This story originally ran in the January 2002 issue of Esquire. To read every Esquire story ever published, upgrade to All Access.
They still got a dirt road up to the town where I grew up—Butcher Holler, Kentucky. They wanted me to put a paved highway up through there, and I said, "I walked through mud up to my knees getting out, and you can do the same thing."
Some people don't know anything about life, and don't wanna know.
Cheatin', love, and the Bible: That's what we sing about. The rest of it are just fantasy songs, and they ain't gonna make it.
I remember the first ice cream I ever had. It was from John L. Lewis, the union man. Daddy made a dollar a day in the coal mines, and when John L. Lewis came in, he started the union and Daddy got more money, so everybody loved John L. Lewis. The union started giving out a gallon of ice cream to each family. Daddy brought his home on hot ice. What shocked me and my brothers and sisters so much is you touched that ice and it was hot. But it kept the ice cream cold. We could not figure this out. The ice cream was great, but the shock of getting burned on the ice—that kinda overtook how we felt about the ice cream. I was eleven years old.
Mommy never had no doctor when she had a baby. She'd send me and the kids to Grandpa's, and I'd go back home and there'd be a baby there. I'd say, "Momma, where'd this baby come from?" She'd say, "A woman just left it." And I said to Daddy one time, I said, "Daddy, where did I come from?" And he said, "I picked up a cabbage leaf and you were under it."
When I got married, I didn't even know what pregnant meant. I was five months pregnant when I went to the doctor and he said, "You're gonna have a baby." I said, "No way. I can't have no baby." He said, "Ain't you married?" Yep. He said, "You sleep with your husband?" Yep. "You're gonna have a baby, Loretta. Believe me." And I did.
Doolittle married me when I was thirteen and took me out of Butcher Holler when I was pregnant. I didn't know the world was that big.
Getting married probably stunted my growth.
A lot of the young ones in Nashville today does fantasy stuff. Five years from now, you'll never remember their songs. But you remember "Your Cheatin' Heart," don't you? All right, then. Hank Williams died in '53, and I don't believe nobody will ever forget his songs.
Doo told me I could sing. Well, I knew better. I knew I couldn't sing, but he come in and catch me singin', like when the baby's asleep, and the only thing I knew very much of was "White Christmas." That's the song he catch me singin'. He come home one day and said, "Loretta, you're a better singer than all these girls out there makin' money. I'm gonna put you on the road or get you a job here in a tavern, and you can sing for two years and we'll buy us a home. Then you can quit." Two years from that day, we didn't have enough money to buy a hamburger.
When you're seventeen and you have four kids and you have a dozen diapers between all of 'em, it gets a little tough.
There ain't no such thing as luck.
I liked Michael Jackson better dark. And I liked his nose a lot better, too. If he has any more taken off, I don't know how he's gonna breathe.
The devil's a joke no one should laugh at.
I wasn't the first woman in country music. I was just the first one to stand up there and say what I thought, what life was about. The rest were afraid to.
Every time Doo smacked me, he got smacked twice.
Why leave the nut you got for one you don't know?
When I started at the Opry, I used to do my shoppin' at the Salvation Army. One time, they caught me comin' out of there with my arms full. This was the second year I was there, and I had to get clothes for the kids for school. I was getting shirts for ten cents, dresses for Betty and Cissie for ten cents, my clothes for ten cents, and they told me that they couldn't have me going in and out of the Salvation Army. They said it looked bad on the Grand Ole Opry. And I said, "Well, next time, I'll look up and down the road before I come out."
There's more hypocrites in church than anyplace else.
It's a shame that when you're young, you don't realize you're going to get old. You don't realize that you're gonna wake up tomorrow fifty when you're twenty. It passes just like that.
I'd rather be hurt than hurt someone.
Holding a baby in your arms for the first time is the happiest moment in life.
When I walk out on stage, I don't want nobody leaving.
Working keeps you young. I ain't ever gonna stop. And when I do, it's gonna be right on stage. That'll be it.
