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Two Weeks Before Doo Died, Loretta Lynn Took Him to Get Hearing Aids Because He Could No Longer Hear the Music During the final month of Doolittle Lynn’s life, he kept telling Loretta that he could no longer hear the music. At first, she misunderstood him. After nearly five decades of marriage, so much of it shaped by her career, Loretta thought Doo might be asking her to stop singing. She later said she would have done it if that was what he wanted. Then she realized the problem was physical. Diabetes and heart disease had confined him to a bed and wheelchair. His legs had been amputated, his eyesight was failing, and now his hearing was disappearing. Two weeks before his death, Loretta took him to be fitted with a pair of tiny hearing aids. By then, she had already placed most of her career aside. Loretta later remembered Doo being bedridden for roughly six years. She stayed home at Hurricane Mills and cared for him around the clock, cutting back her performances and no longer writing songs. When an interviewer asked what had happened to her career during those years, she answered that she did not know. Taking care of Doo had become the work. He died from diabetes-related complications and heart failure in August 1996, five days before his seventieth birthday. Loretta stayed away from performing for another year because, as she put it, she did not have the heart to return. When she eventually entered the studio again, one song brought the final weeks back into the room. “I Can’t Hear the Music,” written with Cody James and Kendal Franceschi, turned Doo’s failing hearing into Loretta’s description of widowhood. The man who had once pushed her toward a stage was gone, and she could no longer hear the voice that had always told her she could do more. During the recording, Loretta repeatedly broke down. At one point, producer Randy Scruggs stopped the session for roughly forty-five minutes. He asked her to think about something she wanted—anything that might carry her through the final chorus. Loretta had not eaten that day. Through the studio window, she had noticed a Snickers bar in the vending machine. She fixed her mind on the candy bar, returned to the microphone and finished the take. Some of her crying remained on the record. The song preserved Doo’s last silence. The little promise of chocolate got Loretta through the chorus.

“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.”

THE SONG LORETTA LYNN COULD ONLY FINISH BY THINKING ABOUT A CANDY BAR

“I Can’t Hear the Music”

Doolittle Lynn’s sentence sounded simple enough to misunderstand.

He had spent decades inside Loretta’s musical life. He bought her first guitar, encouraged her to perform and drove her from one radio station to another when “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl” needed airplay. He had also resented the career at times, particularly when it took her away from home.

So when Doo began saying he could not hear the music anymore, Loretta wondered whether he meant that he no longer wanted music around him.

She took the words seriously. If he was asking her to stop singing, she later said, she would have stopped.

Only gradually did she understand that Doo was describing what his body had taken from him.

The Work Inside Hurricane Mills

During the early 1990s, Loretta’s public schedule narrowed.

Her absence could have looked like the natural slowing of a veteran performer whose greatest chart years were behind her. Inside the Lynn home, the reason was more immediate.

Doo’s diabetes had worsened. His health required continual attention, and Loretta took responsibility for much of that care. In a later interview with Dan Rather, she remembered him being bedridden for about six years. Other accounts described four especially intensive years at his bedside.

She stopped writing. Concerts became secondary. When Rather asked what had happened to her career during this period, Loretta gave no calculation of missed albums or lost income.

She had been caring for her husband, she said. It was an around-the-clock job.

The Farmer Without His Legs

Illness took away the parts of life Doo understood best.

He had always been physical—a logger in Washington, a farmer and the man overseeing the large property at Hurricane Mills. Even when Loretta’s name stood above the enterprise, Doo remained attached to land, equipment and work that could be completed with his hands.

Diabetes first cost him toes, then a foot and eventually both legs. Loretta remembered that when doctors prepared to remove the second leg, she understood what the loss would mean to him.

He could no longer move through the farm as he once had. A wheelchair replaced the working routines around which he had built his identity.

His eyesight deteriorated. Fluid filled his lungs. Then the music began to recede.

The Small Hearing Aids

Two weeks before Doo died, Loretta took him to obtain hearing aids.

They were tiny devices, an attempt to restore one narrow path back into the room. She also tried glasses, though he resisted wearing them and no longer showed much interest in television.

