By Steve Powell

spowell@marysvilleglobe.com

TULALIP – Lorrie Morgan has performed with many country music greats, but she’s really a Beach Boy at heart.

Morgan, who will perform with Pam Tillis at the Tulalip Casino Resort Sept. 23, said her favorite collaboration was singing her No. 1 Beach Boys song with them, “Don’t Worry Baby.”

“I loved them so much since I was a little girl,” she said of the legendary rock band. “They are just as nice and kind as I thought they’d be.”

Since she’s touring with her longtime friend Tillis, Morgan also joked she’d “be in trouble if she didn’t say Pam,” regarding her favorite person to work with.

Morgan and Tillis’s “Dos Divas Grits and Glamour” tour is going all over the states, Canada, and they just returned from Finland and Norway. Future plans include performing on a cruise with Alabama and others in February.

Morgan has won four Female Vocalist of the Year awards and sold more than eight million records, with 14 Top Ten hits, including: “Five Minutes,” “Except For Monday,” “Something In Red,” “Watch Me” and “What Part Of No.” Morgan said singing “Something in Red” still gets to her.

“It moves me the most still,” she said in a phone interview. “Me and that song fought when we first met. But when I heard it recorded in the studio, I broke out in cold chills. It’s a magical song to this day. It’s one I always do” at every concert.

At 13, Loretta Lynn Morgan played at The Grand Ole Opry, making her one of the youngest to debut there. Three years later after her dad, country music star George Morgan, died, she launched her career with her father’s band. Morgan said there were times that she wished she wasn’t famous.

“It used to bother me when the children were little, and I’d take them out to dinner,” she said. “People would interrupt and want a picture or autograph. The children would have that look on their faces…

“That’s when it bothered me. But now I’m not bothered,” she added. “At least they remember me.”

Morgan said it would have been nice to be a stay-at-home mom and not on the road all the time.

“But I had to make money to send them to the schools I wanted to and give them the things I wanted them to have,” she said.

Morgan said the music business has changed a lot over the years. She called it “scary” and “crazy” that so much that happens today depends on statistics.

But she said she does like that she no longer has to travel the country trying to get her songs played on the radio.

“I can make the kind of music I want,” she said. “My fans will buy it online. I don’t have to worry about schmoozing radio like I did. That was a tough part of the business. The same smile and saying the same thing.”

When she’s not singing, Morgan said she likes to swim and cook.

“I love to eat. It’s hard to keep the weight down and stay fit for the stage,” she admitted.

Morgan said her favorite song that she has written is called, “The Next One,” off the “I Walk Alone” album in 2014.

“It’s a bluesy, swanky nightclub song,” she said. “I would have done great in the Frank Sinatra-Dean Martin era.”

Those two are even mentioned in the song. Lyrics include:

“Just whisper I love you Lorrie / you could be the next one

Your eyes aren’t like his / Your smile is like no other’s

You might be the next one to break my heart

You might be the next one to tear me apart

Play something kinda swanky, by Deano or Franky”

Her latest solo project, “Letting Go…Slow” was released in early 2016 and is divided equally between new songs and reinventions of country classics, like “Ode to Billie Jo” and “Lay Lady Lay.”

On the new songs: “Jesus and Hairspray is a fun “one for the girls”; “How Does It Feel” is a response to her divorce from singer Sammy Kershaw years ago; and “Lonely Whiskey” is the penultimate barroom weeper.

Along with Kershaw, Morgan has been married five other times, and has been linked to romances with such celebrities as Troy Aikman and Fred Thompson. Some say her life is like a country song.

Morgan said she only sings songs she knows about. She recalled when she was 18 she was asked to sing about divorce.

“I said, ‘Dude, I’m barely dating.’ I’ve got to sing what I feel. I can’t sing a song that I’ve never lived,” she said.