A leading feminist in the genre of country music, Loretta Lynn was the daughter of a coal miner and the wife of a moonshiner. Her family announced her passing on Twitter on Tuesday at the age of 90.
According to a statement made by the family and shared on Twitter, Lynn passed away at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee.
The statement read, “Our dear mother, Loretta Lynn, died peacefully this morning, October 4, in her sleep at home on her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills.
Carly Pearce, a country music performer, and songwriter said on Twitter that she “showed us all how to unapologetically say the truth.”
“One of the best things that have ever existed. Tonight at the Opry, I’ll be performing “Dear Miss Loretta” with a little extra love. Pearce made the comment in reference to Nashville, Tennessee’s renowned Grand Ole Opry.
In the 1960s and 1970s, when country music was dominated by men, Lynn developed a reputation as a hillbilly feminist who had the guts and skill to create her own songs. She sang about the unfairness of man-woman interactions in “Rated X,” and she welcomed the sexual liberation that birth control afforded women in “The Pill.” She often sang songs about philandering husbands, a topic she was familiar with.
She admitted to Esquire magazine in 2007 that she wasn’t the first woman in country music. I was simply the first person to speak up and express what I believed to be the meaning of life. The others were reluctant to. “
Lynn’s down-home twangy voice was a common feature on country music radio and honky-tonk jukeboxes in the 1960s and 1970s, as she achieved success with songs like “Fist City,” “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind),” “You Ain’t Woman Enough (to Take My Man),” and the autobiographical “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”Lynn reportedly had more than 50 top-10 songs, according to her website.
More About Loretta Lynn
As Lynn grew up in the coal-rich region of Butcher Holler, Kentucky, where her miner father passed away at the age of 52 from black lung disease, fame seemed implausible to her. When she married 23-year-old Oliver Lynn in 1948, Lynn claimed to have been just 13 years old. By the time she turned 18, she had given birth to four children. However, according to documents found by the Associated Press, she was just 15 when she was married.
In the 1950s, she and her husband—known as Doo, Doolittle, and Mooney due to his role in the moonshine trade—moved to Washington State, where her music career started to take off. Doo gave Lynn a $17 guitar and lots of support for her 24th birthday. She started out playing for radio stations after teaching herself to play. She had a recording deal and her own No. 1, “I’m a Honky-Tonk Girl,” by 1960.
Before arriving in Nashville, Tennessee, the center of country music, the couple traveled throughout the country, visiting radio stations to promote her work.
Doolittle and Lynn’s relationship was complicated by the fact that they both used drugs, cheated on each other, and did violent things. In an interview with CBS, she claimed, “He never hit me one time that I didn’t strike him back twice.”
But prior to his passing in 1996, Lynn gave up her job for five years in order to care for her husband at home. She remarked, “I was devastated.” In his absence, I was lost. Despite the difficulty, I felt I had to continue. “
The Country Music Association’s “Entertainer of the Year” award was first given to a woman, Lynn, whose sister Crystal Gayle also rose to fame in the country music industry, in 1972. She also won 12 Academy of Country Music Awards, and seven additional CMA Awards, and was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988.
She received one Grammy for the song “After the Fire Is Gone,” and two more in 2004 for her contributions to the album “Van Lear Rose,” which she co-wrote or co-wrote with White Stripes rocker Jack White.
Lynn’s autobiography, Coal Miner’s Daughter, was a best-seller in the New York Times in 1976, and Sissy Spacek won an Academy Award for her role as Lynn in the movie of the same name.
A large portion of the film was filmed at Lynn’s 1,500-acre (600-hectare) ranch, 75 miles (120 km) west of Nashville, where she kept a Southern home. Lynn and her husband bought the whole town of Hurricane Mills, including the post office, so they could farm corn, keep thoroughbred quarter horses, and hold concerts on the land they bought
Lynn received a Kennedy Center Award for her contribution to American culture, and in 2010 she received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama three years later.
A little more than two weeks after celebrating her 85th birthday with two nights at the historic Ryman Auditorium of the Grand Ole Opry, Lynn had a stroke in May 2017 and shattered her hip in January 2018.