The gestures were practical and intimate. Loretta could not reverse his diabetes or return his legs. She could place the hearing aids near his ears and see whether a voice, a television program or a song might reach him again.

The woman who had spent much of her adult life projecting sound toward distant audiences was now trying to deliver it across the short space beside her husband’s bed.

Doo died at Hurricane Mills in August 1996. He was sixty-nine.

A Year Without the Stage

Loretta did not immediately convert the loss into a record.

She remained away from work for about another year. Grief damaged her sense of time; in one interview she recalled asking a friend whether she had been in Nashville for only a few nights and being told that a year had passed.

When she did return, she began with performing rather than writing. Songs required a kind of attention she had not yet recovered.

Her career had once been propelled by Doo’s certainty. He heard her singing while she worked around the house and insisted she could earn money with that voice. Loretta entered music partly because she did not want to disappoint him.

Without Doo, the person who had pushed her toward the work was also the person whose absence made the work difficult to resume.

Turning His Sentence Around

Loretta eventually wrote “I Can’t Hear the Music” with Cody James and Kendal Franceschi.

The title began with Doo’s physical hearing loss, but the pronoun changed. In the song, Loretta became the person unable to hear. The missing music was his voice—his criticism, encouragement and insistence that she could do what she doubted she could.

The change allowed a private bedside sentence to hold two different disappearances.

Doo had lost the sound around him as his body failed. Loretta lost the sound that had followed her since adolescence when he died.

The song was chosen for Still Country, her first solo studio album in more than a decade. Randy Scruggs produced the sessions in Nashville in 2000.

Writing the song had not made it easier to sing.

Forty-Five Minutes Before the Chorus

Loretta began the vocal and broke down.

She tried to sing a line at a time, but when the final chorus approached, the session stopped. According to her account, roughly forty-five minutes passed before she could continue.

Scruggs suggested that she concentrate on something pleasant—something she wanted after finishing the performance. Loretta had gone through the day without eating. She had noticed a Snickers bar in a vending machine.

That became the object waiting at the other end of the song.

She returned to the microphone thinking about the candy bar and made it through another take. The distraction did not remove the grief from her voice. Some of the crying had to remain because a perfectly controlled performance was no longer available.

The record carries both efforts: Loretta remembering Doo and Loretta trying not to remember him long enough to finish.

What “I Can’t Hear the Music” Really Leaves Behind

Loretta and Doo’s marriage contained devotion, violence, betrayal, work, ambition and a loyalty that neither one managed to explain neatly. Reducing those forty-eight years to romance would make them less truthful. Reducing them to damage would do the same.

The final years placed them in a room where the old arguments no longer solved anything. Doo needed care. Loretta stayed.

After he died, she needed a way to return to the occupation he had first demanded she try. The song became part of that return, though completing it required a studio pause, a vending machine and one small appetite strong enough to compete with memory.

Loretta eventually sang the final chorus. She did not hide every break in her voice.

Then the recording ended, the control-room lights remained on, and the Snickers bar was still waiting.

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Loretta Lynn Sometimes Had to Ask Her Twin Daughters to Turn Around So She Could Tell Which One She Was Calling When Loretta Lynn hurried between the stage and her tour bus, she sometimes called her youngest daughters by a single name: “Twin.” Peggy and Patsy Lynn hated it. The girls were identical, and Loretta spent so much time on the road that she occasionally needed them to turn and face her before she could tell them apart. If everyone was moving quickly, she skipped the question and called for both at once. “Come here, Twin.” Peggy and Patsy would protest that they were two people, not one. Their father Doo usually warned them not to talk back to their mother, though the correction carried little force. He understood why the name made them angry. The twins were born in August 1964, when Loretta’s career was accelerating. She named Peggy after her younger sister Peggy Sue and Patsy after Patsy Cline, who had died the previous year. By the time the girls were old enough to remember their mother’s schedule, Loretta was performing as many as two hundred concerts a year. There were stretches when she disappeared for a month or more. Peggy later said she and Patsy spent so much time with Doo that extended visits from Loretta could feel like time with a favorite aunt. Their father kept them in public school, took them to church twice a week and expected them to hoe the garden and help put up hay. Loretta knew what the touring cost. She later called leaving her children the worst part of her career. But Hurricane Mills had to be paid for, and every new acre Doo purchased created another bill. When Loretta returned home and found the property growing, she understood who would have to go back onto the road. The twins eventually joined her there. In 1990, Loretta walked into the tour bus and told them to learn the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream.” When Peggy and Patsy sang the first note together, the harmony filled the bus. Both women immediately understood that they were a duo. They later performed anonymously at Tootsie’s as the Honk-a-Billies, refusing to use their mother’s name to secure attention. A Warner Bros. representative heard them before learning they were Loretta Lynn’s daughters. As children, they had fought to make their mother call them separately. As grown women, Peggy and Patsy finally chose when their two voices would become one.

