Loretta Lynn

Loretta Lynn was an American country music singer and songwriter whose six-decade career produced one of the American country-music bodies of work of the 20th century — including the 1970 song "Coal Miner's Daughter" and the 1980 Sissy Spacek film of the same name based on her autobiography. She was born Loretta Webb on April 14, 1932, in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, into Appalachian rural poverty. Her father Theodore "Ted" Webb worked in Eastern Kentucky coal mines.

She married Doolittle "Mooney" Lynn at age 15 in 1948, and the Lynn family relocated to Custer, Washington shortly thereafter. She started writing songs and performing in local Pacific Northwest country bars in her late twenties — and her 1960 single "I'm a Honky Tonk Girl" was released by the small Zero Records label. The 1960 single's regional radio play launched her Nashville career.

Her 1962 Decca Records signing produced her 1966 first Hot Country Songs #1 single "Don't Come Home A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind)" and established her as one of the American country-music figures of the 1960s. The 1969–1976 Conway Twitty-Loretta Lynn duet partnership produced five Hot Country Songs #1 duet singles and made the Twitty-Lynn pair one of the American country-music duo acts of the 1970s.

Her 1976 autobiography Coal Miner's Daughter — co-written with country writer George Vecsey — became one of the American country-music memoirs and was adapted as the 1980 Michael Apted film of the same name (in which Sissy Spacek played Lynn — winning the 1981 Best Actress Academy Award for the role). She won four Grammy Awards across her career and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988. She continued recording into her seventies — including the 2004 Jack White-produced album Van Lear Rose (which won the 2005 Best Country Album Grammy). She died on October 4, 2022, at age 90, at her Tennessee Hurricane Mills home.

Her name Loretta is from the French diminutive of Laura (from the Latin Laurus meaning "laurel"). Loretta has been continuously climbing in American naming since the 2010s vintage-revival wave.