Loretta Lynn, country music's iconic 'Coal Miner's Daughter,' dead at 90

Loretta Lynn, who rose from a hardscrabble upbringing to become the most culturally significant female singer-songwriter in country music history, died Tuesday at age 90.

“Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning, Oct. 4, in her sleep at home at her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills," her family said in a statement to The Tennessean.

Many of Lynn’s songs are filled with specifics of her wholly unique life, yet 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. And, without ever mentioning politics or women’s liberation, her songs helped to 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.

"Honky Tonk Angel"Country stars, celebs react to news of Loretta Lynn's death

“She is the single most important female singer-songwriter of the 20th century,” said rock performer Jack White, who produced Lynn’s Grammy-winning "Van Lear Rose" album (2004).

When she was set to receive her Kennedy Center Honor, Lynn told The Tennessean 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.”

When Loretta Lynn was born, there was no such thing as Butcher Holler.

“The whole thing is really Webb Holler,” she said in a 2003 interview. “The Webbs owned the holler, and the Webbs started marrying into the Butchers. I thought the syllable come out better saying ‘Butcher’ than saying ‘Webb,’ so I made it Butcher Holler. They say ‘Butcher’ since that song.”

Whatever its name, the holler was not something many people concerned themselves with before Lynn’s ascendance into country music royalty. It wasn’t even on most maps. For Lynn, it was a place of hardship, poverty and danger. She lived in a cabin near Van Lear, Ky., with no plumbing or electricity. In the winter, the water that father Ted Webb would draw from the well at night would freeze solid by morning, and snow seeped through cracks in the exterior.

In her 1970 smash hit, “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” Lynn told the story of her upbringing. When an autobiography and a movie were released, Butcher Holler became a part of the story of country music. Visitors streamed to the home. The cabin was myth that could be touched.

In later years, Lynn returned to the cabin and marveled.

“I stood out there on that porch and looked out and thought, ‘How in the devil did I ever get out of here?’” she asked.

Look back:How 'Coal Miner's Daughter' biopic brought Loretta Lynn's story to silver screen

Lynn’s father worked the night shift at the Consolidated Number Five mine, while her mother tended to the kids (Lynn was the second of Ted and Clara Webb’s eight children) and read books by a kerosene lamp until he came home. In her first autobiography, Lynn looked back on her father’s work in the Consolidated Number Five mine as something heroic.

“He kept his family alive by breaking his own body down,” she wrote.

Though some of Lynn’s relatives played music, and the family listened to the "Grand Ole Opry" on Saturday nights, she never saw singing as a way out of the hills.

“I never thought of ever leaving Butcher Holler,” she sang in “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” She eventually left for love, not music, though it was her music that ultimately transformed her childhood home into a legendary spot. That doesn’t mean everyone back in the holler was happy with her.

“The Butchers got mad because I used their name and they wanted me to put a concrete highway up through there,” she said. “I sent ’em a letter and said, ‘I waded up to my knees when I left there, and so can you.’"

The housewife’s Woody Guthrie

When Lynn was 13, she met Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn at a pie supper. He was 21, had served in the Army and already had a reputation for wildness. The two married in January 1948, when she was 15 years old, and Mr. Lynn took a job in the coal mine.

Their union was troubled from the start — he left for another woman later in 1948, when Lynn was four months pregnant, then returned to her before she had their first child — but they remained married until his death in 1996. As Butcher Holler would become one of country’s landmarks, the Lynns’ marriage would be one of country’s great love stories.

Lynn was still pregnant when the couple moved to Custer, Wash. She settled into domestic life, having more children and working various jobs to help feed them.

TimelineLoretta Lynn's life and accomplishments

“In Washington, I was picking strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, to take care of my kids,” she told The Tennessean. “Doo (her nickname for Mr. Lynn, who also was nicknamed “Mooney”) worked on a farm, and then a place where he worked on cars. But he didn’t make much money. The two bachelors that lived a mile and a half from me, me and the kids would walk there, clean house and do the clothes.”

Mr. Lynn soon bought Mrs. Lynn a Sears & Roebuck guitar as a gift and told her to learn to play and sing, later pressuring her to begin playing in taverns. Because of that encouragement, she always credited him as being responsible for her career in music. At first, she sounded too much like her idol, Kitty Wells, to be branded an original. But she had talent and conviction, and her blunt, truthful compositions began to set her apart from other female country singers.

In 1959, the year Lynn’s father died, she appeared on Buck Owens’ television show in Tacoma, Wash. That appearance led to an independent contract with Norm Burley in Vancouver, British Columbia. For Burley’s Zero Records, Lynn recorded a single called “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl.”

