Behind the Song
“Van Lear Rose” was a tribute song to Lynn’s mother, Clara Webb. In Honky Tonk Girl: My Life In Lyrics, Lynn shared about her mother. According to Lynn, her mom was part Cherokee Indian with beautiful curled black hair and the loveliest skin. And when she was a child, she had always wanted to look like her, but she could never be as pretty as her mom.
And the lyrics of this song was a recollection of her father’s stories of how he met her mother, whom he called “Van Lear Rose” (named after the Kentucky coal mining community Van Lear where Lynn’s childhood home was located) and fell in love with her.