Lynn's hits included Don't Come Home A-Drinkin', Honky Tonk Girl and the feminist anthem, The Pill. [Photo Credit: BBC News]
Loretta Lynn, whose songs of strength and independence made her a standard-bearer for women in country music, has died at the age of 90.
Known as the Queen of Country, her songs were rooted in real-life experience, most notably in the autobiographical Coal Miner’s Daughter.
Other hits included Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’, Honky Tonk Girl and the feminist anthem, The Pill.
Lynn’s family said she died on Tuesday at her home in 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 said in a statement.
They asked for privacy as they grieve and said a memorial would be announced later.
The singer was born Loretta Webb in a one-room log cabin in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky in 1932. She was the second of eight children.
Just as she would later sing in Coal Miner’s Daughter, her family earned a living during the Depression, with her father earning a “poor man’s dollar” by working all night in the coal mines, and all day in the fields “a-hoein’ corn”.
The family made its own entertainment – her mother played the guitar, with her father accompanying on banjo – and she grew up on the songs of the Carter Family.
