The Greatest Oldies Music

Country

Before John Carter Cash produced Loretta Lynn’s final four studio albums, she had looked after him backstage while his mother performed. Born in 1970 to Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, John spent his childhood around musicians who would remain part of his life. When Loretta appeared on Johnny’s touring shows, June sometimes left him in her care before taking the stage. “Take care of Johnny,” she would say. Years later, their connection brought Loretta to Cash Cabin, the Hendersonville, Tennessee, studio Johnny had built on his property. Beginning in 2007, John Carter and Loretta’s daughter, Patsy Lynn Russell, produced sessions that eventually yielded more than ninety recordings. Loretta was seventy-five when they started. Among the songs were mountain tunes her mother had taught her long before Nashville, back in Butcher Hollow. *Full Circle* arrived in 2016, when she was eighty-three, and became her highest-charting album on the Billboard 200. Three more studio albums followed from the sessions, concluding in 2021. Loretta appreciated the turn their lives had taken. The child she once watched while June sang was now helping preserve her own voice. “So now he’s recording me,” she said.

In the early 1970s, when Loretta Lynn shared the road with Johnny Cash, there was a small job that came with the tour. While June Carter Cash sang, somebody had to mind her little boy. More than once, that somebody was Loretta Lynn. Decades later, the same boy, John Carter Cash, sat behind the console and produced the last four studio albums Loretta Lynn ever made.

Backstage with the Cash family

John Carter Cash was born on March 3, 1970, the only child Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash had together. His parents were at the height of their fame, and he grew up on tour buses and in the wings of theaters. Sometimes Johnny would finish “A Boy Named Sue,” tell the crowd he had grown up and had a son of his own, and bring the boy out to sing with the family.

The rest of the time, he needed looking after. In his 2007 memoir about his mother, Anchored in Love, John Carter Cash recalled that Loretta Lynn used to babysit him backstage when she performed on his father’s shows. Her own memory of it was simple:

“June would be up there singin’ while I watched John Carter.”

Years later, Loretta Lynn told TIME that June would trust her son with just about anyone in the building, and would hand him over with a quick “Here, hold Johnny. Take care of Johnny.” Loretta Lynn remembered him as a good kid.

The cabin in Hendersonville

The turnaround began in 2007. Loretta Lynn, then 75, started making regular trips to the Cash Cabin Studio, the recording studio Johnny Cash had built on his property in Hendersonville, Tennessee, in the late 1970s. By then John Carter Cash looked after the place, and he had already produced his mother’s final recordings before her death in 2003.

He produced the sessions alongside Loretta Lynn’s daughter Patsy Lynn Russell. The work went on quietly for years. Only in 2014, when Loretta Lynn signed a multi-album deal with Sony’s Legacy Recordings, did the public learn how much  music had piled up in that cabin.

Ninety-three songs, and the ones her mother taught her

The number surprised people. Loretta Lynn told TIME she had cut 93 songs. Reports from the sessions put the total at more than 90, and some later accounts said it went past 100.

Many of them reached back to the very beginning. Loretta Lynn explained that she had spent her career writing new songs and never went back to the ones her mother taught her as a little girl in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky. Now, recording on her own terms, she wanted the younger generation to hear what she sang as a child.

So the sessions included old Appalachian ballads like “In the Pines,” “I Never Will Marry” and “Black Jack David,” a song the Carter Family had made famous. That last one carried a quiet connection of its own: the Carter Family was John Carter Cash’s grandmother’s family. There was also a fresh recording of “Whispering Sea,” the first song Loretta Lynn ever wrote.

Full Circle

The first album from the cabin arrived on March 4, 2016. It was called Full Circle, and it was Loretta Lynn’s first studio album in 12 years. She was 83.

Alongside the mountain songs were new versions of her own classics, including “Fist City,” plus a duet with Willie Nelson on “Lay Me Down” and a track with Elvis Costello. It landed the same day PBS premiered the American Masters documentary Loretta Lynn: Still a Mountain Girl.

