Records and Roots: Loretta Lynn's husband Doolittle served as inspiration in many ways

Easing along the slim, gravelly road that leads to Butcher Holler in rural Kentucky is like going back in time.It's back to the future, country style.Country music fans know its significance. Partly, anyway. Loretta Webb, who, when married, became Loretta Lynn, grew up in Butcher Holler during the 1930s and '40s. She sings of it in her autobiographical masterpiece from 1970, "Coal Miner's Daughter."But what's not as widely known pertains to the man she married. He was born Oliver Lynn on Aug. 27, 1926, in Butcher Holler, Kentucky. We have him to thank for the music of Loretta Lynn.Commonly known as Doolittle Lynn, the 21-year-old moonshine runner met his wife-to-be at a pie social when she was only 15. They married one month later, on Jan. 10, 1948. They eventually parented six children, four of them before Loretta turned 20. As mothers often do, she sang to their children when they were little.Doolittle, whom Loretta referred to as Doo, took note. For their anniversary, he bought his wife a Harmony guitar, price $17. He thought she could sing better than the female country singers of the era and that they could make good money if Loretta could make it as a singer. By then, they had relocated to the state of Washington. She taught herself to play guitar and write songs."Honey," Loretta Lynn said to me during an interview in 2005, "I was scared to death to sing in front of people. Doo made me sing, and I'm glad he did."But it was not until her late 20s that she made her first record. Signed to Zero Records, a tiny label based in Vancouver in Canada's British Columbia, Loretta Lynn went south to Los Angeles in February 1960 to record four songs. Written in about 20 minutes on her $17 Harmony guitar, Lynn's "I'm a Honky Tonk Girl" opened major avenues for her to country music stardom.Lynn's breakthrough debuted on Billboard's country singles chart on June 13, 1960. It spent 14 weeks on the chart and peaked at No. 14. Not bad. But good enough to earn her an invitation to appear on the wildly prestigious Grand Ole Opry. She made her Opry debut on Oct. 15, 1960.Several more singles on Zero, including 1961's "The Darkest Day," went nowhere. But Lynn went everywhere. By 1962, she was signed to mighty Decca Records, which was the label home of her music heroes Kitty Wells, Patsy Cline and Ernest Tubb. Her first top 10 single, "Success," arrived in the summer of 1962.Lynn's string of records intensified as the 1960s carried on. There was the honky-tonkin' "Wine, Women and Song" in 1964, a precursor to "Coal Miner's Daughter" in "Blue Kentucky Girl" in 1965 and a message song aimed at women who tried to make romantic inroads with husbands — including her own."I gave birth to this song," Lynn said in her book "Honky Tonk Girl: My Life in Lyrics," "and I felt every little bit of pain in these lyrics."A fan who had become a friend of Lynn's approached her backstage before a concert. She told Lynn that her husband, who would be seeing the concert that night, was running around with another woman."I said, 'We will fix that old gal,'" Lynn said in her book.Lynn wrote "You Ain't Woman Enough" that night and performed it in the show. Released in 1966, the song peaked at No. 2, which was at the time her biggest hit to date.Then came Lynn's next single with a no-doubt-about-it bombastic message. She wrote "Don't Come Home A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind)" based on her life with her husband. Without question, Doolittle Lynn at least in part inspired that song, which on Feb. 11, 1967, became his country twang-yawling wife's first No. 1 song.A year later, Lynn wrote "Fist City." She apparently caught wind of a particular bout of Doolittle's infidelity. On a drive from Nashville back to her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, she wrote such lyrics as "If you don't wanna go to fist city, you better detour around my town, 'cause I'll grab you by the hair of the head, and I'll lift you off of the ground."One did not mess with Loretta Lynn.Doolittle Lynn went to his grave in 1996 at the age of 69 knowing exactly that. Their marriage, often turbulent, lasted 48 years. He inspired many of the songs written by his wife, and by her own admission, she probably would never have tried to sing for the public had it not been for his unbending insistence.Without Doolittle Lynn, Loretta Lynn would not have become a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. So, when you cast your eyes upon her bronze plaque, look closer to see the rascally man behind her that she absolutely loved with every fiber of her country-loving heart.