Sunday, October 21, 2012

Loretta Lynn~ "Oh Come Angel Band"



Loretta Lynn (née Webb; born April 14, 1932) is an American country music singer-songwriter and author.

Born in Butcher Hollow, near Paintsville, Kentucky, USA, to a coal miner father, she married at the age of 15, was a mother soon after, and moved to Washington with her husband, Oliver Vanetta Lynn, Jr. (1926–1996), nicknamed "Doo". Their marriage was tumultuous; he had affairs and she was headstrong; their life together helped inspire her music.

On her 21st birthday, Lynn's husband bought her a $17.00 Harmony guitar. She taught herself to play and when she was 24, on her wedding anniversary, he encouraged her to become a singer.

She worked to improve her guitar playing, started singing at the Delta Grange Hall in Washington State with the Pen Brothers' band, The Westerners, then eventually cut her first record in February 1960.

She became a part of the country music scene in Nashville in the 1960s, and in 1967 charted her first of 16 number-one hits (out of 70 charted songs as a solo artist and a duet partner[1]) that include "Don't Come Home A' Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind)", "You Ain't Woman Enough", "Fist City", and "Coal Miner's Daughter".

She focused on blue collar women's issues with themes about philandering husbands and persistent mistresses, and pushed boundaries in the conservative genre of country music by singing about birth control ("The Pill"), repeated childbirth ("One's on the Way"), double standards for men and women ("Rated "X""), and being widowed by the draft during the Vietnam War ("Dear Uncle Sam").

Country music radio stations often refused to play her songs. Nonetheless, she became known as "The First Lady of Country Music".

Her best-selling 1976 autobiography was made into an Academy Award-winning film, Coal Miner's Daughter, starring Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones, in 1980.

Her most recent album, Van Lear Rose, was released in 2004, produced by Jack White, and topped the country album charts. As of 2011, Lynn continues to tour and has received numerous awards in country and American music.[citation needed]

Childhood and early adulthood

Born to Melvin "Ted" Webb (April 9, 1906 - February 23, 1959) and Clara Marie (née Ramey) Webb (May 5, 1912 - November 24, 1981) and named for film star Loretta Young,[2] Loretta was the second of eight children.

Three of her siblings also pursued country careers — her youngest sister, Crystal Gayle, sister Peggy Sue, and Jay Lee Webb.

On her mother's side, she is related to country singer Patty Loveless (née Patricia Ramey), as well as Venus Ramey (Miss America, 1944).

She was raised in Butcher Hollow, part of Van Lear, Kentucky, a mining community near Paintsville.

Her mother was of Scots-Irish and Cherokee ancestry. Her father was a coalminer, storekeeper, and farmer.

Her 8 siblings are Melvin Webb. Jr(b.1929-d.1993), Herman (b.1934), Jay Lee (b.1939), Donald (b.1943), Peggy Webb Wright (b.1947), Betty Ruth (b.1949) and Brenda Gail Webb (b.1951).

She married Oliver Vanetta Lynn, commonly known as "Doolittle", "Doo" or "Mooney" (for running moonshine), on January 10, 1948.

Oliver was 21 years old; Loretta, born in 1932 according to Kentucky Birth Records, was almost 16 years old.[3]

In an effort to break free of the coal mining industry, the couple moved to the logging community of Custer, Washington. The Lynns had six children:
  • Betty Sue, August 3, 1948 (age 64)
  • Clara Marie (Cissy), March 4, 1951 (age 61)
  • Jack Benny, June 4, 1954 – July 22, 1984 (aged 30)
  • Ernest Ray, April 12, 1959 (age 53)
  • Peggy and Patsy (twins; latter named for Patsy Cline), June 3, 1964 (age 48)
Before her marriage, Loretta regularly sang at churches and in local concerts.

After she married, she stopped singing in public, focusing on family life. Instead, she passed her love of music on to her children, often singing to them around the house.

When she was 21 years old, her husband bought her a $17.00 Harmony guitar as an anniversary present, which she taught herself to play.[4]

Although married for almost fifty years, with six children,[5] the Lynns' marriage was reportedly rocky up to Doolittle's death in 1996.

In her 2002 autobiography, Still Woman Enough, and in an interview with CBS News the same year, Lynn recounts how her husband cheated on her regularly and once left her while she was giving birth.[6]

Lynn and her husband fought frequently, but, she said, "he never hit me one time that I didn't hit him back twice".[6]

Source: Wikipedia 

 




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Donnie/ Sinbad the Sailor Man

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