Loretta Lynn

By Tom Kirvan

Born on April 14, 1932 in the backwoods Kentucky town of Butcher Hollow, Loretta Lynn was a most unlikely musical success story.

She grew up dirt poor, the daughter of a coal miner. She married at age 15 and gave birth to her first child a year later. She had three more children before she was 21 and was a grandmother at the tender age of 29. She and her husband, Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn, lived in a three-room house with no running water or indoor plumbing.

And yet, when she turned 26, a $17 birthday present – a guitar – turned her life around, giving her the confidence to begin playing and singing with local bands. In 1960, Lynn released her first single, “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” a catchy tune that rocketed her to country-western fame.

“I ain’t got much education, but I got some sense,” Lynn said of her independent spirit that endeared her to country-western fans.

She joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1962, a move that accelerated her rise to stardom as she released a series of songs that spoke to working class people, particularly females. In 1970, her signature song, “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” cemented her status as a seminal musical figure, as she performed a series of successful duets with Conway Twitty.

Loretta Lynn*

The film account of her life, the 1980 hit movie “Coal Miner’s Daughter” starring Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones, added even more luster to her career.

“I wasn’t the first woman in country music,” Lynn insisted. “I was just the first one to stand up there and say what I thought – what life was all about. The rest were afraid to.”

Winner of the first-ever award for Female Vocalist of the Year by the Country Music Association in 1967, Lynn enjoyed a singing career that spanned more than 60 years, last performing in 2017 at the age of 87, some three years before her death.

“In the long run, you make your own luck – good, bad, or indifferent,” Lynn said in the twilight of her life. “Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. You’ve got to continue to grow, or you’re just like last night’s corn bread – stale and dry.”

*Anna Hanks from Austin, Texas, USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons