Three verses were eliminated: – a remembrance of an interior-decorating endeavor at Loretta’s log-cabin home, one about the frequent Kentucky floods, and another regarding a “hog-killing day.” These verses were deleted and the finished recording timed out at 3:02, very manageable for radio airplay during that period in country music.
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Several lines in the song had grammatical problems, but no changes were made to those. In the very first line, Loretta sings “I was ‘borned’ a coal miner’s daughter.” Another has her singing “the work we done was hard, at night we’d sleep ‘cause we were ‘tard’” (instead of pronouncing it “tired”). Bradley explained that he let Loretta sing it her own way without correcting her because that was the way she spoke, and since the song was autobiographical in nature anyway, Owen thought that Loretta’s Eastern Kentucky dialect should be left in. After the session was completed, Loretta had second thoughts, feeling that “Coal Miner’s Daughter” was too personal to be released as a single, so she held it back for a full year.
But after reconsidering, she finally gave the go-ahead and the song shipped as a single on October 5, 1970. It reached #1 on December 19th. Following the record’s success, Loretta remarked, “’Coal Miner’s Daughter’ proves that I can write about something else besides marriage problems.” In addition to the book and movie that “Coal Miner’s Daughter” inspired, Loretta’s original recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame in 1998 and the Library Of Congress’ “National Recording Registry” in 2010, the highest honor a recording can achieve. It also placed #185 on the Recording Industry Association of America’s list of the “Greatest Songs Of The 20th Century,” based on cultural and historical significance.
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