Grand Ole Opry At 100: Earl Scruggs & Loretta Lynn

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Speaker 2 This is Fresh Air. I'm David Beagancooley.
100 years ago today, the Grand Ole Opry began with a performance on the Alabama radio station WSM.

Speaker 2 We're going to mark that anniversary with performances by two country artists who were members of the Opry.

Speaker 2 We begin with the great bluegrass musician Earl Scruggs, who perfected the three-finger style of banjo picking that became standard in bluegrass.

Speaker 2 Along with guitarist Lester Flatt, he was half of the duo responsible for such bluegrass standards as Foggy Mountain Breakdown and the theme to the Beverly Hillbillies.

Speaker 2 In 1945, Scruggs joined Bill Monroe's band, the Bluegrass Boys, the band that virtually invented bluegrass.

Speaker 2 He made his first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry that same year with Monroe's band, which included Lester Flatt.

Speaker 2 In 1948, Flatt and Scruggs left Monroe to form their own group and became one of the most popular acts in country music.

Speaker 2 Their hit, Foggy Mountain Breakdown, became even more famous when it was used on the soundtrack of the 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde.

Speaker 2 In 1969, Earl Scruggs formed his own band, the Earl Scruggs Review, with his sons Gary and Randy. Earl Scruggs died in 2012.
Terry Gross spoke with him in 2003.

Speaker 2 He had just released a CD called The Three Pickers, which featured Doc Watson and Ricky Skaggs. Here's a song from that album: Feast Here Tonight.

Speaker 4 As a rabbit ain't in the log and ain't got my dog, I will have to get him my nose.

Speaker 4 I'll get me a bra and a twist in his hair. That way I'll get him my nose.

Speaker 4 I know, I know, I know, I sure know.

Speaker 4 That way I'll get him my nose.

Speaker 4 I'll get me a bra and a twist in his hair, and that way I'll get him my nose.

Speaker 6 Earl Scruggs, welcome to Fresh Air.

Speaker 5 Thank you.

Speaker 6 Now, you grew up during the Depression. Your father died when you were four.
How did your family make a living when he died?

Speaker 5 He was a farmer also.

Speaker 5 So I stayed on the farm until I got old enough to get a job in the factory. And on the farm, you work from daylight till dark, and in the factory, you work eight hours.
So I thought that was great.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 6 Who did you hear play banjo before you started playing yourself? I mean, I've read that there was no radio in your house when you were growing up.

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 6 So who did you hear? How did you hear them?

Speaker 5 We had a banjo in our home. My father played the old-style banjo, so I had a banjo there, and my brother Horace had a guitar.

Speaker 5 And so we just started playing just old tunes that we had heard before and then a little later we we got a Sears Robuck radio and started listening some

Speaker 5 mainly the grand old opera and some programs like that.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 as far as the style banjo that I play, nobody had played it before me.

Speaker 5 And the only thing that is different from my playing from what I'd heard is I had a three-finger roll.

Speaker 5 It's later been called scrug style. But it seemed to help me to play slow tunes as well as up-tempo tunes.
Most of the bands you're playing in the old days were hold-down type tunes, up-tempo tunes.

Speaker 6 So could you put into words what your style

Speaker 6 of picking is, the three-finger style?

Speaker 5 Well, it's just what you hear. It involves, it's a little misleading, say three fingers.
It's actually two fingers, middle and index finger, and your thumb.

Speaker 5 And it's a kind of, some of the rolls will go, if you number your thumb one, the index two, and your middle finger three, it's like a one, two, three roll over and over.

Speaker 5 But to do a tune,

Speaker 5 it's like trying to say every word with the same

Speaker 5 exact same amount of syllables in the word. You've got to alternate the roll some to make the the tune flow.

Speaker 6 Since you didn't have a radio when you were very young and and you didn't have a record player,

Speaker 6 so you were just like hearing, you know, musicians who may have been a r you know, living where where you were,

Speaker 6 how how did you come up with your style of playing, with your style of picking?

Speaker 5 Oh,

Speaker 5 I guess the old days

Speaker 5 you have one main room you have what you take

Speaker 5 company to when they come that you don't use every day. So I was in what we call the front room with a banjo one day

Speaker 5 and I was in a mode where if somebody had asked me what was I thinking about, and I bet you've been in that mode yourself, you couldn't tell them what you was thinking about.

Speaker 5 You just kind of sitting there. And I was picking the banjo and I was playing a tune that's still played today called Reuben.

Speaker 5 And when I realized what I was doing, I was playing the way that I play now. It was like

Speaker 5 having a dream and wake up, you was actually playing the tune. So that was the mode I was in and what I was doing when I learned exactly what I'm doing today.

