Nashville, May 10, 2012 – Country music legend Loretta Lynn announced from the stage of the historic Ryman Auditorium during Opry Country Classics that she has chosen Grammy and Golden Globe nominated actress and star of FOX TV’s hit show, “New Girl,” Zooey Deschanel to portray her in an upcoming Broadway-bound stage adaptation of Coal Miner’s Daughter. Following the announcement, Ms. Deschanel joined the country music icon onstage for a duet of Ms. Lynn’s signature song, “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”

This stage version of Coal Miner’s Daughter will tell the remarkable story of country music legend Loretta Lynn, from her impoverished Kentucky childhood, to her unlikely and triumphant rise to become the First Lady of Country Music and one of the greatest women of her generation. Click here for more information!

Lynn, 80, unveiled plans for a musical adaptation of “Coal Miner’s Daughter” during a Grand Ole Opry show at the Ryman Auditorium on Thursday night. Wearing one of her signature long sleeve, floor length dresses, the singer blew through four songs before bringing Deschanel onstage to sing the title tune.

The announcement mirrored the way Lynn invited actress Spacek on the Opry stage in 1979 to reveal that Spacek would play her in the upcoming film. Spacek later won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Lynn.

“I have a friend here tonight. I don’t know if ya’ll remember when Sissy Spacek was with me. I brought her out here with me. She about fainted. We both fainted,” Lynn said with a laugh. “She went on to do the ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter,’ and you know from there. Well, there’s a little girl back stage that’s going to do the play of ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ on Broadway,” Lynn continued. “Zooey, where you at honey?”

Deschanel, 32, the star and a producer of the Fox comedy “New Girl,” then emerged in a short, vintage-inspired white dress. She grabbed Lynn’s hand and flashed a dazzling smile.

“Are you going to help me sing ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’?” asked Lynn.

“I’m going to help you sing,” said Deschanel, who has been nominated for a Grammy Award. “This is a great honor for me. This is my hero.”

The two traded verses and they ended the song holding hands.

“Coal Miner’s Daughter” was a No. 1 hit for Lynn in 1970 that she wrote about growing up as one of eight children in rural Kentucky. It became the title of her 1976 autobiography and the basis for the 1980 movie, starring Sissy Spacek, which traces Lynn’s rise from humble beginnings into one of country music’s most beloved singers. In 1972, Lynn became the first woman to be named Entertainer of the Year by the Country Music Association.

Among the songs performed in the film are “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man,” “You’re Looking at Country,” “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” and the title song.

Plans for a stage adaptation are still in the beginning stages, with no creative team attached or workshop dates announced. The producers — Fox Theatricals and Scott Sanders Productions — have been behind such Broadway hits as “Legally Blonde,” “The Color Purple,” “Red” and “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”

Deschanel has starred in such films as “Elf,” “(500) Days of Summer” and “Your Highness.” Producers of the musical said their schedule would not conflict with the actress “New Girl” commitments.

Deschanel also has a musical side. She has appeared on some of her movie soundtracks and in a jazz cabaret act called If All the Stars Were Pretty Babies. She has also released three albums with M. Ward as the folk-rock duo She & Him, and she performed three songs for the recent animated film “Winnie the Pooh.” One of those songs, “So Long,” was nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Song Written For Visual Media.

During the surprise duet Thursday as part of the Grand Ole Opry Country Classics, Deschanel sang her parts strong, with a convincing lilt in her voice. As the music faded out, Lynn said to the crowd, “Don’t forget her name. Her name is Zooey.”

And with that, another coal miner’s daughter was born.

___

Online:

http://www.CoalMinersDaughterBroadway.com

__

Caitlin R. King covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow her athttp://www.twitter.com/CaitlinRKing

Tennessean
PHOTOS

Our favorite Coal Miner’s Daughter, Loretta Lynn was born on April 14, 1935, in Butcher Hollow, Ky. Check out the four-time Grammy Award winner’s looks through the 1960s up until today.

In the 1960s and 1970s: Loretta Lynn signed her first record contract in 1960. That same year she recorded “I’m A Honky Tonk Girl.” Ten years later her hit “Coal Miner’s Daughter” peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Country Chart.

The 1980s:The 1980s began with a bang. In 1980, the film “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” based on Lynn’s life, was released. It was a box office hit and garnered seven Academy Award nominations, include a Best Actress Oscar for Sissy Spacek.

The 1990s through today: In 2004, Lynn collaborated with Jack White of White Stripes fame on the critically acclaimed album Van Lear Rose. In 2010, she released the album Coal Miner’s Daughter: A Tribute to Loretta Lynn, featuring singers such as Sheryl Crow and Miranda Lambert.

by Kenneth Partridge – The Boot

Even if Loretta Lynn had never written ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter,’ the 1976 memoir that became an Oscar-winning film, fans would know a fair bit about her life. Many of her best-loved songs were penned from personal experience, and with that in mind, the country legend is releasing another type of autobiography: ‘Honky Tonk Girl: My Life in Lyrics.’

The book combines years of photos and lyrics from some 300 songs, among them ‘Don’t Come Home a’ Drinkin” and and ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter.’ There’s also a forward by Elvis Costello, one of the Kentucky songstress’s countless admirers in numerous genres.

The book arrives in stores today (April 3), and fans craving more Loretta can catch the 76-year-old icon throughout the spring and summer, as she tours across the country. See a list of cities and dates on her concert schedule here

But in interviews, Loretta Lynn almost invariably says, “I’m not a star. Stars are in the sky. I’m just a woman.”

Fans of American music might take exception to that description. Lynn, who will turn 77 in April, has been an influential artist almost from her earliest songs like “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl.” She will play selections from her career when she performs at the Mayo Performing Arts Center Friday, March 30.

Art imitates life

In the words of her own song, Lynn really was a coal miner’s daughter; she was born Loretta Webb in April 1935 in Butchers Hollow, Kentucky. She wasn’t the only musician in the family; her younger sister Brenda Gail Webb would go on to a successful career under the name Crystal Gayle.

When she was barely 14, Loretta married Oliver Lynn, whose nickname was “Doo.” (Their sometimes-turbulent marriage was depicted in the 1980 movie “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” the movie for which Sissy Spacek won the Academy Award.) Doo bought his wife a guitar for her 18th birthday and encouraged her to become a singer.

In the late 1950s, Lynn began performing with a group, the Westerners, at dances and clubs in Washington State. She caught the attention of a record producer, who brought her to Hollywood, where she cut her first singles.

Almost from the beginning, Lynn garnered attention not only for her emotional vocals but also for the emotional honesty of her songwriting. In the 1960s, songs like “Don’t Come Home A Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind)” and “Fist City” demonstrated that a woman could be strong and independent.

At the same time, Lynn was a versatile enough vocalist to record duets with the likes of Ernest Tubb and, most frequently, Conway Twitty. In 1985, she joined Kitty Wells and Brenda Lee for a song on k.d. lang’s “Shadowland” album; the performance was nominated for Grammy.

Comeback trail

Commercial hits came less frequently in the 1990s, and in 1996, her husband died. At the same time, a crop of younger artists started dominating the contemporary country charts.

But Lynn staged a remarkable comeback in 2004 with the album “Van Lear Rose.” Lynn wrote or co-wrote every song, and the CD was produced by Jack White of the alternative rock band the White Stripes.

The combination of White and Lynn may have seemed unlikely, but it worked, thanks to White’s obvious respect for Lynn’s talent. The collaboration gave Lynn a new audience among younger fans, and “Van Lear Rose” appeared on many critics best-of-the-year lists.

Since then, Lynn has also worked with other artists of the current generation. Her 2010 re-recording of “Coal Miner’s Daughter” with Miranda Lambert and Sheryl Crow reached the Billboard charts. (That success makes Lynn the first female country artist to have chart recordings in six decades.)

With plans for a follow-up to “Van Lear Rose” in the works and a touring schedule that belies her age, Loretta Lynn continues to set standards for performers in the country genre and beyond.

By the time the chorus comes around, you can usually tell if it’s a Loretta Lynn song. The iconic country singer is famous for threatening to send a rival to “Fist City” if she didn’t “detour around my town.” To another would-be homewrecker, she once boasted, “You ain’t woman enough to take my man.” Lynn has also sung about social issues we’re debating to this day, from birth control (“The Pill”) to the results of not taking it (“One’s on the Way”).

