Country Musician. Known as the "Queen of Country Music," she was born on Butcher Hollow in rural Van Lear, Kentucky. The eldest daughter of a company coal miner, she helped her family eke out a meager living on the old family homeplace. At the age of 15, she met and married Oliver Vanetta "Doolittle" Lynn shortly before relocating with him to Washington State. Five years later, after the birth of their third child, she was gifted a Harmony brand acoustic guitar by her husband. She quickly took to the instrument, working diligently over the following three years to become proficient with the seventeen dollar guitar. A talented songwriter in her own right, she formed her first group, Loretta and the Trailblazers, which featured her younger brother Jay Lee Webb on the lead guitar. The group caught the attention of Canadian producers Norm Burley and Don Grashey, who signed Loretta to their newly-founded label, Zero Records. In March of 1960, she released her debut single, "I'm a Honky Tonk Girl," which peaked at number fourteen on the Country Billboard Chart. The single was largely self-promoted by Lynn and her husband, who drove cross-country bringing the single to radio stations for airplay. Seven months later, she was first invited to appear onstage at Country Music's most hallowed ground, Nashville's Grand Ole Opry. The success of that inaugural composition caught the eye of the Wilburn Brothers Publishing Company, which proved to be a springboard to her mainstream success. It was through Wilburn Brothers that the 29-year-old secured a prized contract with Decca Records in September of 1961. Her debut release, "Loretta Lynn Sings", produced the top ten single "Success" and garned her a third hit with the "The Other Woman." Other early hits from this period included "Before I'm Over You," "Wine, Women and Song," and the Ernest Tubb duet, "Mr. and Mrs. Used to Be." 1966 saw the release of the #2 hit single, "You Ain't Woman Enough (To Take Away My Man)," which came to be one of her signature songs. The following year she made recording history with self-titled single from the album "Don't Come Home a Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind)." The eponymous song secured her first number one hit on the Hot Country Singles, becoming the first Country #1 to be written by a female composer. A whirlwind of hit compositions followed over the subsequent years, many of which were based off of her personal struggles off of the stage. "Your Squaw is on the Warpath" and "You've Just Stepped In (From Stepping Out on Me)" rose to #3 and #2 respectively on the charts. In 1970 she released what many consider to be her signature song, "Coal Miner's Daughter" which chronicles her childhood in Eastern Kentucky, growing up during the harshest days of the Great Depression. An autobiography of the same name was published in 1976, hitting the number one spot on The New York Times Best Seller List. With this honor, she became the first county music artist to make such an achievement. During this time, Loretta began a seventeen-year collaboration with fellow Country music star, Conway Twitty. Their professional partnership spawned five consecutive hit singles including the Grammy awarded "After the Fire is Gone," "Lead Me On," and "Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man." Their duets were highly praised, with the Academy of Country Music naming them "Best Vocal Duet" for a majority of the decade. In March of 1980, Universal Pictures released the biopic "Coal Miner's Daughter" which starred Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones as Loretta and "Doo" Lynn. The film follows their life from the hills of Butcher Hollow to the successes of the Nashville music scene. The acclaimed film garnered seven Academy Award nominations, a Grammy nomination, as well as clinching an Oscar for Best Actress, and a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture. Loretta released her final top ten record in 1982 with "I Lie." Six years later, "Who Was That Stranger" became her final solo career album to be released under a major recording label. In 1988, she was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame as a singer-songwriter. Following the death of her beloved husband in 1996, Loretta took a short sabbatical from recording. She returned to the music scene in 2000 with her forty-first studio album "Still Country." The album's charting single resulted in her becoming the first female Country musician to chart a single every decade for five consecutive decades. Four years later, she released the acclaimed album "Van Lear Rose" which saw her collaborate with famed alternative music star, Jack White. The album earned her a Grammy for the year's Best Country Music Album. A 2010 tribute album yielded another chart breaking single with a cover of "Coal Miner's Daughter." This accomplishment makes Loretta the sole female Country musician to chart in six decades. Over the subsequent years, she suffered personal setbacks and tragedies with the passing of her daughter Betty Sue in 2013 and a stroke in 2017. A tenacious individual who had persevered through countless struggles, she continued to record. In 2018 she released her forty-fifth solo album, and three years later she released "Still Woman Enough." During the course of her sixty-plus year career, she was bestowed numerous awards and honors for her service to the field of music. Her three Grammys, thirteen Academy of County Music Awards, seven AMA's, and eight Country Music Association Awards made her the most awarded woman in Country Music history. In addition, she remains the only woman to be named the "Artist of the Decade" by Academy of Country Music, and was the first female Country musician to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A Kennedy Center honoree, she was also awarded the nation's highest civilian honor in 2013 when bestowed with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was also awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and remained one of a handful of musicians honored as a member of the Grand Ole Opry for over fifty years. On September 25, 2022, just a little over a week before her passing, Loretta celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of her induction into the Opry.