His family confirmed the death in a statement but did not name a cause.

Ms. Lynn’s career has been notable for her rise in the storybooks from rocky origins. She was married and a teenage mother, a grandmother at 29, and a country star at 30. A trailblazer for other female country artists, she was the first woman to win the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year award, in 1972. She also helped redefine and broaden the appeal of country music. .

“She was country music’s breakthrough singer-songwriter,” Robert Oermann, co-author of “Finding Her Voice,” a study of women in country music, told The Washington Post in 2003. point of view feminine view, and it had never been done before, not like she did. Writing about women as they really lived – that was a breakthrough.

In 2013, when Ms. Lynn received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, President Barack Obama called her “the queen of country music who broke the rules and set records ‘who’” gave voice to a generation, singing what no one wanted to talk about and say what no one wanted to think about.

His career has been propelled by unquestionable musical talent, a surprisingly photogenic presence and formidable courage. “Having to grow up as fast as when I got married took something away from me,” she noted in her second memoir, “Still Woman Enough” (2002). “But it also gave me something: hard-earned strength.”

Many of Ms. Lynn’s most memorable songs celebrated her Kentucky roots and were rendered in an unmistakable Appalachian accent. Her debut album, “Loretta Lynn Sings” (1963), reached No. 2 on the Billboard country album chart, but her greatest success came later, often with tunes full of personal meaning or topical social themes. .

The first of more than a dozen country No. 1 hits came in 1967, with “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)”, written with his sister Peggy Sue about marriage to an alcoholic.

Several of her songs were adamant warnings to romantic rivals for her husband’s affections, including “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)” (1966) and the #1 country hit “Fist City” (1968) :

I’m not saying my baby’s a saint ’cause he ain’t

And he won’t tickle a kitty

I’m here to tell you, girl, fire my man

If you don’t wanna go to Fist City

Some of his other well-known songs include “Dear Uncle Sam” (released in 1966), about a wife saying goodbye to her soldier husband; “You Look at the Country” (1971); “Love is the foundation” (1973); and “One’s on the Way” (1971), written by comedian Shel Silverstein about a beleaguered housewife expecting a child – “I hope it’s not twins anymore.”

There was also “The Pill”, about the liberating effect of contraceptives on a woman’s life. Ms Lynn recorded the song, by Lorene Allen, Don McHan and TD Bayless, in 1972. Her record company held it back for three years and many radio stations refused to play it, but it eventually became the one of the 5 most popular countries.

Ms. Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” only spent a week at No. 1 after its release in 1970, but it quickly became the singer’s signature song:

Well I was born a coal miner’s daughter

In a shack, on a hill in Butcher Holler

We were poor but we had love,

That’s the only thing daddy made sure

He would shovel coal to make a pauper’s dollar

After a 1976 memoir, co-written with New York Times journalist George Vecsey, Ms. Lynn’s popularity peaked with the 1980 film “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”

While producers were still casting the film, Ms Lynn casually announced on ‘The Tonight Show’ that ‘little Sissy Spacek’ would be playing her onscreen. Spacek, who followed Ms Lynn for months and sang every song in the film, won a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal.

Critics praised English director Michael Apted’s realistic depiction of Appalachian life and Ms Lynn’s tumultuous marriage to Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn. She once told Rolling Stone magazine that every time Doolittle hit her, she hit her back – twice.

Despite all the turmoil in their relationship, Ms Lynn credited her husband with pushing her to become a performer.

“I married Doo when I was just a kid, and he was my life from that day forward,” she said in ‘Still Woman Enough,’ Written with Patsi Bale Cox. “He thought I was something special, more special than anyone else in the world, and never let me forget that. That belief would be hard to push away. Doo was my security, my safety net. security.

Loretta Webb was born in Butcher Hollow, Ky., on April 14, 1932. The hollow, with no electricity or indoor plumbing, sat at the bottom of a hill outside Van Lear, Ky., named for the company of local coal. His father, who eventually died of black lung disease, worked in the Van Lear mines.

The second of eight children, Loretta attended a one-room school before dropping out of primary school. She cared for her younger siblings while her mother worked in a nursing home. She didn’t ride in a car until she was 12, and the family’s only connection to the outside world was a battery-operated radio, which played “The Grand Ole Opry.”

