Country-music icon Loretta Lynn dead at 90

Kim Renfro,Keyaira Boone
Updated ·2 min read
1
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

  • The "Coal Miner's Daughter" songwriter, Loretta Lynn, has died at 90.

  • A self-taught guitarist, singer, and songwriter, Lynn was a groundbreaking country star.

  • Born in 1932, Lynn was married at age 13 and went on to write a best-selling autobiography.

The country-music star Loretta Lynn has died at the age of 90.

Her family confirmed that she died at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, on October 4.

"Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning, October 4th, in her sleep at home in her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills," they said in a statement to the Associated Press.

Lynn was a groundbreaking woman in the music industry as the first-ever woman to win entertainer of the year at the Country Music Awards in 1972. She was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988. Her many hit songs include the 1970 autobiographical single "Coal Miner's Daughter" (which was also the name of her memoir and the title of the 1980 movie inspired by her life story).

Loretta Lynn country singer
Lynn at the CMA 2016 Country Christmas show in 2016, in Nashville, Tennessee.Rick Diamond/Getty Images

Born in a small town in Kentucky in 1932, Lynn was 13 years old when she married a 21-year-old war veteran named Oliver "Doolittle" Lynn. The married couple moved away from their hometown shortly after, and Lynn gave birth to four children by the time she was 18 years old.

The biography on Lynn's website says she felt "isolated" and "burdened with domestic work," so she turned to music for solace.

"Me and my husband both worked," she told NPR in 2010. "I took care of a farmhouse, cleaned, and cooked for 36 ranch hands before I started singing. So singing was easy. I thought, 'Gee whiz, this is an easy job.'"

After her husband bought her a guitar, Lynn began singing in local nightclubs and writing music. Lynn signed her first record deal with a small company in Canada in 1960, when she was 25 years old.

She went on to produce 16 No. 1 country singles and win many awards over her career. In 2010, she was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Read the original article on Insider