Legendary country singer-songwriter Loretta Lynn dies at 90

Published: Oct. 4, 2022 at 9:08 PM EDT

BANGOR, Maine (WABI) - Country music legend Loretta Lynn has died at the age 90.

Lynn, known as the ‘queen of country music,’ passed away at her Tennessee home today, according to a statement from her family.

Lynn’s seven-decade-plus career in music started shortly after she picked up a 17-dollar guitar from sears.

By 1970, she had written the auto-biographical “Coal miner’s daughter.”

It became her signature song and later a best-selling book and hit movie.

We spoke to Holden Police Chief Chris Greeley about Lynn.

Greeley worked as a stagehand for multiple bands during the early 80s at the Augusta Civic Center including for Lynn. “When I worked with Loretta Lynn or worked on her stage crew, she was very, very well known. She sold out the the civic center. But the thing about her was that she was really nice. She was just very genuine, very gracious. And she did one thing in particular that I was really impressed by. The show was all done. She put it a chair at the end of the stage, and she talked to everybody that wanted to come up to talk to her. They might have been brief, might have been a quick autograph, but every single person that came up to her after the show, I’d never ever seen that having worked with all kinds of people before,” he says.

Lynn was inducted into the country music hall of fame in 19-88.

Her family says a memorial date will be announced soon.