Loretta

Born and raised in Kentucky as the daughter of coal miner Ted Webb, Loretta Lynn taught herself how to play guitar as a teenager. She knew enough to begin carving out her identity as a singer, later giving way to the establishment of a powerful legacy. But taking a look at Loretta’s sprawling family tree, it seems as though her musical calling was inevitable — and it has spanned generations since. Loretta was the second oldest of eight children. While neither of their parents pursued musicianship as careers, the…

Late country star Loretta Lynn‘s passion for singing lives on in her granddaughter, who tried her hand at music stardom on “American Idol.”Emmy Russell, the 24-year-old daughter of actor Patsy Lynn and Philip Russell, performed original music for judges Lionel Richie, Katy Perry and Luke Bryan during her audition, which aired Sunday on ABC. Russell surprised the judging trio by revealing her musical ancestry but said she wants to move past her grandmother’s lasting legacy. “I think there’s a reason why I think I’m a…

American Idol viewers got a surprise on Sunday night. Emmy Russell, the granddaughter of country legend Loretta Lynn, auditioned for the reality show, performing an impressive original piano ballad called “Skinny.” The 24-year-old musician, who hails from Nashville, impressed the judges, Katy Perry, Lionel Richie, and Luke Bryan, with her performance, who were surprised by her lineage. “Growing up, I sang music my entire life,” Russel said, introducing herself. “I just love writing. I’m 24 years old.…

As has been often quoted since her death Oct. 4 at the age of 90, Loretta Lynn said that to make it, “You have to be different, great or first. I think I was just a little different.” Time and time again during Coal Miner’s Daughter: A Celebration of the Life and Music of Loretta Lynn, which took place Sunday night at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry and aired live on CMT, viewers were reminded that Lynn sold herself short: she was all three. Wynonna, The Gaither Trio and Larry Strickland opened the…

If you wanted to pick a single Loretta Lynn song to encapsulate the country star’s life, career, spirit and the particular way she wove all three together, the choice would not be easy. You might reach for Coal Miner’s Daughter, her signature track, which told of her upbringing in Butcher Hollow, a mining community in Appalachian Kentucky – its poverty, love, perseverance. This was, after all, the root of her storytelling, and that famed vibrato that long carried a backwoods flavour. Or you might lean toward her first No…

Loretta Lynn had a voice made for telling the truth.High and flinty, with a bone-deep coal-country drawl that refused to fade even as she ascended to a queenly position in the Nashville star system, her singing sliced through polished arrangements like a sharpened blade. It could embody both the pain of betrayal and the thirst for revenge; it carried a longing for the comforts of home at the same time that it imagined ways to improve on the old days. And though she easily navigated tricky melodies — spare a thought for…

Dolly Parton, Kacey Musgraves, Reba McEntire, Martina McBride, Mickey Guyton, Sheryl Crow, LeAnn Rimes and other women in country music led an outpouring of tributes to trailblazing singer-songwriter Loretta Lynn, who died Tuesday at age 90 at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tenn.The country music and feminist icon was known for artfully communicating the experiences of the working class through her songs, especially her 1970 hit “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” The classic tune shared a title with her bestselling autobiography and…

Country music has sometimes been described as the authentic blue collar voice of the American south. In the past half-century no singer and songwriter did more to justify that claim than Loretta Lynn, who has died aged 90. In the words of the music historian Bill Malone, Lynn’s songs “spoke for working-class women in a way no ardent feminist could ever do”.The self-penned Success (1962) was her first Top 10 country hit and was followed by a slew of No 1 singles on the US country chart, including, in 1966, Don’t Come Home…

By KRISTIN M. HALL NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Loretta Lynn, the Kentucky coal miner’s daughter whose frank songs about life and love as a woman in Appalachia pulled her out of poverty and made her a pillar of country music, has died. She was 90. In a statement provided to The Associated Press, Lynn’s family said she died Tuesday at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. “Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning, October 4th, in her sleep at home in her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills,” the family…

Loretta Lynn, the firebrand singer and songwriter who transformed coal into diamonds by exploring her dirt-poor childhood in eastern Appalachia in her career-defining 1970 hit “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” died on Tuesday. She was 90.In a statement, her family said that she died from natural causes at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tenn. Lynn was arguably the single most important female figure in postwar country music. “Coal Miner’s Daughter” lent its title to her bestselling 1976 autobiography and the subsequent hit feature…