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In 1978, Eddie Rabbitt gave one of the final credits on Variations to a 78-year-old man who had spent his working life around an oil refinery. The musician was his father, Thomas Rabbitt. The instrument was the fiddle Eddie had been hearing since childhood. Thomas and Mae Rabbitt had come to America from Ireland and settled in New Jersey. During the week, Thomas worked in refrigeration at the refinery. Away from the plant, he played fiddle and accordion at Irish dances, family parties and neighborhood gatherings. Jigs and reels filled the house long before their son understood how far those melodies had traveled. Eddie eventually carried them to Nashville. He became known for polished country records that moved easily toward pop, but he believed the minor chords in his writing came from the Irish music his father played. On Variations, surrounded by Nashville session musicians, he decided to make that inheritance audible. “Song of Ireland” was written with Even Stevens and producer David Malloy. Eddie sang about being born in America while feeling drawn toward a country he had never seen. Near the heart of the recording, the song opened into the traditional Irish tune “Mist in the Meadow.” Thomas played it. The moment was not presented as a novelty or a sentimental spoken introduction. His fiddle simply entered the arrangement, carrying the music he had brought through dance halls and weekend gatherings into his son’s Nashville studio. Variations also contained major country hits, including “You Don’t Love Me Anymore” and “I Just Want to Love You.” Those songs carried the album onto the charts. “Song of Ireland” remained tucked near the end, never becoming one of Eddie’s signature singles. Yet its personnel list preserved something the hits could not. Among Nashville players such as Hargus “Pig” Robbins, Reggie Young and Joe Osborn appeared one unusually personal line: Thomas Rabbitt — Irish fiddle, track ten. Years later, Eddie still made room during his concerts for the old fiddle tunes his father had played. By then the refinery shifts and New Jersey dance halls were far behind them. The music Thomas carried into the family, however, had found its way onto a record bearing his son’s name. More of the Rabbitt family’s Irish story appears below, along with the recording on which father and son finally shared the same album credit.

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Two weeks before Patsy Cline died, she handed Dottie West a scrapbook and refused to take it back. The two women had stayed awake through the night talking about their careers. Patsy was already one of country music’s biggest singers. Dottie was still trying to survive in Nashville with young children, a new baby and only two or three days of road work each month. Patsy knew how thin the money had become. Dottie’s husband, Bill West, played steel guitar, so Patsy sometimes hired him for shows even when her arrangements did not require a steel player. The extra musician was not there for the sound. He was there because the West family needed another paycheck. That night, Patsy brought out the scrapbook she had built during her rise. Inside were fan letters, photographs, newspaper clippings and music charts with her hit records circled in red. Dottie told her to keep it for her children and grandchildren. Patsy insisted that she take it. Dottie carried the book home and sent her children off to school. When she finally sat down to look through the pages, she found something Patsy had placed inside while they were talking: a check for seventy-five dollars. A short note was attached. “This will pay your rent this month.” The gift had been hidden because Patsy understood what open charity might do to the pride of another singer. She left Dottie a record of everything she had achieved, then quietly tucked the family’s immediate need between its pages. Roughly two weeks later, Dottie appeared with Patsy at the benefit concert in Kansas City that became Cline’s final performance. Dottie and Bill offered her a place in their car for the long ride back to Nashville. Patsy chose to wait for the weather and return by plane. She died on March 5, 1963. Dottie’s own break came afterward. Jim Reeves recorded one of her songs, RCA signed her, and “Here Comes My Baby” earned her country music’s first Grammy awarded to a female artist. The seventy-five dollars was soon spent. The month it purchased was enough to keep the West family beneath a Nashville roof while Dottie waited for the career Patsy believed was coming. More from the friendship inside that scrapbook—and the last journey the two women almost made together—is explored below.

