Loretta Lynn won a wristwatch on TV, and a record label was born
A Canadian named Norm Burley watched a young coal miner's daughter win a wristwatch on a televised talent contest in Tacoma, Washington, and co-founded a record company on the strength of it. That singer, Loretta Lynn, went on to score 24 number one singles and become the most awarded woman in country music.
Loretta Webb was born on April 14, 1932, in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, the second of eight children of a coal miner and subsistence farmer; she was named after the film star Loretta Young, and her youngest sister became the singer Crystal Gayle. Her father died of a stroke at 52, also suffering from black lung, a few years after moving the family to Indiana.
She began singing in local clubs in the late 1950s with her own band, the Trailblazers. After the Tacoma contest, hosted by Buck Owens, Zero Records recorded four of her songs in Hollywood, and she signed on February 2, 1960. Her debut had a West Coast shuffle rather than a Nashville polish. She and her husband drove the country plugging it to radio stations, and by the time they reached Nashville I'm a Honky Tonk Girl was climbing to number 14 on the country chart. Demo work for the Wilburn Brothers led to a Decca contract, and she joined the Grand Ole Opry on September 25, 1962.
That partnership came at a cost. The Wilburns held the publishing rights to her songs, and she fought for 30 years without success to recover them; the contracts eventually led her to stop writing in the 1970s. Even so, her catalogue includes some of country's most outspoken songs, among them The Pill and Fist City, alongside Coal Miner's Daughter, which gave its name to the 1980 film in which Sissy Spacek played her.
Lynn won honours from both the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music, solo and in duets, and was the only woman named the ACM's Artist of the Decade, for the 1970s. She had 11 number one albums and three Grammy wins from 18 nominations. A stroke in 2017 and a broken hip in 2018 ended 57 years of touring. She died on October 4, 2022.
Source: Loretta Lynn