Speaker 6 Now you joined Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys in 1945. This was the group that basically created the sound that's become known as Bluegrass.

Speaker 6 When you joined the band, could you hear that something different was happening there?

Speaker 5 Oh yeah.

Speaker 5 He had

Speaker 5 nobody had this style banjo in the group. And he just did the type tunes that

Speaker 5 would

Speaker 5 make the banjo sound good. So it was a good good shot to start with because he had grand old opera exposure and that gave me a lot of exposure when I went to work work with him.

Speaker 5 And it got immediate attention because

Speaker 5 nobody'd heard that kind of banjo-picking. So

Speaker 5 it caught on real fast with the public.

Speaker 6 Why don't we hear one of your recordings with Bill Monroe from 1947? This is one of the famous ones, Blue Grass Breakdown, with Bill Monroe and Mandolin.

Speaker 6 Lester Flatt, guitar, my guest, Earl Scruggs, banjo, recorded in 1947.

Speaker 6 Bill Munro and his Bluegrass Boys recorded in 1947 with my guest, Earl Scruggs, on Banjo.

Speaker 6 What was life on the road like with Bill Monroe?

Speaker 5 It was terrible.

Speaker 5 If I hadn't been 21 years old and full of energy, just came off the farm and a threadmill where I could, you know, I thought to do an hour show on the road was a pushover compared to eight hours in the mill or from sunup to sundown on the farm.

Speaker 5 And music was my love, so to get into a group that had good good singing and playing, and Bill had that,

Speaker 5 especially good singing, and had good fiddle player. So I went in, and it just seemed to make a full band, especially for that style of music.
That was long before anybody had tagged it as bluegrass.

Speaker 5 It was just country music.

Speaker 6 But why did you hate traveling so much?

Speaker 6 With the band?

Speaker 5 Why did I hate it?

Speaker 5 It was because

Speaker 5 we did it 24 hours a day practically.

Speaker 5 Back then there was only two-lane highways and he traveled in the 41 Chevrolet car and we'd leave after the opera on Saturday night and maybe work down South Georgia.

Speaker 5 It was about as far as you could get for Sunday afternoon show

Speaker 5 and on down to Miami someplace for Monday or Tuesday.

Speaker 5 work till about Thursday and start working back to Nashville.

Speaker 5 So it was just, you'd only be in Nashville long enough to do the grand old opera and to get a change of clothes and pack your suitcase and head out again.

Speaker 5 I was single at the time, so I was living in a hotel and I had one suitcase. And so I had to really work on it to keep clean clothes

Speaker 5 forever night doing a show on the road.

Speaker 6 Now, it was in the Bill Monroe band that you met guitarist Lester Flatt, who became your long musical partner.

Speaker 6 What were your first impressions of him when you first heard him play and sing?

Speaker 5 Well, I liked his singing, and his playing fit in good with that style of music. And

Speaker 5 we piled around together, roomed together, and

Speaker 5 so we did that for two and a half, three years, and that's when

Speaker 5 really we never had talked about starting the show ourselves. But I had made up my mind that I was going to just get off on the road.
So I worked two weeks' notice. And

Speaker 5 when I

Speaker 5 started to leave that night, Lester turned in his notice.

Speaker 5 And while he was working his notes, he gave me a call over in North Carolina and said, why don't we

Speaker 5 get on the radio station over close to your home and try it as a group ourselves. So that's how we got started with the Foggy Mountain Boys.

Speaker 6 Now, you started recording. You and and Lester Flatt started recording in, I think it was 1948.
And for the first couple of years, you recorded for Mercury Records.

Speaker 6 During that period you recorded what became one of your best-known songs, Foggy Mountain Breakdown.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Is there a story behind the song?

Speaker 5 Well, that's just a simple song that I probably wrote in 10 or 15 minutes.

Speaker 5 And I've written several other tunes and had some pretty big hits, but nothing like Foggy Mountain Breakdown.

Speaker 6 How did Foggy Mountain Breakdown end up being used in the movie Bonnie and Clyde?

Speaker 5 He called and wanted me to write a tune for the...

Speaker 5 Who called?

Speaker 5 Warren Beatty,

Speaker 5 who wrote and starred in the show. And

Speaker 5 so he called back.

Speaker 5 I think I'm quoting this exactly the way it was.

Speaker 5 In a few days, and he said he didn't want me to write anything because he'd found a tune that he thought fit what he wanted. See, we recorded that tune before they got what I say good equipment.

Speaker 5 I mean, just plain everyday microphones and a radio station and no

Speaker 5 to start making tunes sound fuller or something.

