Loretta Lynn, 'Coal Miner's Daughter' singer, dies aged 90

Country music star had more than 50 top-10 hits

US President Barack Obama presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to country music star Loretta Lynn in 2013. AFP

Lynn at City Stages 2005 in Birmingham, Alabama. Photo: Scott Schram / Public Domain

Lynn's album You Ain't Woman Enough was written about her cheating husband Doolittle Lynn. Photo: Public Domain

Lynn on her tour bus in 1975. Photo: David Pugh / Public Domain

Lynn saw her music career get a second wind after making an album with Jack White of the White Stripes. Photo: Anna Hanks / Public Domain

Lynn's tribute album to fellow country star Patsy Cline. Photo: Public Domain

Lynn, America's groundbreaking country titan whose frank lyricism delving into the experiences of women, touched a nerve in the nation. Getty Images / AFP

Lynn is presented the Icon Tribute award at the 52nd Annual BMI Country Awards in Nashville, Tennessee. Getty Images / AFP

Lynn performs onstage at the 13th annual Americana Music Association Honours and Awards Show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in 2014. Getty Images / AFP

Lynn performs onstage at the Big Barrel Country Music Festival in Dover, Delaware, in 2015. Getty Images / AFP

(FILES) In this file photo taken on September 17, 2014 Loretta Lynn performs onstage at the 13th annual Americana Music Association Honors and Awards Show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. - Loretta Lynn, America's groundbreaking country titan whose frank lyricism delving into women's experiences with sex, infidelity and pregnancy touched the nerve of a nation, has died, US media reported Tuesday. She was 90 years old. (Photo by Erika Goldring / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP)

To many, Lynn was a feminist icon. Invision / AP

Lynn with Tanya Tucker and Crystal Gayle at Lynn's 87th Birthday Tribute in Nashville. Invision / AP

Lynn performs at the BBC Music Showcase during South By South-west in 2016 in Austin, Texas. Invision / AP

Lynn at the Country Music Awards. AP

Lynn and Jack White from the White Stripes. PA Images / Getty Images

Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980). Photo: IMDb

Lynn and Vince Gill perform on stage at the "39th Annual Country Music Awards" at the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Getty Images / AFP

A statue of Lynn outside the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. Getty Images / AFP

Lynn and George Strait in Nashville, Tennessee. Getty Images / AFP

Lynn arrives at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003. Getty Images / AFP

Loretta Lynn, the coal miner's daughter from a hill in Butcher Holler, Kentucky, who became one of American country music's biggest stars died on Tuesday at the age of 90, her family said on Twitter.

Lynn died at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, the family said in a Twitter post.

“Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning, October 4, in her sleep at home in her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills,” the post said.

Lynn, who through her music became an accidental feminist, once told an interviewer that 14 of her songs had been banned by radio stations.

“I wasn't the first woman in country music,” she told Esquire magazine in 2007. “I was just the first one to stand up there and say what I thought, what life was about. The rest were afraid to.”

Lynn's down-home twangy voice was a regular feature on country music radio and honky-tonk juke boxes in the 1960s and 1970s as she scored hits with songs such as Fist City, You Ain't Woman Enough (to Take My Man) and the autobiographical Coal Miner's Daughter. According to her website, Lynn had more than 50 top-10 hits.

Lynn and Jack White from the White Stripes. PA Images / Getty Images

Stardom seemed unlikely for Lynn growing up in Butcher Holler, where her miner father died of black lung disease at age 52. Lynn claimed to have been 13 years old in 1948 when she married Oliver (Doo) Lynn, 23, and by the time she reached 18, she was the mother of four children.

She and her husband moved to Washington state in the 1950s and it was there that her music career began to bloom. On her 24th birthday he gave Lynn a $17 guitar and lots of encouragement. She taught herself to play and began performing at radio stations. By 1960 she had a recording contract and a self-written hit, I'm a Honky-Tonk Girl.

The couple drove around the US visiting radio stations to promote her work before ending up in the country music capital of Nashville, Tennessee.

Sissy Spacek won a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Lynn in the 1980 hit Coal Miner's Daughter. Photo: IMDb

Lynn was the first female to win the Country Music Association's “Entertainer of the Year” honour in 1972. She won seven other CMA awards, was voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988 and won 12 Academy of Country Music Awards.

She won three Grammy awards as an artist — one for the song After the Fire Is Gone with long time duet partner Conway Twitty and two in 2004 for her work on the album Van Lear Rose, a collaboration with rocker Jack White of the White Stripes on which she wrote or co-wrote every song.

In 2003, Lynn was honoured by the Kennedy Centre for her contribution to American culture and was given a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement in 2010. Three years later, president Barack Obama presented her a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Reuters contributed to this report