She married at 15 (not 13, as she claimed in “Coal Miner’s Daughter”). Her husband, then 21, was a moonshiner who owned the hollow’s only car, an army jeep.

A year into their marriage, Ms Lynn – then pregnant with their first child – followed her husband to Custer, Washington. She had four children by the age of 19 and was eventually a mother of six.

After hearing her serenade the kids around the house, Doolittle bought his wife a $17 guitar and encouraged her to sit down with a local country band. She soon started her own band, Loretta’s Trail Blazers, and won a talent contest hosted by singer Buck Owens in Tacoma, Washington.

Ms. Lynn wrote and recorded “Honky Tonk Girl” in 1960, then traveled the country with her husband, pitching the record to disc jockeys and endearing herself to listeners with her unvarnished charm.

During an interview, Dallas disc jockey Bill Mack complimented her on a dress she was wearing.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Lynn. “I just washed it.”

“Oh really, where did you find a laundromat around here?” Mack asked.

“I couldn’t find any laundry, I washed it in the back of the car,” Ms Lynn replied, referring to a basin of water in the car. Mack pressed her further about how she had dried the dress.

“I blew it out the window,” Ms Lynn said.

Moving to Nashville in 1961, she landed a spot on a Wilburn Brothers TV show, which brought her to the attention of Decca Records and famed country music producer Owen Bradley.

In the early 1960s, Ms. Lynn toured as an opening act for Patsy Cline and performed with country star Ernest Tubb.

She formed her longest-lasting musical partnership with singer Conway Twitty in the 1970s and 1980s. The pair had five No. 1 country singles together and won the Country Music Association’s Vocal Duo of the Year from 1972 to 1975. Their records ranged from the mournful “After the Fire Is Gone” to the upbeat “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” and the melodramatic “As soon as I hang up the phone.” Twitter died in 1993.

From the 1960s, Ms. Lynn became a television staple, with appearances on such programs as ‘The Tonight Show’, ‘The Muppet Show’ and ‘The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts’. She discussed her teenage marriage and other intimate matters with an outspokenness that captivated audiences who had never followed country music.

Ms Lynn then set up a theme park, including a campground and a replica of her childhood home, near her home in Hurricane Mills, Tenn.

For years, she suffered from migraines that sometimes forced her to miss performances. She was treated for a sleeping pill addiction in the 1980s.

Ms. Lynn won Grammys for her 1971 duet “After the Fire Is Gone,” her 1971 duet with Twitty, for a 2004 duet, “Portland, Oregon,” with Jack White of the White Stripes, and for her 2004 album “Van Lear Rose”. She was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988 and received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003 and a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 2010.

Three of Ms. Lynn’s siblings have had careers in music. A brother, Jay Lee Webb, who was a singer and played guitar in Ms. Lynn’s band, died in 1996. Her sister Peggy Sue toured with her band in the 1960s and 1970s. Ms. Lynn’s youngest sister , Brenda Gail Lynn, who enjoyed a successful country and pop career under the stage name Crystal Gayle, won a Grammy for her 1977 hit “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.”

Her eldest son, Jack Benny Lynn – named after two of the singer’s uncles, not the radio and film comedian – died in 1984 after being thrown from a horse into a river on the family property; Ms. Lynn stopped performing for over a year. She also temporarily retired to care for her husband before his death in 1996, after 48 years of marriage. A daughter, Betty Sue Lynn, died of emphysema in 2013.

Mrs. Lynn’s twin daughters, Peggy and Patsy, performed together as Lynns; one son, Ernest Ray Lynn, played guitar and bass in his mother’s band. She also had another daughter, Clara Marie Lynn. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.

Well into her 80s, Ms. Lynn made new recordings and continued to perform. She returned to her Appalachian roots on the largely acoustic album ‘Full Circle’ (2016), which was nominated for a Grammy for Best Country Album and featured ‘Lay Me Down’, a fall duet with fellow octogenarian Willie Nelson. .

“I can probably outrun anyone in Nashville. I’m not ready to lay down and die,” she told People magazine in 2016. “I see no reason to stop now.”