Speaker 5 It was just raw material.

Speaker 5 Well that, I mean, it didn't have no echo chamber or anything on it. So that's what Warren Beatty heard in that tune.
So he didn't want to try to record another tune because he thought that

Speaker 5 the equipment that they had then was probably

Speaker 5 would give it a more modern tune than what we had recorded, which turned out to be Foggy Mountain Breakdown and the sound that we got then.

Speaker 6 So you're saying that he used the original recording and he didn't want you to re-record it?

Speaker 5 He took the Mercury recording and that was it.

Speaker 6 Why don't we hear that original recording of Foggy Mountain Breakdown? And this is Lester Flatt and my guest, Earl Scrubbs.

Speaker 6 Now, you mentioned what when you got off the road with Bill Monroe, what you wanted to do was a radio show. And first you did one in Bristol.

Speaker 6 Then in 1953, you ended up doing a radio show in Nashville at a station there.

Speaker 5 WSCM, yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and it was, I think, a 15-minute program. Every morning at 5.45, which is pretty darn early to have to perform.

Speaker 5 We'd come in at 2 o'clock and go to bed and get up at 4 to try to get awake enough to do a live radio program. But that was

Speaker 5 your bread and butter in those days. By that, I mean

Speaker 5 we made our real, really our living by the road work that we did. We'd go out and do shows and charge admission admission and get a percentage of that and also some flat rate too.
But

Speaker 5 that just put us to working in better

Speaker 5 bigger order tourisms and bigger crowds.

Speaker 6 The show was sponsored by Martha White Flower.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And I understand the jingle for that became pretty well known and you were even requested to play it at some of your concerts. I've never heard it.
How did it go?

Speaker 5 Now, you bake bright with Martha White. Goodness gracious, good and light, Martha White, for the finest biscuits, cakes, and pies.
Get Martha White for self-rising flour.

Speaker 5 And the group says, the one all-purpose flour.

Speaker 5 Get Martha White for self-rising flour. It's got hot rise.
Hot rise was actually a baking soda that went into the bread. That would

Speaker 5 make bread rise. You know that yourself being the lady.

Speaker 5 But I thought it was pretty cleverly written.

Speaker 6 So did you get like a lifetime supply of free Martha White flour?

Speaker 5 Oh, no.

Speaker 5 Oh, no. They would probably have done that.
But I got a lifetime of work with Martha White. It was a great company.
And

Speaker 5 they helped us just more than

Speaker 5 I could total up, I guess.

Speaker 6 How long did that show last?

Speaker 5 I wish my wife was engineering. She could tell you better than me, But

Speaker 5 it lasted for a lot of years. And we went into television.
Television came in in about 1955.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 they put us, we started transcribing the morning show,

Speaker 5 radio show, and

Speaker 5 we'd sleep late, but we'd have to do a live television show.

Speaker 5 at a different city each night. And the reason I say

Speaker 5 a live radio television, that was before they had cameras to film you with. So we'd have to, we'd leave 4 o'clock Monday morning to go to down in Georgia.
I had two cities

Speaker 5 in Georgia, Atlanta being one.

Speaker 5 And let's see, Wednesday was Florence, South Carolina, and Thursday was Huntington, West Virginia, and Friday was Jackson, Tennessee, down in West Tennessee, and Saturday back at WSM Television.

Speaker 5 and do the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday night. And if we working on Sunday, we were free until 4 o'clock Monday morning and we started that 2,500 mile tour again.

Speaker 6 There is a Gibson banjo that is named for you. It's called the Earl.

Speaker 6 It has a portrait of you

Speaker 6 on it and your signature. Is it a lot of fun to have

Speaker 6 a banjo that's dedicated to you, that bears your name and likeness?

Speaker 5 It is. As a matter of fact, they're making five different models with my name on it from the plain

Speaker 5 banjo, which they're all basically the same banjo. The what runs up the cost is like gold plating and and engraving and things of that nature.

Speaker 6 Do you play one of those Gibsons or do you play something else?

Speaker 5 Well, yeah, I play a a Gibson banjo.

Speaker 6 Is is it an is it an Earl?

Speaker 5 Well, basically it is.

Speaker 5 Uh I'm playing a a banjo that I've been playing since uh

Speaker 5 back in the

Speaker 5 late 40s, I guess, early 50s. But it's still basically, they're still making basically the same banjo they were making way back there.

Speaker 6 When you say you're still playing the same banjo, do you mean it's literally the same instrument or that it's the same model?

Speaker 5 Same banjo.

Speaker 6 Same banjo. So do you have to get it like redone occasionally?

