One of the greatest. Nothing more needs be written.
RIP Loretta Lynn
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I met her back in the mid 80’s. Wonderful woman. RIP.
Someone told Edith Piaf, the French chanteuse, in her youth, that it wasn't enough just to sing a song with good voice and technique, you had to act the song, make the audience feel it. Loretta either learned that early in her career, or just knew it innately, something she had in common with Frank Sinatra, John Prine, and Patsy Cline, among others.
Each generation has 'em. My generation still have a few. The next generation has there's and so forth. Bu,t Loretta was indeed one of a kind. She always seemed to sing songs she felt. No act. just her life in poetry put to music. A oner, for sure.
I don't think of singers bringing emotion to a song as putting on. But it takes some acting skills to summon those emotions after a three-hundred mile bus ride between gigs, when the stage lights go on, in front of a loud crowd of two hundred or twenty thousand, on cue. It's part of the job, and the authenticity is either there or it isn't. With Loretta, it was.
Yup.
I did pro audio (live sound) for a decade, a job which brings you into contact with established performers regularly, and famous ones from time to time.
I asked a (relatively) famous singer one time exactly that question. How did she find the energy to "switch on" when the show started after days of the exhausting grind lifestyle between each show. Her answer? "It's the other way around... Living that hour of magic is why we put up with all the other stuff."
Most entertainers feed off the audience. I helped produce many shows as the head of a nonprofit professional organization over the years. I preferred the balladeers, no lights or fireworks, just singing and speaking from the heart. Haggard, Nelson, Lynn, even Jerry Reed were always getting energy from the fans.
One of a kind, we won't see the likes of her again. Heres' a recent album, a collaboration with Jack White.
RIP Loretta!
RIP Loretta!
A few months ago I re-watched the movie with Sissy Spacek...IMO the best music-bio film ever made (at least of any that I've seen) and just a great movie period...transcends the genre. Spacek was born to play Loretta.
If you mean the post-WWII legends, today's social media "stardom" turnover rate means there probably won't ever be any more of them.
If you mean hardcore Kentucky-style music, believe it or not it's actually in good hands:
Clicking on that link gummed up my laptop!
No idea why....but not trying again.
Regards,
Jay.
We were related somehow. She used to drop in and visit with my great grandmother at family gatherings from time to time when I was a kid. But, when my great grandmother passed, we lost any connection.
She will be missed.
She will be missed.
When I heard, the only song that flashed in my mind was her very best, a duet with Conway Twitty.
There was a day of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, George and Tammy, Conway and Loretta, Porter and Dolly, Merle and Bonnie, Buck Owens and Susan Rae, Jim Ed Brown and Helen Cornelius, and Charlie Louvin and Melba Montgomery.
Duet country acts are almost gone.
There was a day of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, George and Tammy, Conway and Loretta, Porter and Dolly, Merle and Bonnie, Buck Owens and Susan Rae, Jim Ed Brown and Helen Cornelius, and Charlie Louvin and Melba Montgomery.
Duet country acts are almost gone.