Loretta Lynn, the country music legend who rose from a “Coal Miner’s Daughter” to the height of fame, has died at age 90. She passed away in her home in Hurricane Mills, TN, as confirmed in a statement from her family.
“Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning, October 4th, in her sleep at home at her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills,” the family said. Details for a public memorial will be announced at a later date.
Lynn became one of the early female faces of country music and helped open the door for many more after her with her unique take-no-guff style of songwriting. She recorded 16 Number 1 country singles throughout a career that spanned seven decades and is known for her song “Coal Miner’s Daughter”. The song also shared a title with her 1976 autobiography, which was adapted into a 1980 film by Michael Apted. Actress Sissy Spacek went on to earn Academy Award and Golden Globe honors for her portrayal of the singer in the movie.
Born Loretta Webb on April 14th, 1932 in Butcher Hollow, KY, she was the second-oldest of coal miner Melvin Webb‘s eight children. She experienced abject poverty in her childhood growing up in the Great Depression, taking her sole comfort in broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry. At age 14, she married Oliver Lynn and the two moved to Custer, WA a year later. Loretta and Oliver were married for 50 years until he died at age 69 in 1996. In a later autobiography, Loretta described how Oliver regularly cheated on her and left her twice while she was giving birth to their six children. She also called their marriage “one of the hardest love stories.”
“I married Doo when I wasn’t but a child, and he was my life from that day on,” she wrote in 2002. “But as important as my youth and upbringing was, there’s something else that made me stick to [Oliver]. He thought I was something special, more special than anyone else in the world, and never let me forget it. That belief would be hard to shove out the door. [Oliver] was my security, my safety net. And just remember, I’m explainin’, not excusin’… [Oliver] was a good man and a hard worker. But he was an alcoholic, and it affected our marriage all the way through.”
Oliver encouraged Loretta to sing in local Custer clubs, and in 1950 she attracted the attention of the small Zero Records. In a Los Angeles studio backed by country guitarists Speedy West and Roy Lanham, she cut the single “I’m A Honky Tonk Girl”, which became a surprise hit and took her all the way to the Grand Ole Opry. In 1961, she signed to Decca Records and charted her prophetic first Number 1 hit, “Success”.
A string of Top 10 songs followed which solidified Lynn’s progressively independent point of view: “You Ain’t Woman Enough” (No. 2, 1966), “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind)” (No. 1, 1966), “What Kind of a Girl (Do You Think I Am?)” (No. 5, 1967), “Fist City” (No. 1, 1968), “Your Squaw is On the Warpath” (No. 3, 1968). She charted her biggest hit in 1971 with “One’s On The Way”, and that same year began a lucrative partnership with Conway Twitty, charting over a dozen Top 10 hits.
Lynn’s progressively feminist songwriting was best exemplified in her 1975 song “The Pill”. As the debate over reproductive rights waged across the United States Lynn used her voice to sing “about how the man keeps the woman barefoot and pregnant over the years.”
Though she continued to release music into the 1980s, her recording career began to slow and eventually stop. Following her prolonged absence, she reentered the industry at age 70 in 2004 with the help of Jack White, who collaborated with her on Van Lear Rose for Interscope. The album became the biggest of her career and introduced her to a new generation of fans in a similar vein to Johnny Cash‘s American Recordings albums with Rick Rubin released throughout the previous ten years.
Lynn continued to record well into her 80s, fetching a Grammy nomination for her 2016 album Full Circle, produced by her daughter Patsy Lynn Russell and John Carter Cash. Though a 2017 stroke kept her off the road, she continued to put out albums including Wouldn’t It Be Great, a 2018 collection of new songs and reinterpreted classics like “God Makes No Mistakes”, “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’”, and “Coal Miner’s Daughter”. She released her 46th and final album, Still Woman Enough, in 2021 featuring “Coal Miner’s Daughter Recitation”, a 50th-anniversary celebration of her classic song.
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