The Greatest Oldies Music

Country

The day before Loretta Lynn died, she told her family she was ready for heaven. According to her daughter Peggy, she said Doo was coming to take her home. Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn, her husband of 48 years, had died in 1996. Now Loretta was 90 and in declining health. Still, on Monday, October 3, 2022, she was animated and talking. Her family did not understand how close goodbye might be. In the early hours of October 4, Loretta died in her sleep at her ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. Calls went out, and relatives hurried to the house. Before the public tributes began, her children were facing the loss of Momma. A year later, the family recalled how ordinary that Tuesday should have been. There were errands waiting, supper to plan, and things they expected to tell her. They remembered the months through what was missing: her voice, her birthday songs, her advice when a decision felt difficult. Fifty-two weeks had passed without another conversation. They also returned to something she had told them in her final days—that the angels were coming. At the time, they had brushed it aside. Peggy’s remembrance offered some comfort amid that regret. She believed her mother had known she was leaving, and that the thought had made her happy.

In the first days of October 2022, Loretta Lynn told her family that the angels were coming for her. She was 90 years old, her health had been declining, and the people who loved her most heard the words and let them pass. A year later, they admitted they had dismissed her. She had been telling them the truth.

A Quiet Last Weekend

Nothing about that weekend looked like a farewell to the outside world. On September 25, Loretta had marked 60 years as a member of the Grand Ole Opry. She did not return to the stage for the occasion. A stroke in May 2017 had ended her life on the road, and her last major public performance had come in April 2019, when she joined the finale of “Coal Miner’s Daughter” at an all-star tribute for her 87th birthday in Nashville.

On Sunday morning, October 2, her Facebook page shared a Bible verse from the Gospel of John about living by the truth and coming into the light. Bible verses were nothing unusual on her page. Only afterward did fans realize it would be the last message she ever posted.

Doo Was Coming to Take Her Home

On Monday, October 3, Loretta was talking and animated. According to a long Facebook post her daughter Peggy Lynn Marchetti wrote soon after, Loretta told the family she was ready to go to heaven and that Doo was coming to take her home. She said she had been told she was really going home.

Peggy wrote that it felt surreal, because only a day earlier her mother had been so lively. She summed up those last hours in a single line:

She knew and was happy.

Who Doo Was

Doo was Oliver Vanetta “Doolittle” Lynn, also known as Mooney. Loretta married him as a teenager in Kentucky. She long said she was 13, but state records later found by the Associated Press showed she was 15. He was the one who pushed her to sing in public and helped her chase her first record when nobody in Nashville knew her name.

Their marriage was never easy, and Loretta never pretended otherwise. But they stayed together for 48 years and raised six children. In 1966 they bought the entire settlement of Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, about 65 miles west of Nashville, and turned it into the ranch that became their home. Doo died in 1996, just days before his 70th birthday. For 26 years, Loretta lived on without him. In her final hours, he was the one she said was coming for her.

Still Singing in the Middle of the Night

Peggy’s post also described what those last years had been like. After the stroke, her mother deeply missed her fans, her friends, her tour bus, her stage dresses and, most of all, the connection she felt with an audience.

She never stopped singing. At home, Loretta would sometimes break into song at full volume in the middle of the night, startling her caregivers. Peggy joked that her mother simply needed to remind them she still had the voice.

The Morning of October 4

In the early hours of Tuesday, October 4, 2022, Loretta Lynn passed away peacefully in her sleep at her ranch in Hurricane Mills. Her family called one another and rushed to the house. Within hours, they released a short statement confirming that their mother was gone, and tributes began pouring in from Dolly Parton, George Strait, Reba McEntire and much of the  country music world.

On October 7, she was laid to rest on the ranch she had loved for more than half a century. A Humphreys County sheriff led the motorcade. On October 30, friends and fellow stars gathered at the Grand Ole Opry House for a televised celebration of her life, which opened with a message Loretta had recorded for her fans before she died, thanking them for the life they had given her and her children.

A Year Later, Counting the Days

On October 4, 2023, the family posted a remembrance on her website. It opened by going back to the morning she died:

It was just supposed to be another day.

They wrote that it was meant to be a day of errands and figuring out supper and, as always, talking to Momma. Instead, she was really gone. To the world she was the legend, the record breaker and the pioneer. To them, she had always been Momma.

