Loretta Lynn
About
Loretta Lynn was born a coal miner’s daughter and became a country music superstar who broke down barriers for women everywhere.
Over the course of her 60-year career, Loretta Lynn amassed 24 #1 hits and sold over 45 million albums worldwide. Her music and achievements garnered every accolade available. She won four Grammy awards—including a Lifetime Achievement trophy—seven American Music Awards, eight Country Music Association awards, and fourteen Academy of Country Music awards. She was the first woman to win both the Country Music Association and Academy of Country Music awards for Entertainer of the Year. She joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1962, was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2008. Loretta was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.
Loretta became a New York Times best-selling author in 1976 when she offered the world a glimpse into her life with her autobiography Coal Miner’s Daughter. The book was subsequently made into the 1980 star-studded feature film of the same name with Sissy Spacek as Lynn, Tommy Lee Jones as Doolittle, and Beverly D’Angelo as Patsy Cline. The film won Sissy Spacek an Oscar for her performance and was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture. She went on to write five more books – her second autobiography, Still Woman Enough (2002), You’re Cookin’ It Country: My Favorite Recipes and Memories (2004), Honky Tonk Girl: My Life in Lyrics (2012), Me & Patsy Kickin’ Up Dust (2021) and A Song & A Prayer, released in 2023, shortly after her death.
Loretta Webb was born in Butcher Hollow, KY in 1932, the second of eight children. She never imagined leaving Butcher Hollow, but life had other plans when at the age of 15 she met and married Oliver Lynn, known as “Doolittle” or “Doo,” a 21-year old war veteran. They moved to Washington state, where Doolittle encouraged her gift and she began writing and learned to play guitar. Doo inspired many of her songs with both the happiness and the heartache he brought her during their nearly 50-year marriage and she would write songs about him for her entire career.
She wrote her first single, 1960’s “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” and its b-side “Whispering Sea” in one day. Doo and Loretta drove the single to radio stations around the country and managed to persuade programmers to play it. It hit the charts and reached #14 on the Billboard country charts, which was incredible for an independently release song. Realizing how good his wife was, Doolittle moved Loretta and their growing family to Nashville.
Signed to Decca Records on February 1, 1960 and working with the legendary producer Owen Bradley, Lynn began recording a run of songs, both self-penned and from outside songwriters, that helped serve as a cornerstone of country music in the ‘60s and beyond. Those tracks included “The Girl That I Am Now,” “This Haunted House”—a tribute to her late friend Patsy Cline—“Blue Kentucky Girl,” “You Ain’t Woman Enough(To Take My Man),” “Your Squaw is on the War Path,” “Don’t Come Home a Drinking (With Loving on Your Mind),”—her first No. 1 hit—and “Fist City.” She also recorded several hit duet albums with Ernest Tubb.
Lynn continued to write her own songs and record others’ songs in that vein, scoring hits with honest depictions of everyday life—both her own and those she saw around her. She sang of her beginnings in “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” detailed what it was like to juggle domestic life with a mess of kids while pregnant with “One’s on the Way,” proudly sang about not getting pregnant on the controversial “The Pill,” chronicled the double standards of divorce in “Rated X,” and explained just who she was with “You’re Looking at Country.”
It is impossible to overstate how important Lynn’s songs of the ‘60s and ‘70s were to the evolution of her career specifically, the expansion of the country music songwriting canvas in general, and to endearing her to the listening world at large. She was both feisty and vulnerable, curious and steadfast, flinty and soft. Her voice was unique but inviting. In TV appearances and in her lyrics, she was funny and forthright. She encompassed the totality of a woman’s identity, shredding the notion that all women conformed to a single image. (And also, as a throughline, stay away from her man. Seriously.) She understood that even though they were specific to her that they would be relatable to many and that the concept of “love songs” could take many shapes.
The ‘70s and early ‘80s also concurrently brought a string of smashes with a man she considered her brother, Conway Twitty. The pair scored over and over with songs like “After the Fire is Gone,” “Lead Me On,” and “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man,” which Doolittle suggested to them. She teamed up with her “sisters in song” and fellow legends Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette for 1993’s spirited Honky Tonk Angels, which resulted in a Grammy nomination for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals.
In 1996, she lost the love of her life when Doo passed away. Numb with grief, she admitted that she was lost in a fog for over a year. But she came back again with her 2000 album titled Still Country and returned to performing live on the road.
Loretta’s most successful crossover album of her 60-year career came with 2004’s Van Lear Rose. The album reached #2 on the Billboard Top Country Album chart and #24 on the Billboard 200. The album introduced a new generation of fans to Loretta’s storied legacy and won a Grammy for Best Country Album and the duet with Jack on “Portland, Oregon” won them another Grammy for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals.
The last four albums released by Loretta before her death were produced by her daughter Patsy Lynn Russell and John Carter Cash, son of Johnny and June Carter Cash, at the Cash Cabin Studio in Hendersonville, TN. FULL CIRCLE, released in 2016, was her first new studio album in over a decade. The album debuted at #4 on Billboard’s Country chart, her 40th Top 10 on the chart, and her career peak on the Billboard 200 chart debuting at #19. It was nominated for Best Country Album at the Grammy’s. She followed this album with WHITE CHRISTMAS BLUE, an album sending listeners on a seasonal trip to Lynn’s hometown of Butcher Hollow, KY for the yuletide.
Lynn released WOULDN’T IT BE GREAT in 2018, one of the most deeply personal albums of her career comprised entirely of songs written or co-written by Loretta. The title track, “Wouldn’t It Be Great,” is the last song Loretta wrote for her husband of 48 years and tackled head on how their marriage and love story was impacted by alcoholism. It’s a heartbreaker that causes listeners to run the gamut of emotions as they sympathize, hope with faith, and relate to the pain one feels when seeking the best for those they love. The song is powerful and captures the most vulnerable and sincere aspects of Loretta Lynn’s life.
Released in 2021, STILL WOMAN ENOUGH, Loretta’s 50th solo studio album, celebrated women in country music. Seven of the songs were new versions of previously recorded songs and featured duets with Tanya Tucker, Margo Price, Carrie Underwood and Reba McEntire. It was in the Top 10 on the Billboard Country chart.
Loretta Lynn passed away at her home in Hurricane Mills on October 4, 2022, at the age of 90.
