The Coal Miner's Daughter Has Gone On

by Pa Rock

Country Music Fan 

Terms like "great," "legend," and "superstar" tend to be bandied about with annoying regularity to describe country music entertainers, but there have been a few who are truly deserving of that level of recognition - and one of those is Loretta Lynn.   The country music "legend," Loretta Lynn, died yesterday at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee.  She was ninety.

Loretta Lynn was born Loretta Webb in 1932 in (in a cabin on a hill) in Butcher Holler, Kentucky.  She wrote about her childhood of growing up in impoverished but loving circumstances in her 1976 autobiography, "Coal Miner's Daughter," and also had a country music hit record with the same title and general accounting of her early life.  The movie version of "Coal Miner's Daughter" came out in 1980 with Sissy Spacek playing Loretta - a role for which Spacek won the Academy Award Oscar for Best Actress.

Country and rock singer Crystal Gayle was Loretta Lynn's younger sister.

Loretta Webb married Oliver "Mooney" Lynn in 1948 and gave birth to the first of their six children that same year.  Mooney died in 1996 and Loretta never remarried.  She outlived her two oldest children.

Loretta Lynn began recording in the early 1960's including many songs that she wrote herself.  She was best known for writing about issues facing modern women and families including birth control, raising children, and unfaithful spouses.  She recorded a dozen duets with Conway Twitty, and went on to record with many other country artists including Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette on their album "Honkey Tonk Angels."  

Rock musician Jack White produced Lynn's 2004 album, "Van Lear Rose," and performed a duet with Loretta of her song, "Portland, Oregon" on that album.  White eulogized Lynn yesterday as "the greatest female singer-songwriter of the twentieth century."  He also referred to the country star as a "genius" and as a "mother figure."  

As someone who grew up seventy miles from Branson, I have had the opportunity to see many country "greats, legends, and superstars" in my time, but somehow I was never fortunate enough to attend a Loretta Lynn performance.  That was definitely my loss!

The Coal Miner's Daughter has gone on, but she has left the world a better place in her wake.