Speaker 5 Well, the only thing you're going to wear out on the banjo is the head. The head used to be skin, but now it's plastic.

Speaker 5 There will wear out on you. And the strings, outside of that,

Speaker 5 you can play one for a thousand years unless you got it broken some way.

Speaker 6 Now, what do you love so much about this banjo? Is it just a sentimental attachment or is there something special about the sound?

Speaker 5 Well, it produces the sound that my ears are looking for. Maybe I've just gotten used to it, but

Speaker 5 I like the sound that I get out of that particular banjo.

Speaker 5 I feel

Speaker 5 at home with it when I I take it out of the case and start, you know, it's no,

Speaker 5 when you start with another instrument,

Speaker 5 they're all they all have their feel

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 playing the same instrument, you know what it's going to feel like when you take it out of the case and start to perform.

Speaker 6 Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

Speaker 5 Been my pleasure.

Speaker 2 Bluegrass banjo player Earl Scrugg speaking to Terry Gross in 2003. He died in 2012.
We'll hear from another country artist, Loretta Lin, after a break.

Speaker 2 And Justin Chang reviews the new documentary, My Undesirable Friends, Part 1, Last Air in Moscow. I'm David Biancoule, and this is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 We're marking the hundredth anniversary of the Grand Ole Opry. One of its biggest stars was the beloved and influential country singer Loretta Lynn.

Speaker 2 She was famous for her singing, her songwriting, and her life story, told in the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter.

Speaker 2 The film was adapted from Lynn's memoir, which described how she grew grew up in poverty in eastern Kentucky, became a wife at age 15, and after having four children, started writing songs and performing.

Speaker 2 She made her debut on the Grand Ole Opry in 1960 with her first song and first hit, Honky Tonk Girl. Terry spoke with Loretta Lynn in 2010.
Lynn died in 2022.

Speaker 2 Let's start with Lynn's Honky Tonk Girl.

Speaker 2 Ever since you left me, I've done nothing but drone.

Speaker 2 Many nights I've laid awake and cried.

Speaker 2 We once were happy,

Speaker 2 my heart was in the world.

Speaker 2 But now I'm a honky-toned girl.

Speaker 2 So turn that you've offered away a high

Speaker 2 and fill my blast up all I cry.

Speaker 2 I've lost everything

Speaker 2 in this world.

Speaker 2 And now

Speaker 2 I'm a

Speaker 2 guitar.

Speaker 6 Now, the song we just heard, that's the first song you wrote. It was your first record, released in 1960.
You say you wrote it in 20 minutes on a $17 guitar that your husband bought to you

Speaker 6 because he thought you sang well.

Speaker 6 And you wrote a song because he told you to. Do you think you ever would have written or performed if your husband didn't say that's what you should do?

Speaker 11 No, I wouldn't have because I was too bashful. I wouldn't get out in front of people.
I wouldn't, you know, I was really bashful and I wouldn't,

Speaker 11 I would have never sang in front of anybody.

Speaker 6 So when you wrote Honky Tonk Girl with absolutely no songwriting experience, how did you approach writing a song?

Speaker 11 You know, I just sat down with my guitar. I was outside.

Speaker 11 In fact, I was leaning up against the old toilet out there in West Coast in Washington State.

Speaker 6 Did you say that? Did you say the toilet?

Speaker 11 The old toilet, yeah. Okay.
And I sat there and wrote Honky Tonk Girl and Whispering Sea.

Speaker 6 So what made you think of the story that you tell in Honky Tonk Girl?

Speaker 11 Well, I think I probably listened to a bunch of people,

Speaker 11 you know, their songs and stuff. And I figured, well, if they can write, I can too.
So I just said, hey, I'm going to tell a story. And that's what I did.

Speaker 6 And had you hung out at Honky Tonks or did you know them from songs?

Speaker 11 No.

Speaker 11 When I first started writing, my husband got me a job at this little bar. And me and a still player and my brother, he played the fiddle and sang.
So we sang together. And

Speaker 11 so we really had a good time, you know. And I wrote Honky Tonk Girl and Whispering Sea during that time.

Speaker 6 So you were doing some performing?

Speaker 11 Yeah, I just had started.

Speaker 11 In fact, I had never sang in front of anybody until my husband pushed me out there, you know. I'd never been out and sang for anybody.

Speaker 6 But at home you sang?

Speaker 11 I rocked the babies to sleep.

Speaker 11 And in Kentucky, when I was growing up with my sisters and brothers, we all sang and rocked the babies to sleep, you know, but that was about as far as we ever did, you know.

