Country music icon Loretta Lynn dead at 90
Country music singer Loretta Lynn, known for her hits “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and “You Ain’t Woman Enough,” died Tuesday. She was 90.
“Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning, Oct. 4, in her sleep at home in her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills [in Tennessee],” her family shared in a statement to the Associated Press.
Lynn, the daughter of Kentucky coal miner Melvin “Ted” Webb, made a name for herself by writing personal songs about being a woman in Appalachia.
Already a mother to four children, she launched her music career in the early 1960s, singing about her rural Kentucky upbringing.
The Country Music Hall of Famer, who often wore long, sparkling gowns, was ahead of her time, singing about topics like sex, cheating husbands, divorce and birth control.
She also broke barriers by becoming the first woman to be named Entertainer of the Year at two major awards shows, first by the Country Music Association in 1972 and then by the Academy of Country Music three years later.
The Academy of Country Music chose her as the Artist of the Decade for the 1970s, and she was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988.
Lynn won her first Grammy Award in 1971 for her and Conway Twitty’s duet “After the Fire Is Gone.”
She continued to climb in her career in more recent years, earning two more Grammys in 2005: Best Country Album for “Van Lear Rose” and Best Country Collaboration With Vocals for “Portland, Oregon” with Jack White. And in 2010, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for her 50 years in country music.
Lynn was also honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2013.
During her career, the legendary artist made waves in Hollywood, too. Her 1980 film, “The Coal Miner’s Daughter,” which was based on her 1976 autobiographical novel of the same title, starred Sissy Spacek and has been preserved in the US National Film Registry.
Lynn and her husband, Oliver Lynn, were married for nearly 50 years before he died in 1996 at the age of 69. They had six children: Betty, Jack, Ernest, Clara and twins Patsy and Peggy. She had 17 grandchildren and four step-grandkids.