Loretta Webb

Loretta Webb was born in a remote Appalachian coal-mining hollow in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, the second of eight children. Married at fifteen to Oliver "Doolittle" Lynn and a mother of four by age twenty, her husband bought her a $17 guitar, encouraging her to write songs drawn directly from the struggles of working-class Appalachian women.

Lynn became the first woman to write her own country music chart-toppers. Her autobiographical 1970 masterpiece "Coal Miner's Daughter" became an American folk classic, adapted into an Oscar-winning 1980 film starring Sissy Spacek. Lynn shattered conservative country music boundaries by singing frankly about birth control ("The Pill"), double standards ("Rated X"), and domestic betrayal ("Fist City", "Don't Come Home A-Drinkin'"). In 1972, she became the first woman named Entertainer of the Year by the Country Music Association. In 2004, she enjoyed an acclaimed comeback produced by Jack White with Van Lear Rose, winning two Grammys. In 2013, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.