Speaker 6 So when you recorded your first single, Honky Tonk Girl, you were 24. You'd already been married for 11 years, because because you got married when you were 13.
And you already had four children.

Speaker 6 Do I have that right?

Speaker 11 I had four kids.

Speaker 6 And the twins came a little bit later.

Speaker 11 Yeah, the twins come later.

Speaker 6 What was your life like as a wife and mother before you started recording?

Speaker 11 It wasn't easy. Me and my husband both worked.
I took care of the farmhouse. I cleaned and cooked for 36 ranch hands.

Speaker 10 Wow. And

Speaker 11 yeah,

Speaker 11 before I started singing. And

Speaker 11 so

Speaker 11 singing was easy. I thought, gee, whiz, this is an easy job.

Speaker 6 Wait, so you cooked and cleaned for 36 ranch hands and had four children?

Speaker 10 Uh-huh.

Speaker 11 Sure did. Paid the rent on the old house that we lived in.
And

Speaker 11 that's what I did to make the rent. Yeah.

Speaker 11 Well, that's easy. It wasn't easy, let me tell you.
Life was hard.

Speaker 6 So when you made your first appearance on the Opry, which was the same year that that you recorded Honky Tonk Girl,

Speaker 6 you weren't used to performing on such a prestigious stage in front of an audience like that. Did you know how to perform on stage in a place like that? Not really.

Speaker 11 I just got on there with my guitar and I sang. I mean, I just did it just like I was doing it at home, you know.

Speaker 11 I never thought about it being the Grand Ole Opry because if I had of, I wouldn't have been able to have done it. You just pretty well got to figure.

Speaker 11 Well, you know, this is something like you do every day.

Speaker 10 Right.

Speaker 10 It's so much like what you do every day.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 6 So the next song we're going to hear is a song that you first recorded in 1966, Don't Come Home a Drinking With Lovin' on Your Mind.

Speaker 6 And this is a great song, but first I want to hear the story of how you wrote it. You'd already had about six years of songwriting experience behind you.

Speaker 6 You probably were no longer leaning against the toilet

Speaker 10 when you wrote the song.

Speaker 11 I was probably at it. Dude fixed me a little writing room at this time out in Goodleysfield.
Dude's your husband.

Speaker 6 Your late husband.

Speaker 11 Late husband, yes. And he's the only one I've ever had.
And so he fixed me this little writing room and I'd go out there and I'd write.

Speaker 11 And this is one of the songs that I wrote, was Don't Come Home Drinking with Loving On Your Mind.

Speaker 6 And at this point, did you feel like I know how to write a song?

Speaker 11 Oh, yeah. When I wrote Don't Come Home a Drinking, I knew I could write because I'd had quite a few on the charts by that time.

Speaker 6 Now you've said that your husband is in every song that you've written, in a large way or in a small way.

Speaker 11 Still is.

Speaker 7 I mean,

Speaker 11 if I write a song, he's in there somewhere.

Speaker 6 Were you thinking of him when he wrote this song?

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah. Would he come home after drinking like that?

Speaker 11 Well, sure.

Speaker 11 If a man drinks, he's going to come home drinking. He liked to drink.

Speaker 6 Was the song intended to send him a message at all?

Speaker 11 Not really.

Speaker 11 I probably told him many times. I didn't have to sing about it.

Speaker 10 Okay.

Speaker 6 Well, let's hear the song. This is Don't Come Home a Drinkin', recorded in 1966 by Loretta Lynn, and it was a number one country music chart.

Speaker 5 Go ahead.

Speaker 13 Well, you thought I'd be waiting up when you came home last night.

Speaker 13 You'd been out with all the boys and you ended up half-tied.

Speaker 5 But liquor and love, they just don't mix.

Speaker 13 Leave the bottle for me behind.

Speaker 13 And don't come home a drinkin' with loving

Speaker 13 on your mind.

Speaker 13 No, don't come home a drinking with loving on your mind.

Speaker 13 Just stay out there on the town and see what you can find.

Speaker 13 Cause if you want that, find a love, well, you don't need none of mine.

Speaker 13 So don't come home with drinking

Speaker 13 with loving on your mind.

Speaker 6 Now, when you started performing, Patsy Klein was your mentor until she died.

Speaker 11 But, you know, she hadn't been in the business that long when I came to Nashville. She'd only been singing two or three years.

Speaker 10 And, yeah.

Speaker 6 So she must have really related to what you were going through.

Speaker 11 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 11 We talked a lot.

Speaker 6 What were some of the things that she taught you that really helped you a lot? Things relating to, you know, from clothing to performing style to dealing with the music industry.