This is clear: Loretta Lynn, who’s still a spitfire at 76, suffers no fools.

Born a coal miner’s daughter, “in a cabin on a hill in Butcher Holler,” as her signature song goes, Lynn has just written a new book. “Honky Tonk Girl: My Life in Lyrics” is an overdue salute to Lynn’s 50-plus years of songwriting, with a reverent foreword by Elvis Costello.

Set for release on Tuesday, the book presents Lynn’s lyrics alongside her anecdotes about writing them. It’s also sprinkled with passages about musicians who have inspired her — from Kitty Wells to Jack White, who produced Lynn’s Grammy-winning 2004 album, “Van Lear Rose” — as well as personal photos of Lynn throughout the years and handwritten lyrics scrawled on hotel stationery.

On the phone from her home in Tennessee, Lynn recently reflected on the art of writing from the heart and why it was so important to her career, and sang the praises of a celebrated songwriter she hopes to meet one day: Bob Dylan.

Q. Early in the book, you outline your approach to writing: “For me, I could and can only write what I’ve lived.” Did songwriting come naturally to you?

A. It did, but I never could write before I started [writing songs]. I could never understand that. When I wrote my first song [“I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” released in 1960], they started popping out every three or four days. It was a good thing because my writing is what got me my first recording contract in Nashville. They said, “We don’t have anybody that can write for you,” and I thought, “God, what’s wrong with me?” (Laughs.)

Q. Would you have been as successful if you hadn’t written your own songs?

A. No. I’ve never been able to ask a writer for a song that I thought fit me right at the time. You have to be in the frame of mind of what you’re going through at the time. When I recorded my songs, that was exactly how I felt.

Q. I ask that question because music is full of great singers who never get their due because they don’t write. People really do relate to artists who write their own material.

A. I think so, too. They can put more into it when they sing it, and whoever is listening to that song can feel it.

Q. When do you know you’ve got a good song on your hands?

A. Well, I think singers – I’m not going to say all of them, because I hear some of them come out with the crummiest stuff – I think most people that really write know when they’ve got a good song. Me and Shawn Camp have been writing together. He’s one of the greatest little songwriters going right now. He’s kind of a bluegrass singer, but he can write any type of song.

Q. Was a song like “Dear Uncle Sam,” about a woman torn between the love of her country and the love of her man, controversial when you released it in 1966?

A. That was when I first started singing, back during the Vietnam War. My husband and I were listening to the radio to see if the disc jockeys were playing any of my records. And I said to my husband, “I am so sick of war. I don’t like war. I can’t take it.’’ He said, “Well, why don’t you just write about it?’’ So I got my pencil and paper out right then, and I wrote just how I was feeling. I sing that song every night. And you know, this has been the longest war we’ve ever had in our lives. So many people want to hear it. When I look out and see people crying and wiping their eyes, it bothers me, because I know they’re going through something that I hope I never have to go through.

Q. Have you ever shied away from writing about something?

A. Nothing. If I think about it, I’m gonna write it. You may never know why, but I’m going to write it.

Q. I was astonished to learn in the book that “Coal Miner’s Daughter” originally had eight more verses.

A. Yes. [My producer] Owen Bradley said, “Loretta, you take some of them verses off. There’s already been one ‘El Paso,’ and there will never be another.” Remember, “El Paso” [a hit for country singer Marty Robbins] was real long, almost five minutes. That was the hardest thing I ever did, though, was take the verses off.

Q. Did you ever consider rerecording the song with the extra verses?

A. Well, I think I left the verses there that night [in the studio]. I just ran off and forgot them. But I don’t remember now what they were.

Q. You just broke my heart.

A. (Laughs.) Well, listen, if I’m ever going to put those verses back together, I’ll send you a copy. You’ll get the first dadgum one.

Q. I once read that you used to joke that everyone had the wrong idea about you and Tammy Wynette based on your songs. In real life, Tammy was the feisty woman you portrayed on record, and you were the one more likely to stand by your man.

