New exhibit marks Loretta Lynn’s Whatcom roots, singing partner who gave up chance at fame

Uniquely is a Bellingham Herald series that covers the moments, landmarks and personalities that define what makes living in Northwest Washington so special.

Laurie Lee Lewis was cleaning out her mother’s house after her second stroke forced her to move into a long-term care facility, when she found a collection of nearly two dozen unreleased songs.

“Suddenly she was in a nursing home and that was just horrible, coming off the farm and not where she wanted to live out her life,” Lewis said. “And so this daughter was just so distraught [about] what to do. And it was me simply looking in a cedar chest and finding her 21 songs and the recollection of the career she walked away from to focus on family.”

Her mother, Darlene Little, had been a country musician, playing at bars throughout Whatcom County in the middle of the 20th century. Around that time, another woman by the name of Loretta Lynn, who was born in Kentucky but spent most of her 20s living in Custer, Wash., was starting to make waves in the local country music scene as well.

“Basically, they were the first two women of country music in Whatcom County that had bands,” Lynden Heritage Museum Director Amanda May said in a phone call with the Bellingham Herald. “And that just wasn’t normal in the late ‘50s.”

The two became fast friends, playing at the same venues around town, according to May.

“So back in the 1950s, these two ladies played at the very, very beginning of any career, in the taverns, and other places in Custer and Blaine. The two played — they didn’t play in the same band — but they were always at the same places, and they became friends,” May said.

When Lynn decided to move to Nashville, looking for a bigger platform for her music, she asked Little if she wanted to come with.

“In about 1960-ish, Loretta came to Darlene and said, ‘Okay, I’m gonna make a go up of it. I’m going to move to Nashville and see if I can make this work. Are you going to come with me?’ … And Darlene said, ‘No, I think my place is staying home and being on our farm and raising the kids,’” May said.

While Little stayed behind, she continued to play small, local shows. When Lewis, who’s an accomplished country singer in her own right, found the collection of her mother’s songs, she realized it was time to put her mother’s work in the spotlight.

She approached May about having the Lynden Heritage Museum tell Little’s story, and the pair worked to curate the exhibit on a shortened timeline, to ensure that Little would still be healthy enough to see it when it opened.

“Amanda will tell you that they usually take six months to create something, but my mom’s health is failing, she’s fading away,” Lewis said. “And I said, ‘if we wait till like July or August, I don’t think she’ll be here. So is there a way?’ And she said yes.”

So the two got to work trying to collect enough artifacts and information to fill the exhibit on a shortened timeline. Lewis enlisted the help of Andrew Fuller, a Lynn fan whom she’d met online and told about the upcoming exhibit.

“And he said, ‘I’ll be darned. I’ve been waiting almost a year for an exact replica of Loretta Lynn’s guitar to come back. I’ve been waiting. It’s the exact guitar and all her pictures. And I would be willing, when it gets here, to put it under glass case for display,’” Lewis said.

May decided to expand the exhibit’s focus to include other country musicians from Whatcom County. So Lewis took to Facebook to find other musicians willing to share their stories.

“So I put on these goofball videos saying ‘We need you,’ like Uncle Sam, ‘We need you,’ and trying to get people to blow the cobwebs off and tell their stories,” Lewis said.

They collected the names of over 150 musicians involved in the local scene. Seven of them — Little, Lewis, Jimmy Murphy, Forrest Lee Jr. and Sr., Claudette Dykstra Sterk and Harvey DeJong — have their stories spotlighted in the exhibit.

The scene was small and many of the musicians’ careers overlapped. Lee Jr. eventually moved to Nashville, where he became a producer and eventually worked at Loretta Lynn’s studio. Murphy and DeJong sometimes performed together, collaborating in the mid-1980s.

Murphy’s story is particularly interesting. He moved to the U.S. from New Zealand, before finding his way to Whatcom County.

“When I asked Jimmy, ‘Why Whatcom County? What’s up with that?” Lewis said. “And he said to me, I got him on a quote that said ‘you can find yourself in Whatcom County.’ What? And I thought, you know, I’ve traveled, moved to Texas, Missouri, Arizona, Seattle, and I came back here. And I understand what he says; I know what he’s saying.”

The exhibit opened Friday, April 26, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony performed by Little herself. Lynden Mayor Scott Korthuis declared Friday “Darlene Little Day.”

“There were a lot of tears,” Lewis said. “You know, when you aren’t in the limelight, and you watch your friend with 60 albums and tours and autographs and such … in her wheelchair looking up at her and Loretta and their steel guitar player, she was in shock.”

Lewis said that her mother wasn’t the only one touched by the opening ceremony, which included speeches and performances.

“This is podunk, this is just little farm life around here,” Lewis said. “Everyone in that audience got to see, I don’t know, like a Grand Ole Opry moment we brought to them. And a lot of people said, ‘This is like Nashville, only it’s Lynden.’”

The exhibit will run through the end of September. Museum admission is $10 for adults, $7 for seniors and free for children. The museum is at 217 Front St. in Lynden.