Speaker 10 Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 11 You know, with the style and everything that I, that I was, you know, I was in blue jeans and a t-shirt or blue jeans and just a Western shirt. And

Speaker 11 she taught me a lot how to dress.

Speaker 6 What did she tell you about how to dress?

Speaker 11 Well, she told me to get out of the jeans, you know. Of course, I would wear them until we get to the radio station, then I'd get in the back seat and put on my dress.

Speaker 11 And then I'd take the dress off and go back into my jeans and wait till the next radio station.

Speaker 11 And then I'd go back into my dress again.

Speaker 6 And did she give you any advice about performing?

Speaker 11 Not really. I think she wanted me to learn that on my own.
And I think it's best for every artist to learn on their own what they're going to do on stage and how they act.

Speaker 11 And I don't think anybody else can teach you that.

Speaker 2 We're listening to an interview Terry Gross recorded in 2010 with Loretta Lynn. We'll hear more after a break.

Speaker 3 This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 Let's get back to Terry's interview with country singer Loretta Lynn. Terry asked her about one of her controversial songs, The Pill.

Speaker 11 We have a lot of them that says it like it is, so that's really, I guess, we're not to talk about the way it is.

Speaker 6 This has some lyrics that I think really were controversial in some country music circles at the time. And the lyrics include

Speaker 6 this old maternity dress I've got is going in the garbage.

Speaker 6 You've set this chicken your last time because now I've got the pill. I'm tearing down this brooder house because now I've got the pill.

Speaker 6 So the song sounds autobiographical in some ways. I'm not saying that you are necessarily angry in the way that the character in the song is angry, but you had six children.

Speaker 11 I had six kids. I lost three.

Speaker 6 You lost three?

Speaker 11 I lost three. Oh, I'm sorry.
I was about

Speaker 11 five and six. Well, it wasn't.

Speaker 11 You know, I lost them before they were born.

Speaker 6 Oh, so you had six and lost three others?

Speaker 10 Mm-hmm. Wow.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 That's a lot of pregnancies.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 10 All right, okay.

Speaker 6 Stating the obvious.

Speaker 6 Did you share the song's anger?

Speaker 11 Well,

Speaker 11 I sure didn't like it when I got pregnant a few times.

Speaker 11 You know, it's hard for a woman to have so many kids. And,

Speaker 11 well, at the time, I guess I had four,

Speaker 11 and then I got pregnant and had, you know, with the twins. But,

Speaker 10 yeah,

Speaker 11 I was a little angry.

Speaker 6 Let's hear it. And this was released in 1975, recorded in 1972.
This is Loretta Lynn, The Pill.

Speaker 13 You wind me and dined me when I was your girl.

Speaker 14 Promised if I'd be your wife, you'd show me the world.

Speaker 14 But all I've seen of this old world is a bed and a doctor bill.

Speaker 14 I'm tearing down your brooder house, cause now I've got the pill.

Speaker 12 All these years I've stayed at home while you had all your fun.

Speaker 14 And every year that's gone by, another baby's come.

Speaker 12 There's gonna be some changes made right here on nursery hill.

Speaker 14 You said this chicken your last time, cause now I've got the pill.

Speaker 14 This old maternity dress I've got is going

Speaker 11 in the garbage.

Speaker 14 The clothes I'm wearing from now on won't pick up so much yardage.

Speaker 6 Now you've said that you never even used the pill as birth control.

Speaker 11 Well if I'd have had it I'd have used it

Speaker 11 at the time but yeah. Because see when back

Speaker 11 when I was having all the kids we didn't have birth control pills. Or if they did I didn't know anything about them.

Speaker 6 Well you write that there's a lot you didn't know about when you got married in 1947 and you say you didn't I didn't know anything about sex either, did I?

Speaker 6 No, you say you didn't know anything about sex or even pregnancy. You say when you got pregnant, you didn't even know the word.

Speaker 3 Is that right?

Speaker 11 Well, I don't know.

Speaker 11 I guess we just called it having a baby. We didn't call it pregnant.

Speaker 11 Back in Butcher Holler, there was a lot of things we didn't know.

Speaker 11 A lot of things they still don't know back there.

Speaker 6 You probably had no idea you were ever going to become famous.

Speaker 10 No,

Speaker 11 never.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 I still don't.

Speaker 11 I'm not famous.

Speaker 11 I'm just me.

Speaker 6 I want to play another song. And this is something more recent than what we've been hearing.
This is your collaboration with Jack White. He produced an album of yours in 2004, Van Lear Rose.

Speaker 6 How did you meet?

Speaker 11 I went to Detroit to work. And Jack White came to see me.
And of course he told me about when he was little, he was about nine years old.

