Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [90]
I kept waiting for Doo to call that night, but he was out in this little tavern in Colorado, listening to the news on television. When they announced I won, he got so excited that he bought a round for everybody. Then he said he couldn’t reach me on the telephone because a big bolt of lightning hit the wires.
People tried to make a big thing about Doo not being there. I just made a joke about it by telling ’em, “Doo’s out hunting—but I don’t know what he’s hunting.” That’s how I handle things usually, by making a joke out of it.
The next day, Doo got on a plane to Nashville. I was about worn out from being on the “Today Show” before dawn. I was glad to see him, especially when he told me how proud he was. That’s still the biggest award I can get.
I remember people asking me if I thought the Women’s Liberation spirit had anything to do with my getting it. I told La Wayne Satterfield of Music City News, “You know better than that. The people did it and they didn’t pick the best man or the best woman—they just picked the one they thought was the best. That’s why I’m so proud.”
But I will say this: I think it’s good for people to realize that women can do things as good as a man. And I think show business is one of the places where that’s true.
There’re more women stars in Nashville all the time. They’ve got their own shows and their own buses, and they’re proving they can do the job the same as a man. I get along with all the women singers, but especially Dolly Parton, who was voted Female Vocalist of the Year in 1975. We’re good friends because we talk the same hillbilly language. Dolly is from Tennessee, and when we get going, nobody can understand us.
I love Dolly, and I understand why she wears all that fancy jewelry and makeup and piles her hair up the way she does. She once told me she was poor when she was a kid and now that she can afford pretty things, she said, “I’m gonna pile it all over me.” And I say good for her.
Me and Dolly like to talk about the old days when we were poor. We can remember how the snow and rain used to blow through the cracks. One time Dolly asked me, “Remember when you had company coming, how you’d shoo the flies out the door with a towel, then slam the door real fast?” That’s what it was like in those old cabins.
But whenever we talk like that around the new Opry, I get the feeling people are nervous. Hillbillies are going out of fashion in Nashville, I think.
I had some other wonderful honors following the Entertainer of the Year Award. I was named one of Tennessee’s top five women, along with women in college and medicine and government and business. In the Gallup Poll, in 1973, I was listed as an honorable mention, after the world’s ten most admired women. Golda Meir of Israel was first, so you could say I was in pretty good company.
I’ve won other big awards in music since then, too. In 1973, I got the Female Vocalist of the Year Award again, which gave some of my fans the idea that I owned the award. Well, friends, nobody owns nothing in this world. Even your breath is just loaned to you. There ‘re a lot of good country singers around, and nothing goes on forever.
That was my feeling in 1974, when they moved the awards show over to the new Opry and Johnny Cash was the master of ceremonies. I was nominated for Female Vocalist of the Year and Entertainer of the Year. Sure, I wanted to win ’em, but I was so tired of working I would rather have been on the beach in Mexico.
I knew it wasn’t going to be easy for me to win in 1974 because my own record company, MCA—it changed its name from Decca—had two women up for the same awards—myself and Olivia Newton-John. She’s an English girl who grew up in Australia and never appeared in Nashville. But she had three hit records in 1974, and a lot of people were saying she was gonna win something.
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