Loretta Lynn’s Must-Hear Duets

Lynn and Twitty knew they had something special from the beginning, when they released We Only Make Believe, their first collaborative LP, in 1971. Fittingly, their first single, “After the Fire Is Gone” was about finding a spark with each other and chasing it (even if the characters in the song were technically cheating on their spouses). “Love is where you find it when you find no love at home,” they belt over twangy steel guitar. “And there’s nothin’ cold as ashes after the fire is gone.” “Everybody thought me and Conway had a thing going because of the songs we recorded,” Lynn told NPR in 2010. “But me and Conway were friends. We wasn’t lovers.” But even if it was all make believe, they sang it with enough passion that sparked an ember on the charts, propelling it all the way to Number One on Billboard’s Country chart. The fire crept over to the pop chart, as well, and the two singers recorded nine more albums over the next decade. K.G.

By the time Lynn and Jack White are howling “And a pitcher to go…” at song’s end, “Portland, Oregon” has earned its place as country music’s most thrashing duet, a hypnotic, skronky, and surprisingly seductive collab between a genre icon and a then 28-year-old guitarslinger. White helped introduce Lynn to a whole new audience by producing the country queen’s 2004 LP Van Lear Rose, which went on to win the Grammy for Best Country Album. “Of course, I dreamed of working with her,” he told Rolling Stone that year. “I also dreamed of carrying the train of her dress as she walks onstage, and cleaning out her tour bus, if need be.” White didn’t need to do all that, but he did gift Lynn with one of her greatest modern-day recordings in “Portland, Oregon,” a song the two performed live onstage at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena (backed by the Raconteurs, no less) in 2015. J.H.

Loretta Lynn and Elvis Costello knew each other only four or five years before they recorded the twangy, anxious “Everything It Takes” for Lynn’s Full Circle album. And even though the two didn’t have much in common on the surface — she remembered he wanted to write a song at a computer while she whipped out a piece of paper and a pencil — they found some common ground in this song in which Lynn tells a man not to listen to the woman who’s trying to steal him away from her. In her opinion, the tune was “a woman song,” as she told Rolling Stone, which explains why Costello’s main vocal contribution to the track was harmonizing on the refrain, “She’s got everything it takes to take everything you’ve got.” Lynn wasn’t present when Costello recorded his part, so when she heard the final recording it was a pleasant surprise. “I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “We did a good job.” K.G.

Lynn and Willie Nelson both arrived in Nashville around the same time and became fast friends. “His hair was the color of brass, and his eyes were the same color,” Lynn remembered in a 2016 Rolling Stone interview. “And boy, was he handsome-looking. I thought he was one of the handsomest songwriters in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve never told him that, but I will.” They looked back on their lives together on the loping acoustic-guitar ballad “Lay Me Down,” a duet from Lynn’s Full Circle album, on which the singers weave their voices around the words, “I’ll be at peace when they lay me down.” “Willie was a great songwriter when I met him, and it took him longer to realize he was a singer, too,” Lynn said. “He’s so good.” K.G.

The Coal Miner’s Daughter got outside of her comfort zone in 1977 for a groovy, super swingin’ duet with Ol’ Blue Eyes. Lynn was one of several guests, including regular Sinatra pals Tony Bennett and Dean Martin, to join him for an ABC special, Sinatra and Friends, during an era where he was fusing his brassy brand of easy listening with disco beats. That combo made the singers’ rendition of “All or Nothing at All” — a tune Sinatra originally cut in 1940 — a memorable performance. Lynn provided most of the chemistry throughout the song, looking into Sinatra’s eyes as she sang her verses, and her spell worked. At the end, she gave him a kiss on the cheek, which is a lot better than nothing at all. K.G.

Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty were ideally suited duet partners. They were both country as grits and sang beautifully together, plus they were adept at bickering like an old married couple, even though they were married to other people. Among their numerous hit recordings, the hilarious “You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly” — a hall-of-fame song title if there ever was one — is an oddity. The B-side of 1978’s “From Seven Till Ten,” both of which appeared on Lynn and Twitty’s Honky Tonk Heroes, “You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly” mixes some funky, sprightly electric piano with a honky-tonk rhythm and both singers’ simmering resentment. “You’re the reason I changed to beer from soda pop,” Twitty says. “You’re the reason I never get to go to the beauty shop,” Lynn retorts. Somehow, in spite of it all, they manage to find some lasting love for each other between all the barbs. Shame about those kids, though. J.F.