Full Circle debuted at No. 19 on the Billboard 200, the highest position any Loretta Lynn album ever reached on that all-genre chart, and it went top five on Billboard’s  country albums chart. It also earned a Grammy nomination for Best  Country Album.

What the cabin gave us

Three more albums came from those sessions, all produced by John Carter Cash and Patsy Lynn Russell: the Christmas record White Christmas Blue later in 2016, Wouldn’t It Be Great in 2018, and Still Woman Enough in 2021. That last one turned out to be Loretta Lynn’s final solo studio album.

Loretta Lynn died on October 4, 2022, at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. She was 90. Reports after her death said dozens of songs from the Cash Cabin sessions had never been released.

When Rolling Stone asked her about working with the boy she once minded backstage, she remembered the Cash family handing him to her during shows, then summed up the whole story in a single line:

“So now he’s recording me.”

Do you remember the first time you heard Loretta Lynn sing? Was it on the radio, on a record at home, or in person?

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Thirty years after “Islands in the Stream,” Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton recorded a duet that reflected the friendship they had built along the way. Released in 2013, “You Can’t Make Old Friends” gave them words for the years behind them: shared music, memories, and a familiarity neither had to explain. Their voices carried those years, too. Dolly’s gentle phrasing met Kenny’s warm, weathered delivery, making the performance feel like a conversation between people who knew each other well. The smiles and exchanged glances added to that feeling. Having already created one of country music’s best-loved partnerships, they brought an easy affection to a song about growing older and valuing the people who remember your earlier self. For listeners who had followed them since 1983, the duet offered something especially moving: the chance to hear two old friends acknowledge how much their friendship meant.

Loretta Lynn thought “Coal Miner’s Daughter” was missing something when she heard the studio playback: one small word. During the October 1969 sessions, she worked with producer Owen Bradley and leading Nashville musicians, singing alongside the band as much of the performance was recorded live. Listening afterward, she noticed she had left out the “yeah” she wanted before the final chorus’s declaration of pride. Engineer Jim Williamson later recalled explaining that she could simply record the word separately. “You can do that?” Loretta asked. He located an unused track, played the recording, and brought her in at the right moment. She sang the missing word, and the addition was complete. “Coal Miner’s Daughter” reached No. 1 on the country chart in 1970. Its account of Loretta’s childhood became one of her defining recordings, familiar to generations of listeners. That little “yeah” sounds entirely at home in the finished record. It took Loretta hearing its absence—and an engineer showing her what was possible—to put it there. Knowing how it happened gives that final chorus another detail to listen for.

Roy Orbison’s voice had made loneliness familiar to millions. Then, within two years, he lost his wife and two of their children. Claudette died in a motorcycle accident in June 1966. Left with three young sons, Orbison continued working while trying to care for his family. His career was already losing the momentum of “Only the Lonely,” “Crying,” and “Oh, Pretty Woman.” In 1968, while he was touring England, a fire destroyed his home near Nashville. Ten-year-old Roy Dewayne and six-year-old Anthony died. His youngest son, Wesley, survived. Orbison kept performing, particularly overseas, where audiences continued to welcome him as a major star. He later acknowledged that work helped him endure the grief. At home in America, his visibility diminished. He wrote less, and rebuilding a private life took precedence over pursuing another chart success. His return gathered strength in the 1980s. Bruce Springsteen, George Harrison, Tom Petty, and Bono were among the younger musicians who openly celebrated his influence. Television appearances introduced him to new listeners, and the Traveling Wilburys placed him alongside artists who admired him. He also completed *Mystery Girl* before dying of a heart attack in 1988, aged fifty-two. The dark glasses and extraordinary voice became enduring images of rock history. Behind them was a father and husband who had continued living and working through devastating losses. His songs had given heartbreak a sound long before listeners understood how much of it he carried himself.

