Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn (née Webb; April 14, 1932 – October 4, 2022) was an American country music singer and songwriter. In a career spanning six decades, Lynn released multiple gold albums. She had numerous hits such as "Hey Loretta", "The Pill", "Blue Kentucky Girl", "Love Is the Foundation", "You're Lookin' at Country", "You Ain't Woman Enough", "I'm a Honky Tonk Girl", "Don't Come Home A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind)", "One's on the Way", "Fist City", and "Coal Miner's Daughter". The 1980 musical film Coal Miner's Daughter was based on her life.
Not to be confused with Loretta Lynch.
Loretta Lynn
October 4, 2022 (aged 90)
Hurricane Mills, Tennessee
Singer-songwriter
1960–2022
6, including The Lynns
- Crystal Gayle (sister)
- Jay Lee Webb (brother)
- Peggy Sue (sister)
- Vocals
- guitar
Lynn received many awards and other accolades for her groundbreaking role in country music, including awards from both the Country Music Association and Academy of Country Music (ACM) as a duet partner and an individual artist. She was nominated 18 times for a Grammy Award and won three times.[1] As of 2022, Lynn was the most awarded female country recording artist and the only female ACM Artist of the Decade (the 1970s). Lynn scored 24 No. 1 hit singles and 11 number-one albums. She ended 57 years of touring on the road after she suffered a stroke in 2017 and broke her hip in 2018.[2]
Lynn was born Loretta Webb in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, on April 14, 1932.[3] She was the oldest daughter and second child born to Clara Marie "Clary" (née Ramey; May 5, 1912 – November 24, 1981) and Melvin Theodore "Ted" Webb (June 6, 1906 – February 22, 1959). Ted was a coal miner and subsistence farmer.[4] The family claims Cherokee heritage on Lynn's mother's side, but have not been officially recognized by that tribe.[5] She was named after the film star Loretta Young.[6] The other Webb children were:
Loretta's father Ted died at the age of 52 from a stroke four years after relocating with her mother and younger siblings to Wabash, Indiana. He had also been battling black lung disease at the time of his death.[13]
Through her matriline, Lynn was distant cousins with country singer Patty Loveless.[14]
Personal life[edit]
Marriage[edit]
Lynn was married to Oliver Vanetta "Doolittle" Lynn (August 27, 1926 – August 22, 1996) almost 50 years until her husband died at age 69. On January 10, 1948, 15-year-old Loretta Webb married Oliver Vanetta Lynn, better known as "Doolittle", "Doo", or "Mooney".[65] They had met only a month earlier. The Lynns left Kentucky and moved to the northwest Washington state logging community of Custer when Lynn was seven months pregnant with the first of their six children.[5] The happiness and heartache of her early years of marriage would help to inspire Lynn's songwriting.[16] In her 2002 autobiography, Still Woman Enough, and in an interview with CBS News the same year, she recounted how her husband cheated on her regularly and once left her while she was giving birth.[28] Lynn and her husband fought frequently, but she said that "he never hit me one time that I didn't hit him back twice." Loretta said that her marriage was "one of the hardest love stories".[66] In one of her autobiographies, she recalled: