean to be smart about it. I just wasn’t listening, that’s all.
Dinah Shore had me on her show. She’s from Tennessee, and we always talk about biscuits and stuff. She’s got the kind of show where if I mess up,