Loretta Lynn:
The Cover Story
Loretta Lynn:
The Cover Story
It’s been nearly 55 Years since the release of Loretta Lynn’s feisty anthem “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man),” and if anyone suspects the iconic Coal Miner’s Daughter has lost any of her passion and sass, they need look no further than her new album Still Woman Enough for proof Lynn is just as outspoken, creative and spirited as ever.
Still Woman Enough, which drops March 19, was co-produced by Lynn’s daughter, Patsy Lynn Russell, and Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash’s son, John Carter Cash. The 13-song collection is Lynn’s 50th studio album, excluding her 10 studio duet collaborations with Conway Twitty. Reba McEntire and Carrie Underwood join Lynn on the title track and Tanya Tucker teams with Lynn on her original hit “You Ain’t Woman Enough.” Margo Price joins Lynn to reprise “One’s On the Way,” penned by the late Shel Silverstein. The project also includes new recordings of such Lynn classics as “I Wanna Be Free” and “Honky Tonk Girl” as well as covers of such gospel chestnuts as “Where No One Stands Alone,” “I Don’t Feel At Home Any More” and “I Saw the Light.”
The project is being heralded as a celebration of women, and nowhere is that more evident than on the title track. “I came up with that title years ago,” Lynn tells Sounds Like Nashville of “Still Woman Enough.” “It’s the title of my 2002 autobiography, co-written by my daughter, Patsy, but I just couldn’t write the song. Patsy, and I were going through old song ideas and that one title just stood out to her. She wrote a really great chorus and I started writing the verses.”
Russell says it all started with a great title. “It was my mom’s title. My mother is the best one liner person that there is. I’d put her up against anybody,” she tells SLN. “I used to say, ‘Gosh! She’s like Mac Davis. You give her a word and she just starts spouting out lines.’ So she was writing the book ‘Still Woman Enough’ and she said, ‘I really think this could be a great song,’ and we played with it for a while.”
Loretta Lynn and Patsy Lynn Russell; Photo credit: Coal Miner’s Daughter Museum
It’s been nearly 55 Years since the release of Loretta Lynn’s feisty anthem “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man),” and if anyone suspects the iconic Coal Miner’s Daughter has lost any of her passion and sass, they need look no further than her new album Still Woman Enough for proof Lynn is just as outspoken, creative and spirited as ever.
Still Woman Enough, which drops March 19, was co-produced by Lynn’s daughter, Patsy Lynn Russell, and Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash’s son, John Carter Cash. The 13-song collection is Lynn’s 50th studio album, excluding her 10 studio duet collaborations with Conway Twitty. Reba McEntire and Carrie Underwood join Lynn on the title track and Tanya Tucker teams with Lynn on her original hit “You Ain’t Woman Enough.” Margo Price joins Lynn to reprise “One’s On the Way,” penned by the late Shel Silverstein. The project also includes new recordings of such Lynn classics as “I Wanna Be Free” and “Honky Tonk Girl” as well as covers of such gospel chestnuts as “Where No One Stands Alone,” “I Don’t Feel At Home Any More” and “I Saw the Light.”
Loretta Lynn and Patsy Lynn Russell; Photo credit: Coal Miner’s Daughter Museum
The project is being heralded as a celebration of women, and nowhere is that more evident than on the title track. “I came up with that title years ago,” Lynn tells Sounds Like Nashville of “Still Woman Enough.” “It’s the title of my 2002 autobiography, co-written by my daughter, Patsy, but I just couldn’t write the song. Patsy, and I were going through old song ideas and that one title just stood out to her. She wrote a really great chorus and I started writing the verses.”
Russell says it all started with a great title. “It was my mom’s title. My mother is the best one liner person that there is. I’d put her up against anybody,” she tells SLN. “I used to say, ‘Gosh! She’s like Mac Davis. You give her a word and she just starts spouting out lines.’ So she was writing the book ‘Still Woman Enough’ and she said, ‘I really think this could be a great song,’ and we played with it for a while.”
As the song came together, Lynn quickly decided to recruit some additional girl power on the tune. “As soon as I had the first verse, I told Patsy, ‘I’m going to get Reba to sing this with me’ and shoot, having Carrie was a big treat for us,” she says. “I loved what they’ve added to the song. We are girlfriends singing about being strong women.”
Due to COVID-19, Lynn wasn’t able to be at the recording session with McEntire and Underwood, but as co-producer Russell was there. “The very first song I ever recorded my voice on, singing on like a karaoke track, was Reba McEntire’s ‘How Blue.’ So I’m sitting there going, ‘This is all just full circle for me!’ I just loved it,” she says.
The combination of Lynn and Tucker’s voices on “You Ain’t Woman Enough” is among the album’s many highlights. “For almost 50 years, I am proud to call Tanya Tucker one of my best friends,” Lynn tells SLN. “She was just a little girl when I met her, and I took her under my wing. I have always loved her singing. No one sings a country song better than Tanya. I love what she did on ‘You Ain’t Woman Enough.’ She was the only one I wanted to sing that song with.”
Reba McEntire; Photo credit: David McClister
Still Woman Enough is Lynn’s fourth album release on Sony’s Legacy label, following the Grammy-nominated Full Circle, released in 2016, White Christmas Blue, also in 2016 and Wouldn’t It Be Great in 2018. Like its predecessors, Still Woman Enough was primarily recorded at the Cash Cabin Studio in Hendersonville, TN, with producers Russell and Cash at the helm.
“We started recording in 2007 at the cabin and she was on the road a lot even back then,” Cash says. “She would come in the bus and park the bus right out front of the Cash Cabin Studio, spend three days in the studio, get done what we could, not push anything, but within a three-day period sometimes we got six or seven songs done.
