Loretta Lynn Interview 1997 | In Loving Memory
Loretta Lynn, who rose from an impoverished childhood in Kentucky’s coal fields to become a pioneering female star of country music, has died. She was 90.
According to a statement from her family shared with Variety, Lynn died Tuesday in her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee.
Memorably portrayed in an Oscar-winning turn by Sissy Spacek in the 1980 biopic “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (drawn from Lynn’s bestselling 1976 autobiography, co-authored by George Vecsey), Lynn was one of the first women to rise to stardom as a country vocalist.
She dominated the charts in the 1960s (when she was the top-charting femme country singer) and ’70s (when she was second only to Dolly Parton), ringing up 11 No. 1 country hits in her own right and another five chart-toppers with Conway Twitty, her regular duet partner of the ’70s. In all, she charted 51 top-10 country singles.
Unlike most of her contemporaries, she wrote a great deal of her material, beginning with her first chart hit, 1960’s “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl.” Beyond her pointed songs that addressed traditional honky-tonk themes like infidelity and divorce from the woman’s point of view (a rarity in country), she penned numbers that fearlessly essayed contemporary topics ranging from the Vietnam War to contraception.
Though the hits dried up for Lynn after the early ’80s, she remained a beloved and revered figure.
Lynn was widely believed to be the model for Barbara Jean, the sensitive and tragic fictional country star in Robert Altman’s 1975 ensemble film “Nashville,” set in Music City. Singer-actress Ronee Blakely received Oscar, Golden Globe and Grammy nominations for her work in the role.
Though, like her movie doppelganger, Lynn was frequently sidetracked by illness throughout her career, she remained active as a concert performer and recording artist into the new millennium, and received a fresh boost as a septuagenarian.
In 2004, she recorded a new album, “Van Lear Rose,” with producer-guitarist Jack White of the White Stripes, that won two Grammys and exposed her to a new audience of young rock listeners.
She was born Loretta Webb in Butcher Holler, Ky., the second of eight children; her younger sister Brenda Gail also rose to fame as country star Crystal Gayle. Her father, a coal miner, later died from black lung disease.
At the age of 15, after enduring a life of grinding poverty, she married Army vet and local moonshiner Oliver Lynn (later known to the singer’s fans by his sobriquets “Doolittle” and “Mooney”). The couple left Kentucky for Washington state, where they raised four children together.
Encouraged by her husband-manager to take up the guitar and sing, Lynn began performing in local clubs, sometimes backed by her brother Jay Lee Webb. In Tacoma, she was discovered by Norm Burley, who operated the Vancouver-based independent label Zero Records.
“I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” Lynn’s first single for Zero, was recorded in Hollywood in February 1960 with a crack band that included steel guitarist Roy Lanham and pedal steel ace Speedy West. The song soared to No. 14 on the U.S. country chart and established Lynn as a hot new voice in country music.
After a stint as a demo artist and inhouse songwriter for the Wilburn Brothers’ publishing company, Lynn and her husband relocated to Nashville, where she was signed to country powerhouse Decca Records and placed under the tutelage of producer Owen Bradley.
Her No. 6 single “Success” in 1962 inaugurated a string of hits that made her, for a time, the only real rival to country’s lone established female star, Kitty Wells. (Lynn’s sole contemporaneous rival, fellow Bradley charge Patsy Cline, was killed in a plane crash in March 1963.)
Lynn’s hard-edged top-10 entries included “Before I’m Over You” (No. 4, 1963), “Wine Women and Song” and “Happy Birthday” (both No. 3, 1964) and the autobiographical “Blue Kentucky Girl” (No. 7, 1965, and a No. 6 cover hit in 1979 for Emmylou Harris). She was also memorably paired with her idol, Texas honky tonker Ernest Tubb, in a series of early singles.
Rest in power Queen
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