Country singer Loretta Lynn has died at 90:

Just about all the obituaries have the words “coal miner’s daughter” in the headline or prominent in the body of the text, and that’s my impulse, too. Not only was it the title of a famous biopic about Lynn and a song she wrote, but it was a defining truth about her origins and the identity that mattered to her even after becoming rich and famous.

A short summary of her beginnings:

Lynn was born Loretta Webb in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky on April 14, 1932. She was the eldest daughter and second child [of eight, one of whom was singer Crystal Gayle] born to Clara Marie “Clary” (née Ramey; May 5, 1912 – November 24, 1981) and Melvin Theodore “Ted” Webb (June 6, 1906 – February 22, 1959). Ted was a coal miner and subsistence farmer…

Loretta’s father died at the age of 52 of black lung disease a few years after he relocated to Wabash, Indiana, with his wife and younger children…

On January 10, 1948, 15-year-old Loretta Webb married Oliver Vanetta “Doolittle” Lynn (August 27, 1926 – August 22, 1996), better known as “Doolittle”, “Doo”, or “Mooney”. They had met only a month earlier. The Lynns left Kentucky and moved to the logging community of Custer, Washington, when Loretta was seven months pregnant with the first of their six children. The happiness and heartache of her early years of marriage would help to inspire Lynn’s songwriting. In 1953, Doolittle bought her a $17 Harmony guitar (equivalent to $172 in 2021). She taught herself to play the instrument, and over the following three years, she worked to improve her guitar playing. With Doolittle’s encouragement, she started her own band, Loretta and the Trailblazers, with her brother Jay Lee playing lead guitar.

Much much more at the link.