Loretta Lynn country singer

 Loretta's death at 90 takes away another of the great female country singers.  She was one of the first women to write a lot of her own material, and she was not just a girl singer who had a pretty face and pretty voice. Women singers in the earlier days of country music were often there just to add eye candy to an act, or to sing sentimental songs about motherhood.

Loretta was different.  She was born in Kentucky, in a poor area near the Van Lear Coal mine which was mentioned in her most famous hit.  Her father worked in the mine and was a subsistence farmer, and her mother raised 8 children. At 15 she married Oliver Lynn who whom she called Doolittle or Doo.  He had just come out of the army after World War Two and was several years her senior.  She claimed she was only 13 when she got married but she was in fact 15..  and within a few years she had had 4 children. 

Her life was very typical of young working class women at the time.  She looked after the children, her husband worked but was often rough and abusive.  He had alcohol problems. However he loved her and in spite of their fights he supported her when he believed that she had talent as a singer.  She wrote a song and went around radio stations trying to get it played.   Her work was based on her own life.  It was the 1960s and life was better for Americans and new ideas were in the air such as feminism.  But Loretta knew that there were plenty of working class women out there who were tied to the home because they had several children, who were not feeling sentimental about motherhood,  and who put up with their husbands rather than felt  romantic about them.  The husbands worked hard but were able to get away to bars or find an escape with other women and wives found ways of living with this sort of pressure. 

Many of Loretta's songs were about dealing with abusive or drunken or unfaithful husbands and her work spoke to women... 

She built up an impressive career with on and off support from her husband. Her hits included You aint woman enough to take my man, and Fist City.. and most shockingly of all, she sang about the Pill, which gave young women liberation from too many pregnancies.  It was a controversial song, but Loretta pushed it. Another song was "One's on the way", about a young married woman with a bunch of children and another one on the way.....

She lost her husband some years ago, since his alcohol problems caused ill health.  Her own health declined in recent years but she went on working as much as she could.