Country music legend, Loretta Lynn, was hospitalized over the weekend for what her doctors have diagnosed as the beginning stages of pneumonia and she will continue to need rest.
Loretta Lynn’s official websight made the announcement Saturday (Oct.22), “Loretta regretfully must cancel her shows for Ashland Ky, and Durahm, NC for this weekend, due to illness...Loretta is doing well and is disappointed but feels confident she will be ready for upcoming November dates.”
Mrs. Lynn, 76, continues to perform, when able, keeping a relatively grueling schedule. It’s obvious she enjoys singing and giving audiences more than they pay for.
Kyle Anderson, contributor for EW.com, stated “This isn’t the first time this year Lynn has had to postpone performances because of health issues. According to ‘People’ she had to skip shows in August because of knee surgery and also missed a pair of appearances after being hospitalized with heat exhaustion.” Loretta thanked her friends through representatives, August 29th, on her websight following her knee replacement surgery, “We are so thankful to let everyone know Loretta’s knee replacement surgery went well. She is back home at her Ranch in Hurricane Mills. Loretta would like to thank all those who have added her to their prayers. She is looking forward to a speedy recovery and seeing y’all soon!”
As reported by her daughter Patsy Lynn Russell, country music legend Loretta Lynn is "feeling great" contrary to rumors circulating on the world wide web. Her future plans include a trip to her home in the Bahamas over the holidays.
The following is an excerpt from Loretta Lynn’s personal biography:
Loretta was born in Butcher Holler, Kentucky. Born to Melvin "Ted" Webb (1906–1959) and Clara Marie (Ramey) Webb (1912–1981) and named in honor of Loretta Young, Loretta was the second of eight children. Three of her siblings also pursued country careers, her youngest sister, Crystal Gayle, sister Peggy Sue and brother Jay Lee Webb. She is also, on her mother's side, distantly related to country singer Patty Loveless (née Patricia Ramey). Lynn grew up in Butcher Holler, a section of Van Lear, a mining community near Paintsville, Kentucky.
Just as she would later sing in “Coal Miner’s Daughter, ”Loretta’s family eked out a living during the Depression on the “poor man’s dollar” her father managed to earn “work{ing] all night in the Van Leer coal mine [and] all day long in the field a-hoein’ corn.” As she also notes in that song, “I never thought of leavin’ Butcher Holler.”
But that was before she met Oliver Lynn (aka Doolittle or Doo, or “Mooney” for moonshine), a handsome 21-year-old fresh from the service who swept the young Loretta Webb off her feet. The couple married when Loretta was 13. Wikipedia states, their marriage was sometimes tumultuous; he had affairs and she was headstrong. Their experiences together became inspiration for her music.
Looking for a future that didn’t require him to work the mines, Doo found work in Custer, Washington, and Loretta joined him in 1951. The following decade found Lynn a full-time mother, four kids by the time she began singing seriously in 1961, of precisely the sort she would one day sing to and for. In her spare time, though, with Doo’s encouragement, she learned to play the guitar and began singing in the area. During one televised talent contest in Tacoma, hosted by Buck Owens, Loretta was spotted by Norm Burley who was so impressed he started Zero Records just to record her.
Before long, Loretta and Doo hit the road cross-country, stopping every time they spotted a country radio station to push her first Zero release, “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl.” By the time they reached Nashville, the record was a minor hit and Loretta found work cutting demos for the publishing company of Teddy and Doyle Wilburn.
Out of these influences, Lynn soon fashioned her distinctive style, a mature fusion of twang, grit, energy and libido, an approach she first perfected in the songs of other writers. In “Wine, Women, and Song,” “Happy Birthday,” and “Blue Kentucky Girl,” each a Top Ten hit in 1964, Loretta played a plucky young woman who alternated between waiting for her wayward man to walk back in the door and threatening to walk out herself.
Such hits were early hints of Loretta’s undeniably strong female point of view, a perspective unique at the time both to country music specifically and to pop music generally and a trend in her music that became further pronounced as she began to write more of her own songs. In her first self-penned song to crack the Top Ten, 1966’s “Dear Uncle Sam,” Loretta presented herself as a woman who was going to fight to keep what was important to her, even if that meant questioning the wisdom of her government. Indeed, “Dear Uncle Sam” was among the very first recordings to recount the human costs of the Vietnam War. “Doo encouraged me to write that one,” she recalls today. “I was wondering what it would be like to have someone over there and what I would do if I did.” (The song made a return to Lynn’s live sets with the coming of the Iraq war.)
Over the next few years, Loretta wrote a string of hits unprecedented for their take-no-crap women narrators. In “You Ain’t Woman Enough (to Take My Man)” [#2, 1966], “Don’t Come Home A’Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind)” [#1, 1967], and “Fist City” [#1, 1968], among others, Loretta presented a new character on the country scene: a woman unafraid to stand up for herself, just like real women did. Drawing upon her own experiences as a harried young wife and mother, and upon a homespun sense of humor at once both pointed and hilarious, Loretta issued warnings to soused and philandering hubbies everywhere, and to the female competition, that she was not to be trifled with. In her words, “You better close your face and stay out of my way if you don’t wanna go to Fist City.”
Up until Doolittle's death in 1996, the Lynns’ 50 year marriage was reportedly rocky. 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 he once left her while she was giving birth to one of their six children. Lynn and her husband fought frequently, but, as this spunky little firecracker once said, "he never hit me one time that I didn’t hit him back twice".
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other notes & resources:
http://www.lorettalynn.com/50/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_Lynn
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