“Coal Miner’s Daughter”
Loretta Lynn
Written by Loretta Lynn
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
December 19, 1970
“Coal Miner’s Daughter” became synonymous with Loretta Lynn, thanks to her autobiography and the Oscar-winning film adaptation of the same name.
The moniker was used so interchangeably with her name that it’s easy to forget that “Coal Miner’s Daughter” isn’t about Loretta Lynn. It’s about her dad.
What gets lost when we forget that is what a stunning songwriting accomplishment “Coal Miner’s Daughter” is. Lynn has to use specific autobiographical details to show us why her dad was special, and to do so, we have to be able to see her life from two perspectives at once: the child who was the coal miner’s daughter, and the grown woman looking back.
She pulls off this balance perfectly, and I think of it every time that I hear the line, “Mommy rocked the babies at night, and read the Bible by the coal-burnin’ light.”
We get the child’s perspective there, who remembers her loving mother’s devotion to God and her children. But we also get just enough detail to understand the adult perspective. Little Loretta Lynn didn’t understand that Mommy was praying at night for Daddy to come home safely from the mines, but we do. So we feel it in our chest when she cries out with palpable emotion: “Yeah, I’m proud to be a coal miner’s daughter.” She’s led us into her childhood home with her pen, and by the end, we’re sharing in her pride.
Lynn was well into her country music stardom when she wrote this song, and her father had been long gone, too. She couldn’t have possibly known that this poignant, grief-tinged tribute to her father would bring her fame to another level and have her own story told around the world.
She just wanted the world to know how great her dad was, and how proud she was to be his daughter.
“Coal Miner’s Daughter” gets an A.
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I don’t think I can say any more about the excellence of this song that you haven’t already said. It’s right up there with “Coat of Many Colors” as one of the most sympathetic portrayals of poverty in any medium, in my opinion.
Masterclass in songwriting with a great performance to boot. Part of what makes it so affecting is that most of us from modest or blue-collar backgrounds can feel some of our own fathers (and mothers) in the portrayal, even if they didn’t specifically carry a miner’s cap with their lunch buckets to work every day. But at the same time, it projects a level of hardship above and beyond what most of us can personally connect with, which sells the narrator’s pride of her upbringing at an even deeper level.
As someone born in 1977, years after this song came out, what surprised me when I studied Loretta Lynn’s discography is that was not her introductory single, which I’d always assumed it was. She had literally put out 10 years worth of country hits before the defining record of her career and one of the defining records of any female country singers in history.
Grade: A
Bonus Beats:
Lynn recorded a version of “Coal Miner’s Daughter” with Sheryl Crow and Miranda Lambert for the 2010 Lynn tribute album named after the song. It was the only track on the album to feature Lynn herself. Here it is:
https://youtu.be/3j9te9Fpf6E
Here’s Kacey Musgraves performing the song in tribute to Lynn live at the 2023 Grammys:
https://youtu.be/l45QuznEVw4
Here’s another performance of the song in tribute to Lynn soon after her passing, by the Highwomen for CMT:
https://youtu.be/3rrKiJtO3L4
More Bonus Beats:
Obviously I should mention Sissy Spacek here, who played Lynn in the 1980 Lynn biopic named after this song. She released a version as a single, and while it only went top 30 in the states, it went top 10 in Canada. Here’s the scene from the movie where Spacek sings the song the movie is named after:
https://youtu.be/c1xwdrH0VV4
And here’s Spacek performing it live on the Midnight Special, with Levon Helm on drums:
https://youtu.be/1RIAGvFzIxI
Finally, I’m saving the best for last. An impromptu supergroup of Reba McEntire, Martina McBride, Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Nettles, and the Judds performed “Coal Miner’s Daughter” at a 2011 ACM event honoring the great women of country. Here’s that performance:
https://youtu.be/uXedhWyTZBs
Lots of country music stars of yesterday came from impoverished backgrounds and the POV that came from those backgrounds was so compelling in song format. I understand that most artists these days are fortunately brought up with more, but it’s not as if rural America is devoid of poverty and brokenness. Country music could stand to re-introduce this POV to the mainstream again. What a masterpiece of a song, probably the most iconic autobiographical song in country music (along with the aforementioned Coat of Many Colors).
It can be a clear tie both this song and “Coat of Many Colors” to be the best songs about an artist’s childhood. This one a bit broader and Coat more specific to an incident separates them a bit. A clear “A+” song. Anyone with a humble background can relate to this and being proud of something that is not widely celebrated. Regarding the movie: I have seen it more times than I can count and watch it at least once a year. For fans of real country the movie is up there with “The Wizard of Oz”.
It’s certainly one of the most endearing, enduring, and defining songs of the genre. And yet it lasted for only one week at the top of the chart, with Lynn Anderson’s equally career defining song hot on its heels.
What a stellar ending to an overall exceptional year in country music.
I do like this song, but it is by no means my favorite Loretta Lynn song; however, I would give it an “A”. I saw a Loretta Lynn interview some years ago where she said she had some difficulty in getting the song into a manageable (or recordable) form as she had written far too many verses for the song and had to winnow it down to the verses used on this recording. I forget how many verses she said but I seem to remember some number north of fifteen. I always hoped that Loretta would print the extra verses somewhere, but to the best of my knowledge, she never did.
I believe Owen Bradley told her she had to edit it because “we already have one ‘El Paso.'”
I’ve always loved that anecdote.