A. That’s the truth. We laughed about that, too.

Q. The last time we spoke, you mentioned how much you admire Bob Dylan.

A. And I still haven’t got to meet him yet.

Q. Really? Should I make some calls for you?

A. You’re gonna have to. I need to meet that boy. I saw him the other day singing somewhere. It’s so funny to watch him sing. Have you noticed that? (Adopts a prim accent and sings): “The answer my friend/Is blowin’ in the wind.” (Laughs.)

Q. What do you like about Dylan’s songs?

A. Well, you can’t beat that song, can you? I love that song. And Bob just knows how to put a song together. I’m not gonna say that he knows how to sing them. I’m just gonna say he knows how to put them together. (Laughs.) To watch him sing is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m a big fan of his.

Q. I’m sure he’s a fan of yours, too.

A. I don’t know if he’s ever heard of me, you know.

Q. I guarantee you you’re wrong.

A. Well, I hope so. (Laughs.)

Q. The book ends with lyrics for several unreleased songs. Does that mean you’ve got a new album coming soon?

A. Yes. I’ve got a new Christmas album coming out. I’ve got a new religious album cut. And I’ve got another album cut of some of the biggest hits that I ever wrote for Decca and you can’t find anymore. I rerecorded them.

Q. I hear you’ve also been writing with Bret Michaels from the band Poison.

A. Yes. He came down and cut one of his records in my little studio. I’m singing “The Rose” with him.

Q. The Bette Midler hit?

A. No, “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.”

Q. Oh, wow. That’s a surprise. And you’re also working with Elvis Costello?

A. Yes. He’s funny. He was telling somebody how he took his computer out and was writing on his laptop. And there was Loretta sitting with a pencil in her hand and a piece of paper. So that was our writing session. (Laughs.)

Q. What does Jack White think of all these new collaborators?

A. He loves it. Jack is a great person. He really is. You know he got married and he’s got two little girls. But him and his wife broke up. I hate that, especially after the kids. But I seen him the other day, and he looks good. He hadn’t changed a lick. His hair is still the same. Jack looks the same.

Q. When you think back on all the songs you’ve written, is there anything that ties them all together, a common thread?

A. I think just knowing that I spoke my mind on every song I ever wrote.

Loretta Lynn, a signature voice of country music in the ‘60s and ‘70s, as well as an independent spirit and an early champion of feminism, is an artist not content to rest on her laurels. “I ain’t a star – a star is something up in the night sky,” she said on the fiftieth anniversary of the release of her first single. “People say to me, ‘You’re a legend.’ I’m not a legend. I’m just a woman.”

But on Saturday, March 31, the night sky in Ithaca is sure to shine a little brighter, because the coal miner’s daughter will be making a stop at the State Theatre thanks to Dan Smalls Presents. Advance tickets for the sure to be sold out engagement range from $38.50 to $58.50 and are available at the State Theatre Box Office at 105 W. State St., online at www.sateofithaca.com, or by calling (607) 277-8283.

With fifty-two Top Ten hits, sixteen number one singles, and fifty-four studio records under her belt, the singer shows no sign of slowing down. Her last album of original material was a collaboration with indie rocker and producer Jack White, which garnered a Grammy Award in 2005. Otherwise, the writing she has done has principally been literary: a revision to her best-selling autobiography A Coal Miner’s Daughter, a new memoir a few years back, and even a book of recipes and anecdotes titled You’re Cookin’ It Country.

But she continues to perform frequently around the country. “There still nothing better than walking out and seeing so many people who have come to my shows to see me,” she wrote to me by email earlier this month.

“I ain’t no different from anybody else. I’m my own cook. And I do my own gardening,” Lynn wrote in a recent introduction to A Coal Miner’s Daughter. But that modesty only adds to her charm: after all, she’s had not one but two major Hollywood productions based on her life. “To make it in this business, you either have to be first, great, or different,” Lynn has said. And even a casual fan of her work knows that she is all three.

