Mark Bennett: Valley musicians remember special times with Loretta Lynn

Oct. 7—Some phone calls linger in the memory, like the one John England received 20 years ago.

He was visiting family in his hometown of Terre Haute when his phone rang. The voice on the other end said, "John, would you like to go out on the road with Loretta?"

"Loretta Lynn?" England asked, incredulous. "Yes," came the answer from Lynn's band leader.

England, a longtime Nashville musician and band leader himself, was known of by Lynn's piano player Gene Dunlap. The band wanted England to fill in for Lynn's son, Ernie Lynn. England readily agreed to the offer, made arrangements for the care of his wife and son in Nashville and left on a tour bus the next day.

That was August 2002. The Terre Haute native spent the next year and a half touring with Lynn, playing acoustic guitar and singing duets with a legend.

At each show, England would front the band for two or three opening songs. "And then I would say, 'Ladies and Gentlemen, the Queen of Country Music, Loretta Lynn,'" England recalled by phone Wednesday from Nashville, where he lives and performs with his popular band John England and the Western Swingers.

Lynn died in her sleep Tuesday at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. She was 90.

Lynn called the 6-foot-3 England "Big John." He and others in the band would sing duets with Lynn, filling the roles of her famous duet partners like Conway Twitty and Ernest Tubb. "I usually did 'Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man,'" England said. "And she always laughed when I crossed my eyes, looking at her."

As Lynn approached her 70th birthday, she developed a musical connection with an improbable admirer, alternative rocker Jack White of the White Stripes. White wound up producing Lynn's 2004 album "Van Lear Rose." In 2003, he persuaded Lynn to perform a show with him in New York. England rehearsed songs with White and Lynn in her tour bus before the Big Apple show. Once onstage, the three were captured in a photo that ran in People magazine.

"It looked like we were a trio," England said, laughing.

Though England wasn't familiar with White's music at the time, the former Terre Hautean is adept at performing various musical genres. The 1981 Terre Haute South High School grad studied music at Indiana University while earning a major in history. He played in a punk music band in New York after college, but also played 'society music' with orchestras in NYC ballrooms. His ability to read sheet music opened doors to jobs in New York, before he moved his family to Nashville.

Lynn's band didn't use song charts. They played her music by heart.

"Loretta's thing was pretty informal, old-school, 'the hillbilly-est hillbilly,'" England said.

She would wear ballroom gowns, come onstage and open with "Thank God, I'm a Country [Girl]," putting a twist on the famous John Denver song. "Then she would stand there and kick off her shoes and be barefoot in front of her people and say, 'So what do you want to hear?'" England remembered.

He grew to like Lynn's "Table for Two" among all the classics from her six-decade career, but his favorite was "When the Tingle Becomes a Chill," a crushing ballad of faded love. "If that doesn't give you goosebumps, nothing will," England said.

She maintained her privacy, as much as possible, on those tours, riding in a separate bus. That purple-decorated vehicle would draw onlookers when it pulled into a town or a Walmart to pick up supplies. Cars of curious people circled it as Lynn sat inside. "I thought, 'This has been happening to Loretta since 1965.' How that would change your world," England said.

Her peak performances revealed the reason for the public's fascination, her soaring voice. "When she was feeling it, she would throw her head back and hold that microphone and sing, and you would feel it down to your toes," England said. "That was the thing, when she felt it, you felt it."

Lynn's visual persona remains close to Jasonville singer and Elvis Presley impersonator Bruce Borders, literally. As a collector of music memorabilia, Borders owns several of the gowns Lynn wore onstage and around her Hurricane Mills Ranch. Those hang in his collection along with Elvis' stage-worn outfits kept at his insurance business in Jasonville, where he once served as mayor and now as the state representative for Indiana House District 45.

"I was always enamored with her, because I thought she was such a great entertainer, and an even better person," Borders said Tuesday afternoon.

He saw proof firsthand in the early 1980s. Borders and his City Council Band performed as Lynn's opening act at the Illinois State Fair in DuQuion. The dressing rooms for the performers were below the stage. That's where Borders encountered Lynn and her guitarist, and the three wound up talking about their shared Christian faith, before playing to a throng of thousands.

"We just had a wonderful time and a wonderful discussion right before she went out on stage," Borders said. "What a sweet, sweet lady she truly was. and I don't say that all the time, because some entertainers aren't nice people."

Lynn's tours took her through Terre Haute, too. She and Twitty headlined three autumn shows in Hulman Center in 1975, '76 and '77, that facility's concert heyday. Their Nov. 15, 1975 show drew 8,408 fans, Hulman Center's second-highest concert attendance up to that point, topped only by Elvis Presley at 10,244 just four months earlier.

Several years before that, Lynn sang in the Harry Weger Show at Terre Haute, according to Tribune-Star archives.

Over time, her 1976 memoir "Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner's Daughter" and the subsequent movie in 1980 spread her fame beyond country music radio and record sales. Her east-Kentucky mountain accent and homespun storytelling connected with audiences. And, as England put it, "People forget, Loretta Lynn was so beautiful, and that goes a long way."

That said, her primary gift to her fans was that sound. "The thing about her is the music," England said, "those great songs."

Mark Bennett can be reached at 812-231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.