Loretta Lynn

American country singer and songwriter

• Born: April 14, 1935
• Birthplace: Butcher Hollow, Kentucky
• Died: October 4, 2022
• Place of death: Hurricane Mills, Tennessee

American country singer and songwriter

Born into a hardscrabble life, Lynn used her background to infuse her songs with emotions that were appreciated by fans of country music as well as pop music.

Principal Recordings

albums:Loretta Lynn Sings, 1963; Before I’m Over You, 1964; Ernest Tubb and Loretta Lynn, 1965 (with Ernest Tubb); Hymns, 1965; Songs from My Heart, 1965; A Country Christmas, 1966; I Like ’Em Country, 1966; You Ain’t Woman Enough, 1966; Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind), 1967; Ernest Tubb and Loretta Lynn Singin’ Again, 1967 (with Tubb); Singin’ with Feelin’, 1967; Fist City, 1968; Here’s Loretta Lynn, 1968; Who Says God Is Dead!, 1968; If We Put Our Heads Together, 1969 (with Tubb); A Woman of the World, 1969; Your Squaw Is on the Warpath, 1969; Loretta Lynn Writes ’Em and Sings ’Em, 1970; Wings upon Your Horns, 1970; Coal Miner’s Daughter, 1971; I Wanna Be Free, 1971; Lead Me On, 1971 (with Conway Twitty); One’s on the Way, 1971; We Only Make Believe, 1971 (with Twitty); You’re Lookin’ at Country, 1971; Alone with You, 1972; God Bless America Again, 1972; Here I Am Again, 1972; Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man, 1973 (with Twitty); Story, 1973 (with Tubb); Country Partners, 1974 (with Twitty); Back to the Country, 1975; Blue-Eyed Kentucky Girl, 1976; I Remember Patsy, 1977; Lookin’ Good, 1980; Two’s a Party, 1981 (with Twitty); Making Love from Memory, 1982; Lyin’ Cheatin’ Woman Chasin’ Honky Tonkin’ Whiskey Drinkin’, 1983; Loretta Lynn, 1984; Just a Woman, 1985; Making Believe, 1988 (with Twitty); I’ll Just Call You Darlin’, 1989; Who Was That Stranger, 1989; Peace in the Valley, 1990; Loretta Lynn Sings Patsy Cline’s Favorites, 1992; The Old Rugged Cross, 1992; Hey Good Lookin’, 1993; Honky Tonk Angels, 1993 (with Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette); An Evening with Loretta Lynn, 1995; Still Country, 2000; Van Lear Rose, 2004;Full Circle, 2016;White Christmas Blue, 2016;Wouldn't It Be Great, 2018;Still Woman Enough, 2021.

writings of interest:Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner’s Daughter, 1976 (autobiography; with George Vecsey);Still Woman Enough, 2002 (autobiography; with Patsi Bale Cox).

The Life

Loretta Lynn was born Loretta Webb, the second of eight children, in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, a small coal-mining town. Her parents were Clara, who was of Cherokee descent, and Melvin, who was a coal miner and part-time farmer of Cherokee and Scotch-Irish descent. The family was poor but happy. Because Clara loved to sing, on Saturday nights the family listened to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio, and Lynn memorized all the songs. She attended a one-room schoolhouse and left after completing the eighth grade. When Lynn was thirteen, she baked a pie for a social to raise money to purchase new windows for the school. At that social, Oliver "Doolittle" Lynn (also known as Mooney, a nickname related to his bootlegging activities) outbid other admirers for the pie she had baked, winning the opportunity to walk her home. With her parents’ permission, they were married when she was fifteen (her autobiography and other material originally suggested she was thirteen at the time).

After working for about seven months at various jobs locally and in Wabash, Indiana, Mooney moved Lynn to Custer, Washington, some three thousand miles away. From the start the marriage was rocky, primarily because of Mooney’s drinking, womanizing, and physical abuse of Lynn (although she acknowledged that she also attacked him). The couple had four children in Washington: Betty, Jack, Ernest, and Clara, all born by the time Lynn was twenty.

Lynn and Mooney worked at a variety of jobs until Mooney persuaded her to learn how to play the guitar he had bought her for her eighteenth birthday. She also began to read country-music magazines and write her own songs. Although she was reluctant to sing in public, Mooney tried to persuade a bandleader at a local club to let Lynn sing with the band. Although the bandleader declined the offer, he did provide her an audition for a radio show he hosted. She was a hit, becoming a regular on his show. With the money she made from the radio show and from singing at a nightclub on Saturday nights and at a local Grange Hall, she bought a new guitar, wrote more songs, and formed her own band, the Trail Blazers. After winning a television talent contest in Tacoma, Washington, she was contacted by Zero Records and made her first record, “I’m a Honky-Tonk Girl.” To promote the record, she and Mooney packed up the kids and traveled eighty thousand miles, visiting radio stations and disc jockeys before they got to Nashville, Tennessee, and the Grand Ole Opry in 1962.

