Coal Miner’s Daughter, Trump Supporter and Conservative Icon Loretta Lynn Dead at 90

Loretta Lynn has died at the age of 90. The “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, Country Music Hall of Famer, Trump supporter and conservative icon died at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee on Tuesday.

Lynn was born into abject poverty in Butcher Holler, Kentucky, but used her childhood experiences as inspiration for a career that spanned six decades. The actual daughter of a coal miner, Lynn’s father died from black lung at the age of 52, she married at the age of 15 and subsequently moved to Washington State. The rocky marriage that followed also served as inspiration for many of Lynn’s songs.

Loretta Lynn was a fearless songwriter and performer. Many of her songs dealt with issues of the day that were taboo on mainstream country radio. Birth control, sex, cheating, abuse and Vietnam were some of the themes that got nine of her songs actually banned from country radio, an unheard-of notion now.

Loretta Lynn, the Kentucky coal miner’s daughter whose frank songs about life and love as a woman in Appalachia pulled her out of poverty and made her a pillar of country music, has died. She was 90. https://t.co/ATdwml7dpA

— The Associated Press (@AP) October 4, 2022

Despite starting her career at a rather late age of 28, and only learning guitar at the age of 21, Lynn gained a following in the Washington State bar scene, and Nashville soon followed. Despite the ever-changing nature of country music, Loretta Lynn maintained her popularity, even winning a Grammy in 2005. Her awards and accolades were numerous:

The Academy of Country Music chose Lynn as the artist of the decade for the 1970s and she was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988.

She continued to perform across the country in the 1990s and 2000s, even scooping an additional two Grammys in 2005 for her album “Van Lear Rose.” In 2010, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for her 50 years in country music.

She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in 2013.

Even with all of her success as a best-selling author for “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, multiple Grammy wins, her activism in the 1970’s, and her cemented status as a country legend, Loretta Lynn shocked her fans when she revealed herself as an ardent Donald Trump supporter in 2016. While it should come as no shock that an older county music superstar born and raised in the Appalachian region of Kentucky would be a Republican, Kentucky is a deep red state, fans and pundits still exclaimed outrage that Lynn would support Trump.

In an interview with Reuters, Lynn said this:

“Trump has sold me – what more can I say?” Lynn told me over the phone just before the start of Trump’s rally Thursday in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Lynn’s friend, Phyllis Jones, 71, had driven to Rock Hill from nearby Charlotte, North Carolina, and had called her famous pal while she waited for Trump to appear.

Lynn, 83, who penned and recorded country hits like “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “The Pill” and “Rated X,” still performs between eight and 10 shows a month. She said she has been stumping for Trump at the end of each show, and declared her support for him at an awards dinner in New York in early December. 

Loretta Lynn was a true legend in an era when there aren’t very many left, and even fewer being created. She was a visionary, a conservative, and the voice of a generation of country music. She leaves behind four of her six children and 21 grandchildren.