Loretta Lynn, country music legend and 'Coal Miner's Daughter,' dies at 90

[Trene4000]

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Loretta Lynn, who rose from a hardscrabble upbringing to become the most culturally significant female singer-songwriter in country music history, has died. She was 90.

 

Lynn’s family said she died Tuesday at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee.

 

"Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning (Oct. 4) in her sleep at home at her beloved ranch," her family said in a statement provided to USA TODAY. 

 

Lynn was a mother of four when she launched her career in the early 1960s, and though many of her songs are filled with specifics of her wholly unique life, they had a universal appeal. She wrote about intimate matters – from her difficult, wearying childhood to fights with her husband – yet managed to strike a collective nerve.

 

Without ever mentioning politics or women’s liberation, her 1960s and 1970s hits helped change long-held notions about gender roles. “Rated ‘X’ ” and “Don’t Come Home A Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)” were personal pleas – not political treatises – that sought an end to double standards.

 

Lynn did all this at a time when women were most often the voices through which men’s words and melodies were heard. She was Nashville’s first prominent woman to write and record her own material and was one of the first female music stars to generate her own hits.

 

When she was set to receive her Kennedy Center Honor in 2003, Lynn told The (Nashville) Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network, that she wasn’t sure why people found her culture-shaking songs so remarkable.

 

“Cultural contributions? What’s that?” she asked. “I was just sayin’ it like I was livin’ it. People’d go around that, but I went right through the middle.”

 

She was the first woman named entertainer of the year at the genre’s two major awards shows, first by the Country Music Association in 1972 and then by the Academy of Country Music three years later.

 

In her 1970 smash hit, “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” Lynn told the story of her upbringing, which helped her reach her widest audience yet.

 

Storyline continued: 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2022/10/04/loretta-lynn-dead-country-music-legend-coal-miners-daughter-singer/8175642001/

 

[TronRP]

Rest well my dear, it is well deserved.