The Lynns drove across the U.S., visiting radio stations in hopes of gaining airplay for the single. (It peaked at No. 14 on the Billboard country singles chart.) When they reached Nashville in the autumn of 1960, Lynn was allowed to make a guest appearance on the "Grand Ole Opry." She was 28 years old and had four children.

Audience reaction at the Opry was immediately positive, and that led to more Opry slots and a management contract with Doyle and Teddy Wilburn. The Wilburns’ interest was crucial to her career: They nurtured her songwriting abilities and introduced her to Decca Records chief Owen Bradley, with whom she signed a Decca contract in 1961.

Bradley and the Wilburns saw something different in Lynn: a female singer-songwriter who strayed significantly from the prim, near-Victorian model of the time. She wasn’t ashamed or afraid to proclaim, “I’m a honky-tonk girl.”

Lynn’s increasingly regular appearances on the "Grand Ole Opry" didn’t sit well with some cast members. Several female Opry regulars planned a meeting to discuss how to keep Lynn off the Opry. They invited Patsy Cline, who by then already had befriended Mrs. Lynn. Cline brought Lynn to the meeting, ending the protest immediately.

Cline, who became Lynn’s best friend, died in a 1963 plane crash. By then, Lynn was established as a force in country music. In 1962, The Tennessean profiled the up-and-coming singer, referring to her upbringing in “Miller’s Creek Hollow.” That same year, she joined the Grand Ole Opry cast and reached the Top 10 of the country charts for the first time, with “Success.” That song found her evolving beyond her tremulous Kitty Wells imitations into her own idiosyncratic singing style.

In the following years Lynn further refined that style, working with producer Bradley and scoring Top 10 hits including “Blue Kentucky Girl” and “Wine, Women and Song.” She also recorded duets with another musical hero, Ernest Tubb.

It wasn’t until 1966 that she became recognized as a writer of import, though. In that watershed year, Lynn released “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)” and “Don’t Come Home A’Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind).” The former was a prideful rebuke to someone who threatened to bust up a marriage, the latter a strong, funny slice of life. Both were major hits.

“At the time, girl singers were doing I-love-you-truly kinds of things, but I came in fightin’ over my man ’cause he was stepping out with somebody else,” she said in a 1980 "Penthouse" magazine interview.

Lynn established her own style, her own sound (aided by Bradley and studio virtuosos including steel player Hal Rugg and guitarist Grady Martin) and her own stage persona. In 1967, at the first Country Music Association Awards, she was named best female vocalist.

The ensuing years comprised Lynn’s golden era. She and her husband purchased the tiny town of Hurricane Mills, Tenn., and built a homestead that would become more of a tourist attraction than Butcher Holler. The hit songs continued, with Lynn railing against a cheating husband in “Your Squaw Is on the Warpath” and threatening a rival with violence in “Fist City.”

The dawn of the new decade found Lynn releasing her signature song, “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” In writing simple verses about her family and her childhood home, she bestowed beauty on what was thought to be plain, and dignity on what was thought to be humble.

In the early 1970s, Lynn wrote and recorded songs that weighed in on women’s roles in a changing America. “Rated ‘X’” bemoaned treatment of divorced women as damaged goods, while “The Pill” celebrated birth control as a sexual and social equalizer. These were modern, countrified folk songs, with Lynn serving as the housewife’s Woody Guthrie.

While she eschewed any connection with the women’s liberation movement of Gloria Steinem, Lynn’s songs insisted on something resembling fair play between the sexes. Her messages reached a segment of the female population that found little sense in marches and bra burnings and the like.

“She was burning down walls between men and women,” Jack White said.

Lynn became the first woman to win the CMA’s Entertainer of the Year Award in 1972, the same year she and Conway Twitty won a Grammy for their “After the Fire Is Gone” duet. Lynn’s career emphasis began to shift, though. She wrote fewer songs, and many of her hits were recorded as duets with Twitty, a close friend whose growl was a thrilling match for her voice.

Lynn’s popularity continued to rise, as her "Coal Miner's Daughter" autobiography (written with George Vecsey) was one of The New York Times' best-selling books of 1976. In 1980, when the book was made into an Oscar-winning movie that starred Sissy Spacek, Lynn’s celebrity was unmistakable.

A critical darling again

Partly as a result of personal tragedy, Lynn fell into a creative tailspin in the 1980s and 1990s. Son Jack Benny Lynn, 34, died in 1984 while trying to cross the Duck River in Hurricane Mills.

“After I lost my son, I didn’t have nothin’ to write about,” she told The Tennessean. “I’d write one or two, but they wasn’t what I really wanted.”

Her induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988 provided a time for celebration. But duet partner and dear friend Twitty died in 1993, and Lynn’s husband of 48 years passed away in 1996.

