One day while Loretta was singing to the children at home, Mooney listened intently. Discovering that his wife could sing well, he bought her a used guitar and insisted that she learn to play it, because he announced that they were going to make a stab at the music business (an idea which Loretta wasn’t too keen on at first). She began her career by working local talent shows, fairs and honky-tonks. Mooney served as her manager, driver, promoter and baby-sitter during the lean, early years. The couple often drove from town to town, at their own expense, to visit with the disc jockeys and pass out her first record “Honky Tonk Girl,” released on the Zero label.
“Honky Tonk Girl” actually did reasonably well, reaching #14 on Billboard’s country singles chart in 1960. Within a year, the Lynns had made their way to Music City. A chance meeting with Teddy and Doyle Wilburn (then a successful act on Decca Records and the Grand Ole Opry as “The Wilburn Brothers”) led to the boys pulling a few strings, hooking Loretta up with the right people, and getting her signed to the label.
From the start, Loretta Lynn was as much restricted by popular attitudes of the day as the other female singers in country music. They were “decorations” on a man’s show. Loretta was expected to let men make her decisions. She was asked to believe that women singers just weren’t as important as their male counterparts and would never be successful as individuals. That’s the way it was in Nashville at the time, and most insiders expected it to stay that way.