Speaker 11 When Coleminer's daughter came out, he stayed in the theater the whole time, all day long, and watched Coleminer's Daughter over and over and over.

Speaker 11 So when he got a chance to work with me, he says, I told him I had to go home because, I said, I've got to hurry because I've got to record tomorrow.

Speaker 11 He says, well, how about me coming being the producer? I said, well, why not? That's how we got together. So he was in Nashville by the time I was.
And we recorded. And that's how we started.

Speaker 6 The track I want to play is called Miss Being Missus. You wrote all the songs on this album.
And this is one of my favorites. I like the song a lot.
And also, I just love how stripped down it is.

Speaker 6 It's just you and a guitar. Is that Jack White on guitar?

Speaker 11 That's Jack White.

Speaker 6 Okay. Do you want to say anything about writing the song?

Speaker 10 Well,

Speaker 11 you know, I don't like to talk about the way I write songs.

Speaker 11 I just let people hear a man know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 6 All right, good enough. So this is Loretta Lynn from the 2004 album Van Lear Rose, produced by Jack White, who's accompanying her on guitar.

Speaker 10 Oh, I miss being

Speaker 11 missus

Speaker 10 tonight.

Speaker 10 Like so many

Speaker 3 other hearts,

Speaker 10 mine wanted to be free.

Speaker 3 I've been held here every day

Speaker 10 since you've been away from me.

Speaker 10 My reflection in the mirror,

Speaker 10 it's a hurtful sight.

Speaker 7 Oh, I miss being

Speaker 10 missus

Speaker 10 tonight.

Speaker 10 Oh, I miss

Speaker 10 being missus

Speaker 10 tonight.

Speaker 10 Oh, and how I love them, loving arms that once held me so kind.

Speaker 10 I took off my wedding band

Speaker 10 and put it on my fry.

Speaker 10 And I miss the

Speaker 10 missus

Speaker 10 tonight.

Speaker 6 That's my guest, Loretta Lynn, with Jack White on guitar from the album Van Lear Rose, which Jack White produced of Loretta Lynn songs in 2004.

Speaker 6 Your husband, who we've spoken a little bit about, died in 1996.

Speaker 6 And you didn't perform for a while after that. How has your life changed since he's been gone?

Speaker 11 Well, not for the better. I mean,

Speaker 11 I miss him so much, you know.

Speaker 11 He kind of kept things going, like

Speaker 11 me recording, and he'd always tell me how good I was, you know, and that always helped

Speaker 11 a lot. And

Speaker 11 he would say,

Speaker 11 you know, we need to get a new record out or whatever.

Speaker 11 He always kept me moving. And if it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have been singing, period,

Speaker 11 because he thought I could sing, and that's he put me to work.

Speaker 6 You know, as so many people are,

Speaker 6 I think, kind of baffled a little bit by the relationship because it seems in some ways to have been a very rocky relationship. And at the same time, you stayed with him throughout.

Speaker 11 We had a, I think we had a relationship. We fought one day and we'd love the next.
So, I mean,

Speaker 11 to me, that's a good relationship. If you can't fight and if you can't tell each other what you think, why, your relationship ain't much anyway.

Speaker 6 You don't need him anymore to tell him you're a good singer, right? I mean, you know that, right?

Speaker 11 Well,

Speaker 11 I don't know about that, but I try.

Speaker 6 Well, Loretta Lynn, it's really been great to talk with you. Thank you so very much.

Speaker 11 It's been nice to talk to you, honey.

Speaker 2 Loretta Lynn speaking with Terry Gross in 2010. Loretta Lynn died in 2022.

Speaker 2 Tonight, the Grand Ole Opry will celebrate its 100th anniversary with a live stream concert. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews a new documentary about Russia's crackdown on independent journalists.

Speaker 9 This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 Our film critic, Justin Chang, says the best documentary he's seen this year is a five-and-a-half-hour film called My Undesirable Friends Part 1, Last Air in Moscow.

Speaker 2 Filmed over several months in late 2021 and early 2022, it follows several independent journalists in Moscow as they deal with the fallout of Vladimir Putin's crackdown on reporters and Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine.

Speaker 2 My Undesirable Friends received a Gotham Award nomination for best documentary and is playing at select venues around the country. Here is Justin's review.

Speaker 3 In October 2021, the New York-based filmmaker Julia Loktev flew to Moscow amid nationwide protests in support of the Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny.

Speaker 3 Vladimir Putin's government had begun cracking down on independent journalists covering the protests, branding them as foreign agents, a designation that effectively stigmatized them and forced them to include disclaimers with their work.