Superstar Ernest Tubb was a veteran act for Decca Records in 1964, when he and Lynn, a relative newcomer to the label, teamed up to record an album of duets that would take its title from this country weeper about the fallout from a broken marriage. Tubb’s trademark vocal, emphasizing flatly delivered emotion is countered by a brighter, yet slightly tremulous approach from Lynn, as the two resolve to go their separate ways — but manage to keep the proceedings as civil as they can. The duet would be the legendary pair’s most successful chart single, just missing out on the Top Ten. S.B.

After the phenomenal success of the 1986 Trio album, country music was ripe for a project combining that album’s acoustic traditions with the sheer firepower of three bona fide country queens. Lynn, Dolly Parton, and Tammy Wynette not only paved the way for generations of female artists and songwriters, but they shared a sisterly musical bond that beautifully coalesced on the Honky Tonk Angels LP, released in 1993.  First recorded by rock and country legend Wanda Jackson in the late Fifties, and later by Skeeter Davis and Linda Ronstadt, among others, the glitter in “Silver Threads and Golden Needles” shone even brighter because of a heartfelt collaboration among legendary friends. S.B.

A river couldn’t keep Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty apart, as they sang on “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man,” but there was one person who could bring them together: Doolittle Lynn, Loretta’s husband and manager. “[Doo] says, ‘I’ve got a hit for you,’ and Conway says, ‘Oh, my God. He’s got a song for us?'” Lynn recalled in an International Musician interview. “It was called ‘Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man,’ and it was a Number One hit. We kind of listened to Doo from then on.” The track is an upbeat Romeo and Juliet story: Not gators nor fishermen nor the Mississippi River itself can separate the song’s lovers. Doolittle was onto something: The joy in Loretta’s and Twitty’s voices could have floated any boat across the river. K.G.

“A Boy Named Sue” tunesmith Shel Silverstein wrote this hilarious send-up of jet-set Sixties icons Elizabeth Taylor, Raquel Welch, and Jackie Onassis, contrasting their day-to-day lives with that of a harried Topeka housewife and mother contending with leaky faucets and a rambunctious (and expanding) brood. On 2021’s Still Woman Enough, which would be the final studio LP released during her lifetime, Lynn revisited the tune as a duet with Margo Price. Unlike live versions she performed more recently (in which she often mentioned former First Lady Michelle Obama), Loretta kept the witty lyrics from 50 years earlier intact, while Price name-checks her son Judah. S.B.

Frequent competitors in the Vocal Duet category at the CMA Awards as a result of their hit collaborations with, respectively, Conway Twitty and Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn and George Jones would finally join forces themselves in 1984 when this spirited track appeared on Jones’ collection of duets Ladies’ Choice. It would also reappear as a bonus cut on the 2005 expanded reissue of his My Very Special Guests LP. Confessing a lack of respective skills around the house — Loretta burns the bacon and beans while George can’t fix a leaky ceiling — the breezy duet celebrates the one talent they do have in common. Based on their musical chemistry it’s a real shame these two singular talents didn’t combine more frequently in the studio. S.B.

Songwriter Dallas Frazier, who provided Marty Stuart’s wife, Connie Smith, with a number of her greatest hits, wrote this moving tune, which was among a pair of previously unreleased cuts on Stuart’s 2007 duets anthology, Compadres. In the tradition of the great prison ballads, Stuart is the ill-fated inmate, hoping for one more visit from his beloved before he faces the hanging tree, and begging not to be forgotten after he’s in his grave. Stuart and Lynn’s emotional voices blend beautifully throughout as the two consummate storytellers expertly keep the sad tale from turning into a mawkish mess. S.B.

In 2010, artists from Paramore and the White Stripes to Carrie Underwood and Lucinda Williams came together for a Loretta Lynn tribute album. The LP had its moments, especially on this rendition of Lynn’s autobiographical “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” Miranda Lambert and Sheryl Crow joined Miss Loretta for her signature, each of them telling the country queen’s story in a verse. While it’s a hoot to hear Crow put a twang on the line “selling a hog,” it’s Lynn who naturally steals the recording, making a song she’s performed countless times sound just as pristine as her beloved Butcher Holler. J.H.

In 2013, Willie Nelson released To All the Girls…, a collection of duets with female singers including Dolly Parton, Miranda Lambert, and, of course, Loretta Lynn. His voice and Lynn’s play off each other beautifully on “Somewhere Between,” a slow ballad that Merle Haggard had sung with his wife, Bonnie Owens, on his 1967 album Branded Man. But where Haggard and Owens were both in their 30s when they recorded the song, Nelson and Lynn were both around 80 when they sang, “Somewhere between your heart and mine there’s love that I can’t understand.” That half a century of maturity gives the song a deeper meaning. They take it slow like a couple who have lived with each other long enough to understand their barriers and limits, and they love each other in spite of it all. K.G.