Loretta Lynn

While the majority of classic Loretta Lynn songs flowed from her own pen, this aching song of loneliness – from her 1964 album Songs From My Heart — features ...

Lynn’s album Van Lear Rose was a testament to the never-ending creative spirit of the singer. In 1994, Lynn re-visited the tune, covering it herself on her album Making More Memories. If you have copies of this Decca single with the title printed as “Here In Topeka,” chances are pretty good that you have a collector’s item. The singer was inspired to write this 1971 top 10 hit while traveling around the United States on tour. The song had none of the sassy spirit and fire that had been a part of such classics as “Fist City.” It was her story — about growing up poor in the mountains of Kentucky. Though the threat to “lay off my man if you don’t want to go to Fist City” probably wouldn’t fly today, she certainly makes her point that it’s hand’s off or there’s going to be trouble. It was the first of the singer’s songs to show the take-no-prisoners mentality that she became so famous for with her material. This song of warning to another woman who had designs on the singer’s man — inspired by a real-life incident — has become one of the most covered of Lynn’s songs over the years. The first of Loretta Lynn’s songs to top the Billboard country charts came with this feisty offering about a woman who was tired of her husband wanting to get romantic when he was intoxicated. She scored her first top 10 in 1962 with the aptly titled “Success.” Her first No. Fifteen years later, Emmylou Harris lovingly tipped her hat to Lynn with a faithful hit cover of this timeless tune. Though an unabashed country music traditionalist, there was nothing old-fashioned concerning her approach to a lyric.

A reflection of Loretta Lynn's highly anticipated, late-career album "Van Lear Rose," a collaboration between her and producer Jack White.

Loretta Lynn, the "Coal Miner's Daughter" whose gutsy lyrics and twangy, down-home vocals made her a queen of country music for seven decades, has died.

Loretta Lynn, the country music star who brought unparalleled candor about the domestic realities of working-class women to country songwriting, died at her ...

She was perfectly matched to fellow country singers like Conway Twitty (her longtime duet partner) and Willie Nelson, scoring hits with both, but expanded out ...

From the death of country singer Loretta Lynn to Elon Musk offering to buy Twitter (again) and an update on that asteroid moonlet which got whacked by NASA, ...

Loretta Lynn, America's groundbreaking country titan whose frank lyricism delving into women's experiences with sex, infidelity and touched the nerve of a ...

Loretta Lynn, the coal miner's daughter and moonshiner's wife who became one of American country music's biggest stars...

"I miss her dearly," says the star, after fellow country singer Loretta Lynn dies at the age of 90.

“Sitting right there, the first woman to win CMA entertainer of the year: Miss Loretta Lynn!” The audience at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville roared as Lynn, ...

The singer recorded 60 studio albums, topped the US national charts 16 times and was nominated for the Grammy awards 18 times in what can be described a ...

While Lynn claimed not to be a 'big fan of women's liberation', her songs told a different story, documenting female pleasure, pain and physicality.

Loretta Lynn, who died Tuesday at 90 years old, was a standard-bearer of country music and its most decorated female artist ever.

Loretta Lynn died Tuesday at age 90. See how the country music industry and other stars are remembering the iconic singer.

Legendary country singer-songwriter Loretta Lynn has died at 90. Generations of country musicians she influenced are honoring her, including Miranda Lambert ...

The country star sang about desire, cheating, heartache and righteous revenge in three-minute vignettes that depicted lives she knew and understood.

“You called me your wife to be,” she sings, with a bitter downward swoop on “wife”; she sings “You turned a flame into a blaze” with an upward leap on “flame” and a quaver on “blaze” that make the fire almost visible. [“Wings Upon Your Horns,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDKHspqZvHg) sung by an “innocent country girl” who was seduced and betrayed — with an overlay of religious imagery that was controversial at the time — has a placid midtempo backup. As a singer, Lynn applied what she learned from the twang and vibrato of Kitty Wells and the torchy intensity of Patsy Cline to her own voice: reedy and tart with steely underpinnings, ready to summon tearfulness or indignation, slyly eluding the beat to hesitate at one moment and blurt something the next. While mainstream country moved away from Lynn’s lean traditionalism toward arena-scale production, she persevered, touring through the decades and earning generation upon generation of new admirers. But it still held the ring of truth. “I was just the first one to stand up there and say what I thought, what life was about. [desire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj4krt6-E5Y), cheating, heartache and righteous revenge. Lynn was the coal miner’s daughter who kept her Kentucky drawl and remembered clearly what it was like growing up poor in Butcher Holler. The Appalachian traditions Lynn had grown up on lingered in her music; she wrote tunes in the familiar forms of waltzes, ballads and honky-tonk shuffles. “You put your whole heart into a song when you’re hurting.” Drawing on the experiences of the turbulent 48-year marriage that she began in her teens, she sang about Her songs were terse, scrappy and so skillfully phrased that they sounded like conversation, despite the neatness of their rhymes.

Lynn, who died Oct. 4, grew up in poverty in eastern Kentucky and went on to have 16 No. 1 hits. Her life story was portrayed in the 1980 film Coal Miner's ...

British Columbia is a long way from the Appalachian coal fields, but the role that a south Vancouver chicken coop played in the rise of country music legend ...

The 1976 book (and its 1980 film adaptation) helped the world see the country star's remarkable resilience. The writer who worked by her side remembers his ...

Martina McBride speaks to TODAY's Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie about Loretta Lynn's legacy and how she helped many women in the music industry.

Opinion. Another queen is dead. Long live Loretta Lynn. Image without a caption. By ...

Country music star Loretta Lynn died Oct. 4 at the age of 90. Her life story was made famous in the film Coal Miner's Daughter. She had 16 No.

In the Loretta Lynn biopic, Coal Miner's Daughter. Sissy Spacek went well beyond the standard of celebrity biopics.