The original ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ – and bona fide Queen of Country Music – Loretta Lynn died today, aged 90, at her home in Tennessee.
Her family announced her death in a statement: “Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning, 4 October, in her sleep at home in her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills.
They asked for privacy and said a memorial will be announced later.
Lynn’s career stretched back to the early ‘60s when the Kentucky mother of four defied trends to write not just about that C&W staple of cheating husbands and divorce but also about sex and birth control.
Her hits included Coal Miner’s Daughter, 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 was the first woman named entertainer of the year by the Country Music Association (1972) and by the Academy of Country Music (1975).
Her 1969 autobiographical hit Coal Miner’s Daughter was also the title of her 1976 book and 1980 biopic in which she was played by Sissy Spacek.
In 2005 she won two Grammys for her collaboration with Jack White, Van Lear Rose.
She was born Loretta Webb, the second of eight children, near the coal mining company town of Van Lear in the mountains of east Kentucky. At 15 she married Oliver ‘Mooney’ Lynn who helped her get a recording contract with Decca Records and a slot at the Grand Ole Opry stage.
He wrote her 1960 hit single, her first, I’m a Honky Tonk Girl.
They were married nearly 50 years and had six children. He died in 1996.
“I didn’t write for the men, I wrote for us women – and the men loved it, too.”
Their six children, Betty, Jack, Ernest and Clara, and twins Patsy and Peggy, gave them 17 grandchildren and four step-grandchildren.
Early in her career she formed a successful duo with Conway Twitty and their hits included Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man and After the Fire is Gone.
The Academy of Country Music named her its 1970s’ Artist of the Decade. In 1988 she was admitted to the Country Music Hall of Fame.
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 a popular museum.
Still a prolific, successful, writer, she suffered a stroke in 2017 that curtailed her performing.
In a 2016 interview she said of her songs: “It was what I wanted to hear and what I knew other women wanted to hear, too.
“I didn’t write for the men, I wrote for us women – and the men loved it, too.”
