AFP
News from the NOS•today, 17:21
American country singer Loretta Lynn has died at the age of 90. She died in her home in Tennessee, her family told The Associated Press.
Lynn played a pioneering role in developing the conservative genre of country music by singing about women’s issues such as birth control (The pill), births (One is on the way), double standard for men and women (Classified ‘X’) and drunk husbands (Don’t come home drinking (with love in mind).
His songs, inspired by the troubles he faced in his marriage, were considered controversial by many national radio stations in the 1960s and 1970s and therefore have not been played. Despite this, Loretta Lynn has become one of the most famous country singers ever and has paved the way for many other singers.
She was number 1 24 times with her songs. Eleven of her albums reached number one on the music charts (country). Lynn was also the most awarded female country artist in history.
The poorly educated daughter of a Kentucky miner, Loretta Webb, born in 1932 in Kentucky, married six-year-old her eldest Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn, whom she had met just a month earlier.
The couple moved to a logging community in Washington, where Lynn gave birth to the first of their six children at the age of 16. Her husband gave her a Harmony guitar that she learned to play on her own.
With Doolittle’s encouragement, she founded her own band, Loretta and the Trailblazers, with her brother Jay Lee playing lead guitar. The happiness and sadness of her early marriage were the inspiration for her songs.
The coal miner’s daughter
His first album I am a Honky Tonk girl it came out in February 1960. In 1967 it had its first number 1 hit with Don’t come home drinking (with love in mind) and the album it contained became the first album by a female country artist to sell more than 500,000 copies.
His best-selling autobiography of 1976, The coal miner’s daughter, was made into an Academy Award-winning film of the same title in 1980. Starring Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones. Spacek won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Lynn. his album Van Lear Rosereleased in 2004 and produced by alternative rock musician Jack White of Thee White Stripes, it was nominated for five Grammys and won two.
Loretta and Doolittle had been married for nearly 50 years when he died in 1996. In his autobiography Still quite woman since 2002 she has been writing about the ups and downs of her marriage. “He thought I was something special, more special than anyone else in the world, and he never let me forget it.” But she also had another side. “Doo was a good man and a hard worker. But he was an alcoholic and that affected our marriage all the time.”
In 2017, she ended her nearly 50-year career after suffering a stroke and breaking her hip a year later.
