Museum honors Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn’s remarkable life has taken her from a Kentucky holler to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville.
She was inducted into the hall, country music’s most exclusive circle, in 1988, 28 years after her debut single, Honky Tonk Girl.
Now the trailblazing singer and songwriter is being honored in the museum’s newest exhibit, “Loretta Lynn: Blue Kentucky Girl,” which is scheduled to run through Aug. 5, 2018.
Artifacts on display include Lynn’s first recording contract (for Zero Records in February
1960), the handwritten manuscript of her 1970 chart-topper
Coal Miner’s Daughter, the Presidential Medal of Freedom she received in 2013, her 1956 Gibson
J-50 guitar and the sewing machine she used to make some of her early stage outfits.
“Loretta came from so little, yet gave us so much,” said museum CEO Kyle Young after describing Lynn’s hardscrabble beginnings during the exhibit’s opening reception.
Now 85, Lynn is recovering from a stroke she had in May and was unable to attend the exhibit’s opening reception. Several family members were in attendance on her behalf and witnessed the crowd delivering a lengthy standing ovation that seemed loud enough to reach Lynn’s home 75 miles west of Music City.
Three singer-songwriters, who owe a great debt to Lynn’s music, paid tribute. Margo Price and Brandy Clark delivered Fist City and Coal Miner’s Daughter, respectively, and Kacey Musgraves read from the foreword she wrote for a book based on the exhibit.