Several years after Mr. Lynn died, Mrs. Lynn began writing again. She addressed her loneliness on her 2000 "Still Country" album — on which she co-wrote a song about her husband. “Now he’s gone to a distant shore,” she sang. “And I can’t hear the music anymore.”

Generations of performers heard her music as something relevant and inspiring, though. Among those affected by her songs and her vision was White of rock duo The White Stripes. Lynn struck up a friendship with the young musician, and he determined to produce an album that would spotlight her skills as a songwriter and as a vocalist.

That album, "Van Lear Rose," was recorded in East Nashville in 2003 and released in 2004, and it became one of the most acclaimed albums of the new century. After two decades of creative decline, Lynn again was a critical darling.

Late masterpiece:Loretta Lynn's 'Van Lear Rose' was a late-career gift from a songwriting master

Country radio ignored "Van Lear Rose," and the album received no CMA Awards nominations, but "Portland, Oregon,” a duet with White, received substantial airplay on Country Music Television and Lynn notched five Grammy nominations for her new music. In February 2005, she and White won Grammy awards for best country album and best country collaboration.

“This is what this business is all about, ain’t it?” she said, accepting the country album prize.

In the years after "Van Lear Rose," Lynn recorded numerous songs with producer John Carter Cash (son of Johnny and June Carter Cash). She also wrote with esteemed songwriters including Elvis Costello, Shawn Camp and Todd Snider, and she sang the searing “Don’t Tempt Me” — a song she and Snider co-wrote — on Snider’s 2009 album, "The Excitement Plan."

Lynn also participated in the 2010 multi-artist album "Coal Miner's Daughter: A Tribute to Loretta Lynn." That album found Reba McEntire, Faith Hill, Lucinda Williams, Carrie Underwood and many others singing songs from Lynn’s recorded catalog. Lynn contributed vocals on a new version of “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” singing alongside Miranda Lambert and Sheryl Crow. That recording earned an ACM Awards nomination, and its appearance on the Billboard Hot Country singles tally meant that Lynn had charted singles in six decades, something a female performer had never before accomplished.

"Like sisters":Dolly Parton pays tribute to Loretta Lynn

In October 2010, Garth Brooks sang with Lynn at the Ryman during a Grammy-sponsored celebration of her 50 years in music. Earlier that year, she received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy.

“I’m proud of my awards, and every one I get. … You just don’t forget where you come from,” she said at the October celebration. “All I do is close my eyes, and I know where I’m from. I go back to that little old one-room cabin where I lived until I was 11 years old.”

She celebrated her 85th birthday in 2017 by playing two sold-out concerts at the Ryman Auditorium. Just a few weeks later, recovery from a stroke forced her to cancel the year's remaining tour dates and postpone the release of her next album, "Wouldn't It Be Great."

Lynn was recovering from the stroke and unable to attend the opening reception when the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum opened new exhibit "Loretta Lynn: Blue Kentucky Girl" in summer 2017, but she visited the museum two months later to induct Alan Jackson into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

That night, flanked by George Strait and Connie Smith, she led the room in "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." The reverence and affection her fellow Hall of Famers had for the coal miner's daughter turned country music grande dame was evident.

In late September 2018, "Wouldn't It Be Great" was released to critical acclaim. Weeks later, CMT awarded Lynn with an Artist of a Lifetime honor; Spacek accepted the award on her behalf.

In 2019, at one of Lynn's last major public appearances, artists and appreciators gathered inside Bridgestone Arena for a celebration of singer-songwriter unlike any before it. White, Brooks, Strait, Jackson, Brandi Carlile, Kasey Musgraves, Tanya Tucker and Keith Urban were among those who took the stage in salute to Lynn's generation-crossing impact.

“I’m so honored to sing for the queen," Miranda Lambert said on stage that night. "I wanna say thank you for inspiring me."

Despite a slowdown in public appearances, Lynn continued to work throughout the last years of her life. In 2020, she published "Me & Patsy Kickin' Up Dust," a book on the singer's influential friendship with Cline. And last year, Lynn released her final studio album: "Still Woman Enough," a collection of empowering songs – including her own and covers – performed alongside Underwood, McEntire, Tucker and Margo Price.

"I’m not a lazy person," she told The Tennessean in 2020. "If I work, I’ll be telling stories."

Lynn’s was an unprecedented story that will be retold but not repeated.

“God gives you life, and you do with it what you want to,” she told The Tennessean. “If you turn out bad, that’s up to you. If you turn out good, that’s up to you, also. But still, from the time I was borned, I think he probably held my hand, or held me in his arms. Or else I’d have never made it.”

Juli Thanki and Matthew Leimkuehler contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Loretta Lynn, country music's iconic 'Coal Miner's Daughter,' dead at 90