Loretta Lynn, country star with Custer roots, dies

Loretta Lynn, a coal miner’s daughter, American country music star and past Custer resident, died October 4 at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. She was 90.

Known for her candid lyrics about working-class life, Lynn is remembered for her rise from Kentucky coal country to trailblazing a path for other female country singers.

In her autobiography, “Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner’s Daughter,” Lynn notes how she was 14 and pregnant with her first child when she left Butcher Hollow, Kentucky on a train headed across the country for Custer, where her husband, Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn, found work on a farm. She had four children by the time she was 19, ultimately having six.

Hearing her serenade the children, Doolittle thought she had a promising voice and bought her a guitar for her 18th birthday. Lynn started playing local granges and taverns in the 1950s, while she worked seven days a week as a cook and maid. She often appeared at Bill’s Tavern, which sat near Peace Portal Drive and Hughes Avenue. She formed her own band, known as the Trailblazers, and won a televised talent contest hosted by Buck Owens in Tacoma. She recorded her first album in 1960 and moved to Nashville by the end of the year.

With three Grammy Awards, 51 Top 10 hits and multiple gold albums, she is one of the most decorated woman country-recording artists. Her hits include “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man),” “One’s on the Way,” “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” 

Lynn returned to Whatcom County to play at the Northwest Washington Fair in Lynden several times throughout the decades. 

In 2013, former President Barack Obama gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Lynn suffered a stroke in 2017 and broke a hip on the first day of 2018. Her family asked for privacy as they grieve and said in a statement on her website that a memorial will be announced at a future date. She was buried in a family cemetery on her Hurricane Mills estate.