“We were just compiling material,” Cash continues. “We were just putting music together. Then the first album was finally released and that was a collection out of all those recordings that we had done. I think before the first album was even released we had recorded 80 some specific songs. I counted about two or three months ago out of all the different recordings that we had done, there’s like 105 finished vocals. She continues to make great music and it’s just been a wondrous journey.”
On April 14th, Lynn will turn 89-years-old, yet her voice remains undiminished. Cash says he’s been continually impressed. “The strength of her voice is amazing,” he says, and shares a story to illustrate his point. “We were in New York City and she was doing like a release party show or something for ‘Full Circle,’ the first record,” he recalls. “We were in a hotel room and she was rehearsing for the show. I remember I was playing guitar and backing her as she was rehearsing. She was singing at her normal level, which just happens to be about 50 decibels above anybody else I know, and we heard a little rap at the door. I got up and opened the door. It was the security guard and he said, ‘Well we got a call that there was some loud music,’ and he peeked in the door and he said, ‘Oh hi Miss Loretta!’ The power of her voice has been there through this whole time period. It has not lessoned. It has not ceased to amaze me.”
Lynn’s career has been one of the most awarded in any genre of music. She’s a member of multiple Halls of Fame, including the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. She’s won four Grammy Awards and was the first woman to win CMA’s Entertainer of the Year honor when she took the title in 1972. She’s scored 16 number one singles and sold more than 45 million records worldwide.
Loretta Lynn; Video credit: Legacy Recordings
On Still Woman Enough, Lynn serves up new recordings of some of the classics that have made her a household name such as “I Wanna Be Free,” “You Ain’t Woman Enough,” “One’s on the Way” and a special “Coal Miner’s Daughter Recitation.” “That was mom’s idea, wanting to re-track some of her songs,” she says. “I think that that happens with a lot of artists because they’ve been that friend for so long to those songs that they want to imagine them new. They want to imagine them with new sounds, with new instrumentations, with new productions… My favorite time period of my mom’s music has always been from 1960 to about 1974 and they are those records that are so golden to me that one thing that I would never want to do is re-record them. But this is mom’s session and we’re here to do what Loretta wants.”
Seeing her mom bring those songs to life again in the studio was special for Russell. “Our thought was only to do them justice because we’re never going to make them better,” she says. “But when mom started singing the songs, it was like one of those ‘Ahhhhhh’ moments. She was having so much fun singing those songs again with just a little bit of a newer sound to them. It was like, ‘This is who I am. This is what I do. These are the songs that made me who I am, the artist that I am.’ I’m glad that she wanted to re-record those because those songs are just as relevant today [in her 80’s] as they were with a 30-something Loretta Lynn… She’s still telling the same story that people need to hear. She’s still singing the same anthems that today for women that are still just as important. I’m happy that I got to be a part of that because when she recorded those songs before, we weren’t born yet. Just watching it was one of those ‘I get it now. I get why you wanted to do this.’”
On Still Woman Enough, Lynn serves up new recordings of some of the classics that have made her a household name such as “I Wanna Be Free,” “You Ain’t Woman Enough,” “One’s on the Way” and a special “Coal Miner’s Daughter Recitation.” “That was mom’s idea, wanting to re-track some of her songs,” she says. “I think that that happens with a lot of artists because they’ve been that friend for so long to those songs that they want to imagine them new. They want to imagine them with new sounds, with new instrumentations, with new productions… My favorite time period of my mom’s music has always been from 1960 to about 1974 and they are those records that are so golden to me that one thing that I would never want to do is re-record them. But this is mom’s session and we’re here to do what Loretta wants.”
Seeing her mom bring those songs to life again in the studio was special for Russell. “Our thought was only to do them justice because we’re never going to make them better,” she says. “But when mom started singing the songs, it was like one of those ‘Ahhhhhh’ moments. She was having so much fun singing those songs again with just a little bit of a newer sound to them. It was like, ‘This is who I am. This is what I do. These are the songs that made me who I am, the artist that I am.’ I’m glad that she wanted to re-record those because those songs are just as relevant today [in her 80’s] as they were with a 30-something Loretta Lynn… She’s still telling the same story that people need to hear. She’s still singing the same anthems that today for women that are still just as important. I’m happy that I got to be a part of that because when she recorded those songs before, we weren’t born yet. Just watching it was one of those ‘I get it now. I get why you wanted to do this.’”
Both Russell and Cash speak extensively about what a joy Lynn is to work with in the studio and how honored they are to have recorded these sessions. The experience was special for Lynn too. “There is nothing like having people you love and trust to work with,” Lynn says. “The truth is Patsy and John Carter Cash are very talented… They know what roles they have in making this and all of the musical recordings we have worked on. That is why we have been able to record as much as we have. I love them both.”
Cash says there’s a valuable lesson for everyone in their shared experience. “Never underestimate the brilliance of an artist no matter how many years they’ve been making music,” he says. “Never underestimate the beauty and never underestimate Loretta Lynn specifically. I learned that with my father in the studio and watching him continue no matter what. You cannot count out someone who has the brilliance, the dedication and the honest, true, good loving heart as Loretta Lynn. There’s never a time that the work of a great writer is not viable and the same thing with musicians. It’s the same thing with great artists. Somebody like Loretta, as good as she ever was, I think she’s that much better.”
The fact that Lynn’s new album is being released during Women’s History Month in March seems particularly apropos. When asked if she has any advice for the women who are traveling the road she paved, she responds, “I tell young artists today if you’re a songwriter tell your story, tell the truth. That’s what I did. It just so happened a heck of a lot of women were feeling the same way. We have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.”
Loretta Lynn; Video credit: Legacy Recordings
