NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Loretta Lynn, the Kentucky coal miner’s daughter whosefrank songs about life and love as a woman in Appalachia pulled her out ofpoverty and made her a pillar of country music, has died. she was 90.
In a statement provided to The Associated Press, Lynn’s family said she diedTuesday at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee.
“Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning, October4th, in her sleep at home in her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills,” the familysaid in a statement. They asked for privacy as they grieve and said a memorialwill be announced later.
Lynn already had four children before launching her career in the early 1960s,and her songs reflected her pride in her rural Kentucky background.
As a songwriter, she crafted a persona of a defiantly tough woman, a contrastto the stereotypical image of most female country singers. The Country MusicHall of Famer wrote fearlessly about sex and love, cheating husbands, divorceand birth control and sometimes got in trouble with radio programmers formaterial from which even rock performers once shied away.
Her biggest hits came in the 1960s and ’70s, including “Coal Miner’sDaughter,” “You Ain’t Woman Enough,” “The Pill,” “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin'(With Lovin’ on Your Mind), “Rated X” and “You’re Looking at Country.” She wasknown for appearing in floor-length, wide gowns with elaborate embroidery orrhinestones, many created by her longtime personal assistant and designer TimCobb.
Her honesty and unique place in country music was rewarded. She was the firstwoman ever named entertainer of the year at the genre’s two major awardsshows, first by the Country Music Association in 1972 and then by the Academyof Country Music three years later.
“It was what I wanted to hear and what I knew other women wanted to hear,too,” Lynn told the AP in 2016. “I didn’t write for the men; I wrote for uswomen. And the men loved it, too.”
Story continues
In 1969, she released her autobiographical “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” whichhelped her reach her widest audience yet.
“We were poor but we had love/That’s the one thing Daddy made sure of/Heshoveled coal to make a poor man’s dollar,” she sang.
“Coal Miner’s Daughter,” also the title of her 1976 book, was made into a 1980movie of the same name. Sissy Spacek’s portrayal of Lynn won her an AcademyAward and the film was also nominated for best picture.
Long after her commercial peak, Lynn won two Grammys in 2005 for her album“Van Lear Rose,” which featured 13 songs she wrote, including “Portland,Oregon” about a drunken one-night stand. “Van Lear Rose” was a collaborationwith rocker Jack White, who produced the album and played the guitar parts.
Born Loretta Webb, the second of eight children, she claimed her birthplacewas Butcher Holler, near the coal mining company town of Van Lear in themountains of east Kentucky. There really wasn’t a Butcher Holler, however. Shelater told a reporter that she made up the name for the purposes of the songbased on the names of the families that lived there.
Her daddy played the banjo, her mama played the guitar and she grew up on thesongs of the Carter Family. Her younger sister, Crystal Gayle, is also aGrammy-winning country singer, scoring crossover hits with songs like “Don’tIt Make My Brown Eyes Blue” and “Half the Way.” Lynn’s daughter Patsy LynnRussell also was a songwriter and producer of some of her albums.
“I was singing when I was born, I think,” she told the AP in 2016. “Daddy usedto come out on the porch where I would be singing and rocking the babies tosleep. He’d say, ‘Loretta, shut that big mouth. People all over this hollercan hear you.’ And I said, ‘Daddy, what difference does it make? They are allmy cousins.’”
She wrote in her autobiography that she was 13 when she got married to Oliver“Mooney” Lynn, but the AP later discovered state records that showed she was15. Tommy Lee Jones played Mooney Lynn in the biopic.
Her husband, whom she called “Doo” or “Doolittle,” urged her to singprofessionally and helped promote her early career. With his help, she earneda recording contract with Decca Records, later MCA, and performed on the GrandOle Opry stage. Lynn wrote her first hit single, “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,”released in 1960.
She also teamed up with singer Conway Twitty to form one of the most popularduos in country music with hits such as “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” and“After the Fire is Gone,” which earned them a Grammy Award. Their duets, andher single records, were always mainstream country and not crossover or pop-tinged.
And when she first started singing at the Grand Ole Opry, country star PatsyCline took Lynn under her wing and mentored her during her early career.
The Academy of Country Music chose her as the artist of the decade for the1970s, and she was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988. She wonfour Grammy Awards, was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2008,was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003 and was awarded thePresidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.
In “Fist City,” Lynn threatens a hair-pulling fistfight if another woman won’tstay away from her man: “I’m here to tell you, gal, to lay off of my man/Ifyou don’t want to go to Fist City.” That strong-willed but traditional countrywoman reappears in other Lynn songs. In “The Pill,” a song about sex and birthcontrol, Lynn writes about how she’s sick of being trapped at home to takecare of babies: “The feelin’ good comes easy now/Since I’ve got the pill,” shesong.
She moved to Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, outside of Nashville, in the 1990s,where she set up a ranch complete with a replica of her childhood home and amuseum that is a popular roadside tourist stop. The dresses she was known forwearing are there, too.
Lynn knew that her songs were trailblazing, especially for country music, butshe was just writing the truth that so many rural women like her experienced.
“I could see that other women was goin’ through the same thing, ’cause Iworked the clubs. I wasn’t the only one that was livin’ that life and I’m notthe only one that’s gonna be livin’ today what I’m writin’,” she told The APin 1995.
Even into her later years, Lynn never seemed to stop writing, scoring a multi-album deal in 2014 with Legacy Records, a division of Sony MusicEntertainment. In 2017, she suffered a stroke that forced her to stop touring,but she released her 50th solo studio album, “Still Woman Enough” in 2021.
She and her husband were married nearly 50 years before he died in 1996. Theyhad six children: Betty, Jack, Ernest and Clara, and then twins Patsy andPeggy. She had 17 grandchildren and four step-grandchildren.