Loretta Lynn is considered a classic; during her peak in the genre she topped the charts and had over seventy tracks that hit big. Lynn was born the daughter of a coal miner in Kentucky in 1934. She began to sing at church and local fairs when she was just a kid, and when she was thirteen she married Oliver Lynn and moved to Washington, where they had four children. She and Oliver were married until he passed away in 1996.
Lynn took on motherhood but didn't forget her talent in the music world. She sang at clubs and had a backup band that her brother was also a part of. She was finally noticed in 1959 and signed with Zero Records. She released 'I'm a Honky Tonk Girl' a year later and it was an automatic hit. Lynn and her husband publicized the single at radio stations all around, and it reached the top 20s on the charts. The Wilburn Brothers then asked Lynn to join them on tour, and she moved to Nashville. She then signed with Decca where she worked with the producer of Patsy Cline.
She released 'Success' two years later and it went to the top of the charts as the first of her top singles. In 1966, she released 'You Ain't Woman Enough' and for the first time in country music, a feminist voice was heard. She followed with 'Don't Come Home A-Drinkin,' 'Your Squaw Is on the Warpath' in 1968, 'Women of the World' in 1969 and 'The Pill' in 1974. In 1972 she was the first female ever to win Entertainer Of the Year.
Lynn joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1962, where she met Ernest Tubb and Patsy Cline. Within four years, she had thirteen hits and four number ones. She began to collaborate with Conway Twitty in the early 1970s and they had a handful of number ones, including 'After the Fire is Gone', 'Lead Me On', 'Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man', and 'As Soon as I Hang Up the Phone'. CMA awarded the two with Vocal Duo of the Year four times in a row.
She then wrote an autobiography titled The Coal Miner's Daughter, which was later made into a film. In 1980 it was the most successful film of the year and Sissy Spacek, who played Lynn, won an Academy Award for her role. The same year, Loretta was awarded Academy of Country Music Artist of the Decade and was honored in the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988. The movie and the book drove Lynn to further success and she decided to focus on touring for a while. In 1993 she joined up with Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette for the album Honky Tonk Angels, and she released a memoir book called Still Woman Enough in 2000. Van Lear Rose in 2004 was her first release with a commendable backing since the 1980s. Along with her country artist peers, she can still be seen performing all over the nation in arenas great and small.
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