Country music fans are mourning legendary performer Loretta Lynn, who died Tuesday at the age of 90.
Lynn’s impact on culture can’t really be underestimated. She was a country music fixture since the 1960s and never shied away from talking about real issues. Just take a listen to her song called “The Pill” about the power of birth control.
Lynn was active for over half a century, putting out brilliant, honest music that demanded multiple listens. And in 2004, at what some might call the height of Portland’s Old Portland cool phase, she and Jack White teamed up for a song called “Portland, Oregon.”
The song is all about what Portland was all about at the time: drinking a pitcher of something and making questionable but fun choices.
Read more: How to make a sloe gin fizz in Portland to toast Loretta Lynn
Did Loretta Lynn and Jack White really ever drink a pitcher of sloe gin fizz in Portland? If so, where (Willamette Week once made the case for Shanghai Tunnel as well as two other possible places)? Did this song set Portland on a trajectory to cool-city fame and then overexposure or was it already on its way?
What really happened between Lynn and White “in a booth in the corner with the lights down low”?
Look, none of that really matters now. What matters is, 18 years later, this song is still perfect, from White’s intro to Lynn’s first line, “Well Portland, Oregon and sloe gin fizz, if that ain’t love then tell me what is?” to the final line, “And a pitcher to go.”
Watch Lynn and White perform it here:
— Lizzy Acker
503-221-8052; lacker@oregonian.com; @lizzzyacker
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