Speaker 3 Loktev began filming several of these journalists who courageously kept reporting on the abuses of the regime, including her friend Anna Nemzer, a talk show host for the independent channel TV Reign.

Speaker 3 Hoping to capture the journalist's ordeal as nimbly and thoroughly as possible, Loktev became a one-person crew, following her subjects around their homes and workplaces, and filming on an iPhone.

Speaker 3 iPhone. She shot for months as tensions mounted, culminating in Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Not long afterward, all her subjects fled the country.

Speaker 3 The result of her efforts is an extraordinarily tense and intimate new documentary, My Undesirable Friends Part One, Last Heir in Moscow.

Speaker 3 Looktev is currently making a Part II, which will focus on the same subjects as they try to continue their work in exile. Part 1, though, is already a stunning accomplishment.

Speaker 3 A harrowing immersion in the daily lives of journalists who find themselves in a state of freefall.

Speaker 3 The film is divided into five chapters. The first three take place in the months leading up to the invasion of Ukraine.

Speaker 3 We see Anna Nemzer in the TV Reign studio, interviewing activists who advocate for immigrants, people with disabilities, and other marginalized groups.

Speaker 3 We see journalists reporting from the front lines of the protests and not conforming to state propaganda talking points.

Speaker 3 Whether they're data journalists, investigative reporters, or feature writers, they all try to keep on working, despite their foreign agent status, which some of them try to fight in court.

Speaker 3 Others mock the term and treat it as a badge of honor.

Speaker 3 Most of Lokdev's subjects are women in their 20s and 30s, and over the course of these five and a half hours, we're moved by their sense of camaraderie and community,

Speaker 3 and also by their gallows humor. They hang out at each other's apartments and crack jokes about the likelihood that they've been bugged, or that they might be arrested or detained.

Speaker 3 As we'll see in the film's later stretch, they're not wrong to worry.

Speaker 3 Loktev, who was born in the former Soviet Union and moved to the U.S. as a child, is a superbly observant filmmaker.

Speaker 3 In the past two decades, she's directed two fictional dramas, The Loneliest Planet and Day Night Day Night, both slow-burning character studies that took their time getting under your skin.

Speaker 3 My Undesirable Friends, Part 1, is a work of similar patience, and once Russia's full-scale assault on Ukraine begins, the movie has us fully in its grip.

Speaker 3 After the darkly comic tension of the first three parts, the fourth and fifth chapters become outright horrifying.

Speaker 3 As the journalists make plans to flee, the story's center of gravity shifts to a reporter whose fiancé has been imprisoned for treason, and who must make the heart-rending decision whether to stay or leave.

Speaker 3 It's impossible to watch My Undesirable Friends Part 1 without thinking of President Trump's ongoing attacks on the press.

Speaker 3 It's also hard not to see the film's events from the depressing standpoint of the present, with Navalny dead and the war in Ukraine still raging miserably on.

Speaker 3 Yet as grim as it is, the movie isn't a hopeless experience.

Speaker 3 I came away with deep admiration and affection for these journalists, and for their devotion to their beleaguered but invaluable profession.

Speaker 3 This is one of the most engrossing movies, fiction or non-fiction, that I've seen all year. Because it doesn't have an American distributor, it also hasn't hasn't been the easiest movie to see.

Speaker 3 It's now playing in select venues around the country, and if you have a chance to see it in a theater in the coming weeks, you should.

Speaker 3 Five and a half hours may sound like a commitment, but once this movie has begun, you won't want to leave.

Speaker 3 And you'll be as eager as I am, by the end, to see what lies ahead for these intrepid souls in Part 2.

Speaker 2 Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed My Undesirable Friends Part 1, Last Air in Moscow.
You can find a list of where you can see the film on the website argopictures.com.

Speaker 2 That's A-R-G-O-TPictures.com. On Monday's show, Oscar-winning costume designer Paul Taswell.

Speaker 2 He watched The Wizard of Oz as a child, designed The Wiz in high school, and now he's brought Wicked to life. He talks about creating more than a thousand looks to tell the story of Wicked for Good.

Speaker 2 I hope you can join us.

Speaker 2 To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air.

Speaker 2 You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash thisisfreshair. We're rolling out new videos with in-studio guests, behind-the-scenes shorts, and iconic interviews from the archive.

Speaker 2 Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Brigger is our managing producer.

Speaker 2 Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Deanna Martinez.

Speaker 2 Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Susan Yacundi, and Anna Bauman.

Speaker 2 Our digital media producer is Molly C. V.
Nesper. Hope Wilson is our consulting visual producer.
For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Biancoule.

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