OCTOBER 15, 1960 – Loretta Lynn made her first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry, singing “I’m A Honky Tonk Girl” at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.Lynn was inspired to compose “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl” from a woman she met while performing in a club in Washington state. As the woman became more intoxicated, she would tell Lynn more details of her story and would cry uncontrollably. The woman told Lynn of how her husband had left her for another woman. The pair developed a friendship that would last for several years. Lynn then wrote the song while leaning up against her home’s bathroom toilet seat in twenty minutes, using a seventeen dollar guitar that her husband bought her as an anniversary present. She recounted the song’s composition in 2010, “I just sat down with my guitar…I was outside and leaning up against the toilet in Washington State. And I sat there and wrote ‘Honky Tonk Girl’ and ‘Whispering Sea.'”
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