Loretta Lynn Birthplace — Butcher Hollow, Kentucky

Loretta Lynn was born on April 14, 1932, in Butcher Hollow — known locally as Butcher Holler — a remote coal-mining community near Van Lear in Johnson County, Kentucky. The family's two-room log cabin, where Loretta grew up the second of eight children, is preserved as a museum and pilgrimage site. Her father Ted Webb was a coal miner; the poverty, isolation, and close-knit community of the Eastern Kentucky mountains are inseparable from her music. She immortalised her origins in 'Coal Miner's Daughter' (1970), one of the most celebrated songs in country music and the title of her bestselling 1976 autobiography.

Lynn married Oliver 'Doolittle' Lynn at thirteen, moved to Washington state, had four children, and was performing in small clubs when Doolittle drove her to Nashville and she auditioned for Decca Records. The directness and toughness of her songwriting — 'You Ain't Woman Enough,' 'Fist City,' 'The Pill,' 'Rated X,' 'One's on the Way' — reflected the reality of women's lives in a way Nashville had rarely heard, and her willingness to address contraception, infidelity, and divorce made her both controversial and beloved. She became the first woman named Entertainer of the Year by the CMA in 1972.

The Butcher Hollow homeplace is open for tours and maintained by Loretta's brother Herman Webb. Van Lear is in Johnson County in the Big Sandy region of eastern Kentucky — coal country, remote, extraordinarily beautiful in the way of the Appalachian highlands. The nearby town of Paintsville is the closest service centre and has an annual Loretta Lynn festival.