I like that part in Coal Miner's Daughter where Loretta tells her husband Doolittle, "I didn't know you knew so much about the music business."
He answers her, "I just pick it up as I go along, listenin' to people talk."
Whomever he was hanging out with, or seeing at his job - some of them must have been discussing and dreaming about making hit records.
In a book about soul music, it said in the middle of the last century - post World War II and on into the '60s and '70s, all over the American South there were people soundproofing rooms with egg cartons and buying what equipment they could find and afford, to make records.
They talk about this phenomenon in the Muscle Shoals documentary, as well.
In Coal Miner's Daughter, when Doolittle and Loretta visit the first radio station to encourage the D.J. to play her song on-air, the announcer kind of snaps at them impatiently, "Do you know how many do-it-yourself records I get in here every week?! If I played 'em all, I wouldn't have time to play anything else!"
Mr. Lynn, with no music-business background, and no fancy "connections," launches his wife's singing career: pretty impressive.
Recently listening to the movie, I noticed how a radio personality tells them their record is on the charts and it's "Number fourteen, nationwide!"
And then within the next couple of scenes, Doolittle encourages Loretta to realize she probably can get on the stage at the Grand Old Opry because, "We're Number fourteen - nationwide!"
He learns on the fly - he was a smart and creative person.
(It occurred to me he could have gone to college on the G.I. Bill, having served in the Army during World War II - as he says in the movie, "I went a-shore at D-Day plus four, and stayed in combat 'til the damn thing was over.")
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