Lynn signed a contract with Decca Records, and she continued touring. While on tour in 1964, she had twin girls, Peggy and Patsy. From the 1960s on she had tremendous success in country music, and she also branched out in other fields. Lynn published her autobiography, Coal Miner's Daughter, in 1976 and it became a best seller. Four years later a film adaptation of the book was released, starring Sissy Spacek as Lynn. Spacek, who sang Lynn’s songs for the film, won every major acting award, including the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her performance. Another memoir by Lynn, Still Woman Enough, would appear in 2002.

Lynn's other ventures included a chain of Western clothing stores, and at one time she and Mooney owned a rodeo. The couple owned most of Hurricane Mills, a town near Nashville, and they lived in a plantation-style mansion there. Mooney died from complications of diabetes on August 6, 1996. Lynn's son Jack Benny had died in the 1980s, and her daughter Betty Sue died in 2013. Still, Lynn continued to record and perform. In 2016 a documentary film on her life, Loretta Lynn: Still a Mountain Girl, was aired on PBS. She suffered a stroke in May 2017, which led her to cancel concert appearances, and early the next year she broke her hip in a fall. Yet these health challenges proved only temporary obstacles, and she soon returned to the recording studio.

Lynn died at the age of ninety on October 4, 2022. She reportedly passed away in her sleep at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, though no cause of death was immediately made public. The news was met with many tributes from within the country music community and beyond.

The Music

Finding a Voice. Although she had grown up singing and listening to country music on the Grand Ole Opry, Lynn’s musical career began when her husband bought her a cheap guitar for her birthday when she was still a teenager. After she learned to play the guitar and had written some songs, Mooney, who was convinced that his wife could make it in show business, took her to a club that featured country-and-western music. The bandleader had her audition for his radio show, and she won a spot. A second break occurred when she entered and won a television talent show for country singers which was hosted by Buck Owens.

The television exposure led Zero Records to sign Lynn to a contract. The first song she recorded was her own, although originally it had been intended to be sung by Kitty Wells, reigning Queen of Country Music. Of course, since Lynn had never met Wells, the song, “I’m a Honky-Tonk Girl,” had not been recorded. It became Lynn’s first hit, but not until she and Mooney promoted the song by visiting a number of radio stations, urging them to play her record.

When the couple got to Nashville, Lynn recorded some demo tapes and submitted them to record companies. Because Owen Bradley of Decca Records (now MCA) liked one of the songs, “Fool Number One,” so much, he signed Lynn in order to get the song, which was then recorded by Brenda Lee. Bradley believed that Lynn sounded too much like Wells. Lynn realized that she had to work on developing a distinctive style. She wrote songs for Doyle and Teddy Wilburn’s Sure-Fire music publishing company, and she befriended some important country performers, notably Patsy Cline. Lynn subsequently made some guest appearances on the Grand Ole Opry, and she became a regular cast member in 1962.

Lynn toured and recorded songs, becoming Decca Records’s number-one female recording artist. In 1967 Billboard named her Female Country Artist of the Year, and the following year she received a similar award from the National Association of Record Manufacturers. “You Ain’t Woman Enough” and “Fist City” won awards for her songwriting.

Collaborations and Success.Ernest Tubb, a legendary country singer and fellow Decca artist, approached Lynn about recording duets. “Sweet Thang” and several other hits resulted from this collaboration. Her recording of the song “Coal Miner’s Daughter” was a number-one hit containing the same themes as the later autobiography of the same name. In 1971 Lynn’s duet with Conway Twitty won the Country Music Association Vocal Duo of the Year award, and Lynn was Female Vocalist of the Year. The following year, breaking the gender barrier, she was named Entertainer of the Year by the Country Music Association.

During the 1970s, Lynn enjoyed great success. Her duets with Twitty and Tubb won several awards, from the Country Music Association and from the Academy of Country Music. Her duets were extremely successful, both because of the chemistry she created with other singers and because the songs often related to her personal life. She was the Academy of Country Music’s Artist of the Decade in 1979, and two years later the National Songwriters Association inducted her into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Career Decline. Lynn continued to tour and record through the 1980s and 90s, though for several years she focused more attention on caring for her husband as his health declined. The reduction in output was matched by a decline in commercial success, and between 1984 and 2000 only five of her songs made the country charts. Still, she continued to be recognized as an important figure in country music throughout this period. In 1988 she was inducted into the Country Music Association Hall of Fame. Four years later, she and Mooney decided to stop touring and move to Branson, Missouri, where other country artists had established theaters. Lynn performed there in the Loretta Lynn Theater.