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Thirty years after “Islands in the Stream,” Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton recorded a duet that reflected the friendship they had built along the way. Released in 2013, “You Can’t Make Old Friends” gave them words for the years behind them: shared music, memories, and a familiarity neither had to explain. Their voices carried those years, too. Dolly’s gentle phrasing met Kenny’s warm, weathered delivery, making the performance feel like a conversation between people who knew each other well. The smiles and exchanged glances added to that feeling. Having already created one of country music’s best-loved partnerships, they brought an easy affection to a song about growing older and valuing the people who remember your earlier self. For listeners who had followed them since 1983, the duet offered something especially moving: the chance to hear two old friends acknowledge how much their friendship meant.

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Loretta Lynn thought “Coal Miner’s Daughter” was missing something when she heard the studio playback: one small word. During the October 1969 sessions, she worked with producer Owen Bradley and leading Nashville musicians, singing alongside the band as much of the performance was recorded live. Listening afterward, she noticed she had left out the “yeah” she wanted before the final chorus’s declaration of pride. Engineer Jim Williamson later recalled explaining that she could simply record the word separately. “You can do that?” Loretta asked. He located an unused track, played the recording, and brought her in at the right moment. She sang the missing word, and the addition was complete. “Coal Miner’s Daughter” reached No. 1 on the country chart in 1970. Its account of Loretta’s childhood became one of her defining recordings, familiar to generations of listeners. That little “yeah” sounds entirely at home in the finished record. It took Loretta hearing its absence—and an engineer showing her what was possible—to put it there. Knowing how it happened gives that final chorus another detail to listen for.

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Roy Orbison’s voice had made loneliness familiar to millions. Then, within two years, he lost his wife and two of their children. Claudette died in a motorcycle accident in June 1966. Left with three young sons, Orbison continued working while trying to care for his family. His career was already losing the momentum of “Only the Lonely,” “Crying,” and “Oh, Pretty Woman.” In 1968, while he was touring England, a fire destroyed his home near Nashville. Ten-year-old Roy Dewayne and six-year-old Anthony died. His youngest son, Wesley, survived. Orbison kept performing, particularly overseas, where audiences continued to welcome him as a major star. He later acknowledged that work helped him endure the grief. At home in America, his visibility diminished. He wrote less, and rebuilding a private life took precedence over pursuing another chart success. His return gathered strength in the 1980s. Bruce Springsteen, George Harrison, Tom Petty, and Bono were among the younger musicians who openly celebrated his influence. Television appearances introduced him to new listeners, and the Traveling Wilburys placed him alongside artists who admired him. He also completed *Mystery Girl* before dying of a heart attack in 1988, aged fifty-two. The dark glasses and extraordinary voice became enduring images of rock history. Behind them was a father and husband who had continued living and working through devastating losses. His songs had given heartbreak a sound long before listeners understood how much of it he carried himself.

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Phil Kaufman believed he owed Gram Parsons one final trip to Joshua Tree. Keeping that promise led him to steal his friend’s coffin from Los Angeles International Airport. Parsons died of an overdose at the Joshua Tree Inn on September 19, 1973. He was twenty-six. His work had helped establish country rock, influencing musicians including Emmylou Harris and the Eagles, but his brief career ended in a desert town he had visited repeatedly. His family planned to fly his body east for burial. Kaufman, his road manager, remembered a different arrangement: he and Parsons had agreed that whoever died first would be cremated at Joshua Tree. With a borrowed hearse and a friend’s assistance, Kaufman persuaded airline employees that the funeral plans had changed. They collected the coffin, bought five gallons of gasoline and a case of beer, and headed into the desert. Near Cap Rock, Kaufman soaked the coffin with gasoline and ignited it. The attempt fell far short of a cremation. The fire left Parsons’ body partially burned, and authorities recovered his remains the following morning. Kaufman and his accomplice were arrested. California reportedly had no statute specifically covering the theft of a corpse, so the penalties concerned the stolen and destroyed coffin. Parsons’ remains were ultimately buried in Louisiana. The desert nevertheless became central to how fans remembered him. Decades later, visitors continued leaving flowers, guitar picks, and handwritten messages near Cap Rock. What Kaufman regarded as honoring his friend’s wishes became an extraordinary—and deeply troubling—chapter in Parsons’ story. His burial took place elsewhere, but the failed farewell bound his memory to Joshua Tree.