From:   "Dik de Heer" <
Date:  Sun Apr 14, 2002  2:21 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Loretta Lynn

LORETTA LYNN

Born Loretta Webb, 14 April 1935, Butcher Hollow, Kentucky

Country singer / songwriter.
Loretta Lynn is one of the most successful female singers in country
music (77 charted hits, 1960-1993), an unmistakable voice with echoes
of earlier traditional singers, also a songwriter, including the autobio-
graphical "Coal Miner's Daughter". She married Oliver V. Lynn ('Mooney')
before her 14th birthday. They moved to Washington State and had four
children before she was out of her teens (a grandmother at 32, six children
altogether; the eldest son died in a farm accident in 1985). Urged and
supported by Mooney she took up singing, formed band the Trailblazers,
worked local clubs. Her first country hit (# 14) was "I'm A Honky Tonk Girl"
for the Zero label (1960). Following a move to Nashville, she became a regular
on the Wilburn Bros syndicated weekly TV show. After being turned down
by Capitol and Columbia, she signed with Decca in 1962, with 22 hits in
the country top ten 1962-71 as a result. "Don't Come Home A'Drinkin'',
"Fist City", "Woman Of The World" and "Coal Miner's Daughter" were the
first four of her 16 chart toppers. One of her few hits that crossed over to
the pop charts was "The Pill", a controversial 1975 song which some radio
stations refused to play.
Loretta split from the Wilburns in the late '60s; they sued her for breach of
contract. When that was settled she formed United Talent booking agency
with Conway Twitty, with whom she recorded many duets (named vocal duo
of the year four times by the CMA). She was the first woman to be CMA's
Entertainer of the Year (1972, repeating the trick during the next three
years), the first woman in country music to become a millionaire, the first
to be on the cover of Newsweek (1973). Also she became a TV celebrity
with frank talk on chat shows. Her autobiography "Coalminer's Daughter"
was nine weeks on the NY Times best-seller list and made into a film in 1980
with Sissy Spacek in the Oscar-winning title role. She was elected to the
Country Music Hall Of Fame in 1988. In 1993 she teamed up with Dolly
Parton and Tammy Wynette for the successful album "Honky Tonk Angels"
on Columbia. She is still active, but Mooney's death in August 1996 after a
long illness took its toll.

Official website: http://www.lorettalynn.com
Autobiography: Loretta Lynn with George Vecsey, Loretta Lynn : Coal Miner's
Daughter. Chicago : Regnery, 1976. Reissued in 2001 by Da Capo Press.
CD recommendation: Honky Tonk Girl : The Loretta Lynn Collection.
(3 CD-set, MCA).