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Two Weeks Before Doo Died, Loretta Lynn Took Him to Get Hearing Aids Because He Could No Longer Hear the Music During the final month of Doolittle Lynn’s life, he kept telling Loretta that he could no longer hear the music. At first, she misunderstood him. After nearly five decades of marriage, so much of it shaped by her career, Loretta thought Doo might be asking her to stop singing. She later said she would have done it if that was what he wanted. Then she realized the problem was physical. Diabetes and heart disease had confined him to a bed and wheelchair. His legs had been amputated, his eyesight was failing, and now his hearing was disappearing. Two weeks before his death, Loretta took him to be fitted with a pair of tiny hearing aids. By then, she had already placed most of her career aside. Loretta later remembered Doo being bedridden for roughly six years. She stayed home at Hurricane Mills and cared for him around the clock, cutting back her performances and no longer writing songs. When an interviewer asked what had happened to her career during those years, she answered that she did not know. Taking care of Doo had become the work. He died from diabetes-related complications and heart failure in August 1996, five days before his seventieth birthday. Loretta stayed away from performing for another year because, as she put it, she did not have the heart to return. When she eventually entered the studio again, one song brought the final weeks back into the room. “I Can’t Hear the Music,” written with Cody James and Kendal Franceschi, turned Doo’s failing hearing into Loretta’s description of widowhood. The man who had once pushed her toward a stage was gone, and she could no longer hear the voice that had always told her she could do more. During the recording, Loretta repeatedly broke down. At one point, producer Randy Scruggs stopped the session for roughly forty-five minutes. He asked her to think about something she wanted—anything that might carry her through the final chorus. Loretta had not eaten that day. Through the studio window, she had noticed a Snickers bar in the vending machine. She fixed her mind on the candy bar, returned to the microphone and finished the take. Some of her crying remained on the record. The song preserved Doo’s last silence. The little promise of chocolate got Loretta through the chorus.

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Loretta Lynn Sometimes Had to Ask Her Twin Daughters to Turn Around So She Could Tell Which One She Was Calling When Loretta Lynn hurried between the stage and her tour bus, she sometimes called her youngest daughters by a single name: “Twin.” Peggy and Patsy Lynn hated it. The girls were identical, and Loretta spent so much time on the road that she occasionally needed them to turn and face her before she could tell them apart. If everyone was moving quickly, she skipped the question and called for both at once. “Come here, Twin.” Peggy and Patsy would protest that they were two people, not one. Their father Doo usually warned them not to talk back to their mother, though the correction carried little force. He understood why the name made them angry. The twins were born in August 1964, when Loretta’s career was accelerating. She named Peggy after her younger sister Peggy Sue and Patsy after Patsy Cline, who had died the previous year. By the time the girls were old enough to remember their mother’s schedule, Loretta was performing as many as two hundred concerts a year. There were stretches when she disappeared for a month or more. Peggy later said she and Patsy spent so much time with Doo that extended visits from Loretta could feel like time with a favorite aunt. Their father kept them in public school, took them to church twice a week and expected them to hoe the garden and help put up hay. Loretta knew what the touring cost. She later called leaving her children the worst part of her career. But Hurricane Mills had to be paid for, and every new acre Doo purchased created another bill. When Loretta returned home and found the property growing, she understood who would have to go back onto the road. The twins eventually joined her there. In 1990, Loretta walked into the tour bus and told them to learn the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream.” When Peggy and Patsy sang the first note together, the harmony filled the bus. Both women immediately understood that they were a duo. They later performed anonymously at Tootsie’s as the Honk-a-Billies, refusing to use their mother’s name to secure attention. A Warner Bros. representative heard them before learning they were Loretta Lynn’s daughters. As children, they had fought to make their mother call them separately. As grown women, Peggy and Patsy finally chose when their two voices would become one.