“And I was the first to ever go into Nashville singin’ it like the women lived it,” Lynn said. Songs like “Don’t Come Home a-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)” and “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)” were as feminist as country music got in 1966, and her autobiographical narratives (the most famous being A Coal Miner’s Daughter), took the glitz out an occasionally goofy genre. Lynn’s lyrics grew more strident through the ‘60s and ‘70s, including “Your Squaw Is on the Warpath” (1968), “Woman of the World (Leave My World Alone)” (1969), and a tune about birth control called “The Pill” (1974).

Lynn challenged female rivals in her songs, showed tremendous blue-collar pride, and is unafraid of controversy, whether the topic is sex (“Wings Upon Your Horns”), divorce (“Rated X”), alcohol (“Wouldn’t It Be Great”), or war (“Dear Uncle Sam”). Like the lady herself, Loretta Lynn’s songs shoot from the hip.

Lynn may be most famous for her 1976 autobiography and its Academy Award-winning 1980 film adaptation starring Sissy Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones, and the Band’s Levon Helm. Lynn actually is a coal miner’s daughter, raised in dire poverty in remote Appalachian Kentucky. Living in a mountain cabin with seven brothers and sisters, she was surrounded by music as a child. “I thought everybody sang, because everybody up there in Butcher Holler did,” she recalled. “Everybody in my family sang. So I really didn’t understand until I left Butcher Holler that there were some people who couldn’t. And it was kind of a shock.”

Referring to the lyrics of “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” Lynn wrote in her autobiography: “Most people know that much about me, because those are the first words of my biggest song. I open my show with it because I know people are gonna request it until I sing it. I wrote it myself, nine verses, and it broke my heart when I had to cut three verses out because it was too long. I could have written a thousand more verses, I’ve got so many memories of Butcher Hollow.”

Lynn famously married Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn when she was a barely schooled child of 13. “Doo” was a 21-year-old war veteran with a reputation as a hell raiser. When she was seven months pregnant with her first child, they moved far away from Appalachia to Custer, Washington. By age 18, she had four children (two more, twins, came along in 1964). Isolated from her native culture and burdened with domestic work, she turned to music for solace.

Her husband bought her a guitar and encouraged her career. A 1960 single followed, and by the fall of 1961, Lynn was singing regularly on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville where she and her husband had relocated.

Her chart debut came with 1962’s “Success,” the first of her 51 Top Ten hits, and it led to an invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry cast later that year. (Patsy Cline, a fellow Opry cast member taught her how to dress, style her hair, and wear make-up.)

By the mid-1970s, Lynn was a superstar. Featured on the cover of Newsweek Magazine, her humor, systematically scrambled grammar, and unpretentious manner made her a favorite on talk shows.

“I just wrote about things that happened,” she said. “I was writing about things that nobody talked about in public, and I didn’t realize that they didn’t. I was having babies and staying at home. I was writing about life.”

Lynn retired in the ‘90s to take care of her ailing husband, and when she returned to performing (“Doo” died in 1996), country music had popped out. But she had a chance at a comeback when The White Stripes’ front man produced Van Lear Rose, which Lynn has called the “country-est record I’ve ever recorded.”

Late in A Coal Miner’s Daughter Lynn recounts the elaborate process of preparing for a show while on the road. “I spend half an hour at the vanity, just making up,” she wrote. “A writer named Carol Offen once asked me why I got dressed up so fancy in these days when a lot of women are wearing blue jeans and letting their hair just hang.”

She continued: “I said that’s all right for other women, but I think my fans expect me to look a certain way. It’s part of my personality on stage.”

“I tell everybody, ‘It’s your show. What song do you want to hear?’ and we sing ‘em,” Lynn wrote by email. “I have not had a set list for 25 years.” And the artist is famously responsive to her fans; a New York Times concert review from 2008 noted: “Ms. Lynn encouraged members of the crowd to shout out requests, which they’d been doing unprompted, making the show more like a rowdy town-hall meeting.”

For Lynn, the performer ought to put on a performance.

“I enjoy seeing me change from Loretta, the gal in jeans,” she wrote in A Coal Miner’s Daughter, “to Loretta, the woman in the long gown. It’s a little like seeing one of the Hollywood stars appear before my own eyes.”

And then with a characteristic joke: “I guess my Mommy should have never let me sit looking at pictures of movie stars.”