Introduction:
Loretta Lynn’s Husband Booked Her First Gig, but Not Without Risk: “The More Beer He Drank, the Worse He Got”
Heckling and harassing the on-stage band usually won’t get you anywhere except the sidewalk outside of the venue, but in the late 1940s, Loretta Lynn’s husband took a risk by doing just that for the chance of getting his teenage wife behind the microphone. As history would show, his efforts paid off tenfold.
But it certainly didn’t come without significant risk.
Finding a Little Slice Of Country In Washington State
While we most closely associate Loretta Lynn with her birthplace, Kentucky, and the country music capital that propelled her to fame, Nashville, Tennessee, she began her life as a teenage bride and mother of four on the West Coast, thousands of miles away from either. She and her husband, Oliver Lynn, moved to Whatcom County in Washington State shortly after they married in 1948. She was only 14 years old.
Loretta wasn’t only far away from the Appalachian mountains she called home for less than two decades. She was an entire country’s length away from the epicenter of country music. “That was just about as far away from the Grand Ole Opry as you can get,” Lynn recalled in a 1971 interview with The Great Speckled Bird.
The country star recounted how her husband came home from work one day and told her about a country band playing at a nearby venue. He told her that they would go out to see the band on Saturday. She said, “I never went any place because I had four children by the time I was seventeen. So, that thrilled me just to think, ‘Oh, we’re going to get to go someplace.’” And indeed, Oliver made their rare excursion count.
Loretta Lynn’s Husband Drunkenly Booked Her First Gig
As most musicians or frequent audience members know, hecklers are a nuisance few people wish to tolerate. Harass the performers long enough, and you’re liable to come face-to-face with the venue’s locked front door. Drunken hecklers are even worse. And on that fateful night in Washington, Oliver Lynn was being just that. “He had a few bottles of beer,” his wife, Loretta Lynn, said in 1971. “The more beer he drank, the worse he got about going up to the band.”
The country icon said her husband would get the attention of a band member and say, “Hey, next to Kitty Wells, I have the greatest country girl singer in the world.” She continued, “I thought, ‘Oh, Lord, if they let me up there to sing, what am I going to do.’ He just aggravated the band all night long. So, the guy finally got tired of him and said, ‘Now, listen, Mister, we don’t let anybody up here to sing. But if you’ll bring her over Wednesday night, we have a half-hour radio show, and we’ll put her on the air if she’s any good.”
That following Wednesday, Loretta was sure her husband would have forgotten his drunken exchange with the band. But he remembered, and off they went to the venue. Loretta only knew one song all the way through, “There He Goes,” and that’s what she sang. “They put me right on the air,” she recalled.
The rest is country music history (and a testament to the rare occasion that bothering a band on-stage pays off…although we can’t recommend this method in good faith for any other aspiring country singers out there).