On This Day 56 Years Ago, Loretta Lynn Released the Autobiographical Song That Made Her a Country Icon

The first woman ever to win country music’s coveted Entertainer of the Year title did not succeed in spite of her difficult upbringing. Rather, Loretta Lynn thrived precisely because of it. The second of eight children, she was born in a one-room log cabin in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, where her father worked long, laborious hours in the Van Lear coal mines.

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Married at 15 and a mother by 16, Lynn spoke her truth plainly in song, emboldening future generations of female country artists to do the same. On this day (May 10) in 1970, she released the song that would come to define her career, “Coal Miner’s Daughter”.

“The Best Nine Verses” Loretta Lynn Ever Wrote

Loretta Lynn was already a well-established country star when she wrote “Coal Miner’s Daughter” in 1969. Songs like “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind)”, “Fist City”, and “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man) had earned her the reputation of a tough-as-nails, outspoken storyteller.

However, “Coal Miner’s Daughter” launched a whole new level of stardom for the 14-time Academy of Country Music Award winner. And it started out with “nothing but the truth,” Lynn wrote in her autobiography of the same name.

She made up the melody herself “line by line,” but initially struggled with the rhymes. “I had to match up words like ‘holler’ and ‘daughter’ and ‘water,’” she said. “But after if was done, the rhymes weren’t so important. In a couple of hours, I had nine of the best verses I ever wrote.”

Only six of those verses made it into the final recording. And even then, “The song doesn’t tell half of it,” Lynn said in an interview. “If I told the whole story nobody would believe it now anyway.”

[RELATED: 4 Nostalgic Loretta Lynn Songs That We Could Listen to Forever]

“Coal Miner’s Daughter” gave Lynn the fourth No. 1 hit of her career and her first charting entry on the all-genre Hot 100, peaking at No. 83. It also became the inspiration for the 1980 film of the same name, in which Sissy Spacek’s portrayal of Lynn won her an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Remember This Beautiful Kacey Musgraves Tribute?

On October 4, 2022, Loretta Lynn died of natural causes at her Hurricane Mills, Tennessee home. She was 90 years old.

Four months later, country singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves stood onstage at the 2023 Grammy Awards and delivered a stunning rendition of “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, softly strumming a guitar bearing Lynn’s name on the neck.

During an interview at the 2019 ACM Awards, the “High Horse” singer named Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton among her greatest influences.

 “I don’t take that lightly that they paved the pathway for me,” she said. “I grew up singing all their songs. They’re ingrained in my brain. It’s really important to me.”

Featured image by CBS via Getty Images