'Loretta Lynn: Blue Kentucky Girl' exhibit celebrates her remarkable life

Loretta Lynn's remarkable life has taken her from a Kentucky holler to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

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 known for enduring, unflinchingly forthright recordings like "Rated X" and "Don't Come Home A Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind)" is being honored in the museum's newest exhibit, "Loretta Lynn: Blue Kentucky Girl," which opens to the public Friday and is scheduled to run through Aug. 5, 2018.

Artifacts on display include the first recording contract Lynn signed (for Zero Records in February 1960), the handwritten manuscript of her 1970 autobiographical chart-topper "Coal Miner's Daughter," the Presidential Medal of Freedom she received from President Barack Obama in 2013, her 1956 Gibson J-50 guitar and the Singer 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 Tuesday evening. Several family members were in attendance on her behalf and got to witness the crowd delivering a lengthy standing ovation that seemed loud enough to reach Lynn's Hurricane Mills home 75 miles west of Music City.

Three country singer-songwriters, who owe a great debt to Lynn's music and the doors she kicked down, paid tribute to her on Tuesday. Margo Price and Brandy Clark delivered fine renditions of the classics "Fist City" and "Coal Miner's Daughter," respectively, and Kacey Musgraves, who grew up singing Lynn's songs on the Texas Opry circuit, read from the foreword she contributed to a book based on the exhibit.

"I’m a 29-year-old in 2017 and I’ve seen some pretty interesting situations as far as how women are considered in the country music world," said Musgraves in an interview before the reception. "I can’t even begin to imagine the s--t she had to put up with, face and fight every day to get to where she is now. ... She was (driven) by her own confidence, courage and she backed the things she believed in." 

At the end of the reception, daughter Patsy Lynn Russell, who was wearing her mother's wedding bands for the event, passed along a message from Lynn to the crowd: "Tell everybody I love them and I will be back to see everybody."

The museum is staging a number of Lynn-related programs this weekend, including a songwriter session on Saturday with one of her most frequent collaborators, Shawn Camp, and a Sunday morning screening of the 2016 "American Masters" documentary "Still a Mountain Girl." Visit countrymusichalloffame.org for the full schedule. 

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