After Mooney’s death in 1996, Lynn stopped performing for a while, but in 1997 she went back to the Grand Ole Opry for an appearance. She did some shows in Florida, and then after doing a gospel album for Heartland Records in 1997 she went back on the road, performing in the Middle East during the Gulf War. Her 2000 album Still Country was well-reviewed, but did not see strong sales. In 2001 Lynn recorded a single, “I Can’t Hear the Music Anymore,” as a tribute to Mooney, who had uttered the words shortly before his death.

Musical Resurgence. Lynn experienced a significant late-career revival thanks in part to her friendship with Jack White of the rock band the White Stripes. After performing with the band, Lynn recorded the album Van Lear Rose (2004) with production by White. The record proved to be a major hit both critically and commercially, bringing Lynn to the attention of a new generation of fans. It was nominated for several Grammy Awards, winning for Best Country Album and Best Country Vocal Collaboration. Lynn followed up this success with a steady touring schedule year after year. The albums Full Circle (2016) and Wouldn't It Be Great (2018) continued her resurgence well into her eightieth decade. Despite experiencing a stroke in 2017 and a broken hip in 2018 (which caused her to halt her live performances), Lynn recorded Still Woman Enough in 2021, an album of new and old material that shares a name with her previous autobiography.

Musical Legacy

Lynn’s folksy manner, her gospel roots, and her ability to bare her emotions in a song made her a legend in the world of country music. Known for her strong singing voice, she also wrote most of her own hit songs, winning her respect as a skilled songwriter. Many of her songs were also innovative for their forthright lyrical content, including some with strong feminist themes (although she did not consider herself a feminist). Songs such as “The Pill,” “One’s on the Way, and ”Pregnant Again” addressed women’s rights to control their own bodies. “Fist City” and “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)” addressed the issues of domestic violence and women’s sexual rights. In her footsteps, other female country singers became increasingly willing to sing about difficult subjects that had been ignored in the past. Lynn also broke new ground for women in the country music industry by winning prominent awards that had previously only been given to men.

Through her musical stardom as well as the success of the book and film Coal Miner’s Daughter, Lynn became a highly recognizable personality. In her heyday from the 1960s to the 1980s, she often appeared on television, in magazines (Newsweek had her on the cover of its June 18, 1973, issue), and in newspapers (the New York Post had a feature on her life in its August 16, 1975, issue). In 1981 readers of the Ladies’ Home Journal voted her one of the 100 Most Important Women. Though her overall celebrity status faded somewhat in later decades, Lynn remained an icon in musical circles. In 2010 she was presented with a lifetime achievement Grammy Award, and in 2013 she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama for her contributions to American culture. In 2015 she was awarded the Academy of Country Music's Crystal Milestone Award and the Billboard Legacy Award for Women in Music. By the time of her death in 2022, Lynn was considered the most awarded female country recording artist.

Bibliography

Dew, Joan. Singers and Sweethearts: The Women of Country Music. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977. This book describes Lynn as a spokesperson for women who married too young, got pregnant too often, and felt trapped by domestic life.

Friskics-Warren, Bill. "Loretta Lynn, Country Music Star and Symbol of Rural Resilience, Dies at 90." The New York Times, 5 Oct. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/arts/music/loretta-lynn-dead.html. Accessed 2 Nov. 2022.

Kelly, Kim. Review of Still Woman Enough by Loretta Lynn. Pitchfork, 22 Mar. 2022, pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/loretta-lynn-still-woman-enough/. Accessed 7 Sept. 2022.

Krishef, Robert K. Loretta Lynn. Minneapolis, Minn.: Lerner, 1986. This short biography focuses on Lynn’s personality, her charitable work, and her relations with her family and newcomers to show business.

Lynn, Loretta, with George Vecsey. 2d ed. Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner’s Daughter. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2001. This book was the basis for the film starring Spacek as Lynn. It provides a good discussion of Lynn’s early years in Appalachia, and Lynn comments on her husband, her kids, her health, death threats, her fans, and other topics. Included is a diagram of the bus in which she tours.

Lynn, Loretta, with Patsi Bale Cox. Still Woman Enough. New York: Hyperion, 2002. This book picks up where Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner’s Daughter left off, and it provides details on her tumultuous relationship with her husband, on her experience with domestic violence, on her reaction to Mooney’s death, and information about her children’s lives and careers. Includes a list of awards and a discography.

Pareles, Jon. "Loretta Lynn Mines a Legacy of Heartaches and High Notes." The New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/arts/music/loretta-lynn-mines-a-legacy-of-heartaches-and-high-notes.html. Accessed 11 May 2018. Provides an overview of Lynn's life and career on the occasion of the release of her album Full Circle.

Zanderbergen, George. Nashville Music: Loretta Lynn, Mac Davis, Charlie Pride. New York: Crestwood House, 1976. This resource includes a short biography supplemented by photographs, anecdotes, and comments by Lynn.