Loretta Lynn

Born a coal miner's daughter in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky on April 14, 1932, country music icon Loretta Lynn (born Loretta Webb) was married at the age of 15 and became a mother a year later. She was raising four children when she started performing at age 24 in local clubs. Full of sassy, honky tonk glamor, she was a perfect fit for Nashville where the blue-collar anthems about her tough upbringing and her husband's philandering quickly became popular. A series Top 20 singles – including “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl” (1960), “Success” (1962), “Wine, Women, and Song” (1964), and “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)” - led to her first Number 1 single on the country music charts with “Don't Come Home a Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind).” She scored more than 60 country hits including the classics “Rated X”, “Coal Miner's Daughter”, and “Fist City” and sold over 30 million records before her biography was turned into the Academy Award-winning film Coal Miner's Daughter starring Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones in 1980. During this successful run of solo albums, she also found time to record a series of duet albums with fellow country music star Conway Twitty, releasing 10 albums and numerous singles together between 1971 and 1981. A member of the Grand Ole Opry for more than 50 years, she teamed up with Tammy Wynette and Dolly Parton for the top 10 album Honky Tonk Angels in 1993 before a high-profile comeback saw her collaborate with Jack White and produce some of her finest work on the Grammy Award-winning album Van Lear Rose in 2004. Her popularity resurgence in the early 2000s led to Sony Music releasing Coal Miner's Daughter: A Tribute to Loretta Lynn in 2010 featuring country artists such as Reba McEntire, Faith Hill and Carrie Underwood performing some of her hits. In 2015, she released Full Circle which featured collaborations with Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello and gave Lynn her 40th top 10 album. Loretta Lynn released a Christmas album in 2016 and began work on her Wouldn't It Be Great, her 41st album, which was released in 2018. Still Woman Enough (2021) mixed new songs with new renditions of some of her previous tracks and was produced by her daughter, Patsy Lynn Russell. While her series of duets with Conway Twitty in the 1970s were her most popular, she also collaborated with many other artists over the years including George Jones, Ernest Tubb, Randy Travis, Billy Ray Cyrus, and Crystal Gayle. Loretta Lynn died on October 4, 2022, at the age of 90.