Country Music

In 1978, Eddie Rabbitt gave one of the final credits on Variations to a 78-year-old man who had spent his working life around an oil refinery. The musician was his father, Thomas Rabbitt. The instrument was the fiddle Eddie had been hearing since childhood. Thomas and Mae Rabbitt had come to America from Ireland and settled in New Jersey. During the week, Thomas worked in refrigeration at the refinery. Away from the plant, he played fiddle and accordion at Irish dances, family parties and neighborhood gatherings. Jigs and reels filled the house long before their son understood how far those melodies had traveled. Eddie eventually carried them to Nashville. He became known for polished country records that moved easily toward pop, but he believed the minor chords in his writing came from the Irish music his father played. On Variations, surrounded by Nashville session musicians, he decided to make that inheritance audible. “Song of Ireland” was written with Even Stevens and producer David Malloy. Eddie sang about being born in America while feeling drawn toward a country he had never seen. Near the heart of the recording, the song opened into the traditional Irish tune “Mist in the Meadow.” Thomas played it. The moment was not presented as a novelty or a sentimental spoken introduction. His fiddle simply entered the arrangement, carrying the music he had brought through dance halls and weekend gatherings into his son’s Nashville studio. Variations also contained major country hits, including “You Don’t Love Me Anymore” and “I Just Want to Love You.” Those songs carried the album onto the charts. “Song of Ireland” remained tucked near the end, never becoming one of Eddie’s signature singles. Yet its personnel list preserved something the hits could not. Among Nashville players such as Hargus “Pig” Robbins, Reggie Young and Joe Osborn appeared one unusually personal line: Thomas Rabbitt — Irish fiddle, track ten. Years later, Eddie still made room during his concerts for the old fiddle tunes his father had played. By then the refinery shifts and New Jersey dance halls were far behind them. The music Thomas carried into the family, however, had found its way onto a record bearing his son’s name. More of the Rabbitt family’s Irish story appears below, along with the recording on which father and son finally shared the same album credit.

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In 1949, Jimmy Stewart married Gloria McLean and signed the papers that made her two young boys his sons. Twenty years later, one of them—Marine First Lieutenant Ronald McLean—was killed in Vietnam, sending a decorated World War II pilot home from another war as a grieving father. Ronald was five when Stewart entered his life; his brother Michael was three. Jimmy had spent years as one of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors, yet within eighteen months of the wedding, Gloria gave birth to twin daughters and he found himself raising four children. Contemporary accounts noted that Stewart made no distinction between the boys he had adopted and the daughters born to him. He called all four his children. The family name on Ronald’s documents remained McLean, but inside the house he was Jimmy’s eldest son. Ronald grew up and joined the Marine Corps. Stewart had flown more than twenty combat missions over Europe and remained in the Air Force Reserve long after Hollywood resumed. Military service was not an abstraction within their family, though nothing in Jimmy’s own record could make the waiting easier once Ronald was sent to Vietnam. On June 8, 1969, the 24-year-old lieutenant was serving with a reconnaissance unit in Quảng Trị Province. During an enemy attack, Ronald exposed himself to fire while directing his men and was killed by machine-gun fire. He was awarded the Silver Star posthumously. Gloria accepted the medal at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro. Jimmy did not turn his son’s death into a public performance. When he later addressed it, he said the war had been mismanaged but necessary, then added only that the family was proud of Ronald. In the years that followed, Jimmy and Gloria returned regularly to Washington to honor him. Ronald’s name was eventually cut into the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Panel 23 West, Line 113. A reporter visiting Stewart’s study in 1980 found framed family photographs covering one wall. Among them was the honorable-service citation sent after Ronald’s death. The Oscar stayed elsewhere. The paper bearing his son’s name remained with the family pictures.