It Was 50 Years Ago Today: Loretta Lynn Hits #1 With “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)”
February 14, 1967
“Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)” by Loretta Lynn
#1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, February 11-17, 1967
This Valentine’s Day, while everyone else is steeped in romance and exchanging dewy-eyed glances at each other, take a little time to remember that love isn’t always roses and chocolate.
Sometimes it’s waiting up at all hours for your beloved to come home from the bar, getting up to who knows what, while you cry all alone. It’s hard to feel romantic when your other half comes in stinking of alcohol, acting a fool, and trying to put the moves on you, and you’ve had hours — maybe years — of resentment bubbling up inside.
If only there were a candy heart that could say what you really feel — preferably one that starts with an “F” and ends with a “U.”
At least you’ll always have Loretta Lynn. While her best friend Tammy Wynette would famously sing “Stand By Your Man,” Lynn lived it, married to the same man, Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn, from age 15 until his death nearly 50 years later.
Doolittle’s hard-drinking and womanizing gave Lynn an endless supply of misery, but also an endless source of material. Doolittle also recognized Loretta’s talent, however, buying her first guitar and encouraging her to perform.
When Lynn recorded her first hit, “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” in 1960, country music was dominated by male performers. Only a handful of female country singers had become superstars, most notably Kitty Wells and Patsy Cline.
Lynn started out imitating Wells’ vocal style and honky-tonk sound, as well as her tellin’-it-like-it-is attitude. After befriending Cline in the early ’60s, Lynn adopted some of her mentor’s elegant style and showmanship.
But while Cline embraced the strings-drenched, crossover Nashville Sound, Lynn never betrayed her Kentucky roots or the unglamorous side of her family life.
In fact, it was when she began focusing on her personal life story and point-of-view — and pushed for her self-written songs to become singles — that her popularity exploded.
But while she racked up a string of Top 10 country hits in the early-to-mid-’60s, her 1966 single “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)” was a turning point. It established her persona as a woman who could both stand by her man and stand up for herself.
Her next single, however, also proved she could stand up to her man. In “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind),” she offers an ultimatum: “liquor and love they just don’t mix / leave the bottle or me behind.”
This isn’t a plea for temperance, but a protest that she’s being forced to stay home and miss out on the fun (“you never take me anywhere because you’re always gone”). He expects to be able to come home drunk and turn his amorous attentions to her; she’s too disgusted and upset to want him anywhere near her. This isn’t the submissive little country wife, but a woman with a mind and a will of her own.
Like her heroine Kitty Wells, whose 1952 classic “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” was repeatedly banned on radio and television, Lynn faced censorship from the conservative country music establishment. But despite country radio’s lack of enthusiasm to play and promote the single, “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’” became a grassroots hit, bought by Lynn’s fans — and likely many, many women who understood the song’s meaning on a personal level.
Eventually, it became too popular for radio to ignore. Three months after its release, “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’” became Lynn’s first #1 hit — and made her the first woman to write her own country #1 single. (Her sister, Peggy Sue, a singer in her own right, also contributed.)
“Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin'” opened the floodgates. Lynn would earn an additional 10 country #1s over the next decade, as well as countless Top 10 hits.
She would continue courting controversy with many of her hits, including 1968’s “Fist City” (female violence), 1972’s “Rated ‘X’” (divorce), and 1975’s “The Pill” (birth control) — all of which topped the charts, even if they were (temporarily) banned.
This straightforwardness may have lifted some eyebrows, but it also made her one of the biggest stars in country music history, including the only female performer to be named Artist of the Decade (1970s) by the Academy of Country Music.
So this Valentine’s Day, savor your love songs and slow jams. For the other 364 days of the year, Loretta’s got your back.
It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.