Then they measured the year the way families do. Twelve months since they had heard her voice. The first birthdays she had not been there to sing to them. Fifty-two weeks since their last conversation, and the first decisions made without her. Three hundred sixty-five days since they had seen her smile.

They also admitted the part that still hurt. At 90, they had known the moment would come. But when she warned them the angels were on the way, they had brushed it aside.

The remembrance ended with a promise. The family wrote that they were committed to honoring her life, her songwriting and her  music, and that they would carry that work for the rest of their lives.

Months earlier, on what would have been her 91st birthday, they had shared another memory. One year before, they had gathered in her living room for her 90th. They ate, they laughed and they sang, because Loretta always sang. Six months later, she was gone.

Related Post

A cot waited in a rehearsal hall at RCA Victor’s New York studio while Jimmie Rodgers made his final recordings. Between songs, he lay down to recover enough strength for another take. It was May 1933. Rodgers was 35 and had battled tuberculosis since 1924. As his health deteriorated, his earnings had dwindled. Victor was paying $250 per recorded side, and he wanted to provide for his wife, Carrie, and their daughter, Anita. The sessions started on May 17. Within days, standing to sing became impossible. He worked from an easy chair, supported by pillows that brought him close enough to the microphone, then returned to the cot. On May 24, two musicians accompanied him through three songs. After they left, Rodgers recorded one more with only his guitar: “Years Ago.” He had completed twelve songs in eight days. The following night at the Taft Hotel, severe coughing gave way to hemorrhaging in his lungs. The hotel doctor could not be located. Rodgers fell into a coma and died on May 26, roughly 36 hours after his last recording. Before music made him famous, he had worked as a railroad brakeman. A Southern Railway train carried his body home to Meridian, Mississippi, in a baggage car. According to accounts of the journey, the engineer kept sounding the whistle along the way.

Randy Owen sometimes stopped his tour bus at truck stops to call radio DJs from pay phones. Alabama had already made him a country star. These calls were about persuading stations to help children at St. Jude. He knew what it meant to grow up with little. On his family’s sharecropper farm near Fort Payne, Alabama, he picked cotton and corn to help put food on the table. At school, other children mocked his scarred hands and the cotton dust on his clothes. Years later, after millions of record sales, Owen met St. Jude founder Danny Thomas in Atlanta. Thomas asked him to bring the country music community into the hospital’s fundraising work. When illness prevented Thomas from speaking at Nashville’s Country Radio Seminar, Owen took his place and proposed a nationwide radio effort. Winning support required persistence. He later described himself as “begging, pleading” with DJs. Some stations remained unconvinced. The first Country Cares radiothon aired on November 19, 1989: twelve hours, 45 artists and more than 800 stations. It raised approximately $1 million. By its 35th year in 2024, the initiative had brought in more than $1 billion. Owen has said helping St. Jude may be his most important work beyond being a husband and father. That enormous total began with individual requests, including calls made beside the highway between shows. Owen kept asking stations to participate. Across the country, their listeners kept answering.

Lorrie Morgan saved the card Keith Whitley gave her at the Nashville airport for her flight home. When she finally opened it, her husband was dead. It was early May 1989. Lorrie was heading to Alaska to promote her first RCA album, while Keith was enjoying the strongest run of his career. Just weeks earlier, “I’m No Stranger to the Rain” had become his third consecutive No. 1. At home, success had brought little reassurance. Keith had struggled with alcohol for years. A period of sobriety beginning in 1987 lasted about six months. Lorrie later described the fear surrounding his drinking as living with a ticking time bomb. In her 1997 memoir, she recalled tying her leg to his while they slept so she would know if he got up to drink. During her trip, he began drinking again that weekend. On Tuesday morning, May 9, his brother-in-law, Lane Palmer, visited the house in Goodlettsville. They drank coffee and discussed golf and lunch. Palmer left around 8:30 a.m. When he returned roughly an hour later, Keith was lying on the bed, fully dressed and unconscious. The medical examiner determined that he died from acute alcohol poisoning. Traveling back to Nashville, Lorrie read the card she had set aside. She later said its words left her feeling that Keith had been trying to tell her something—a feeling she was left to carry without the chance to ask him.

You Missed

Country

A cot waited in a rehearsal hall at RCA Victor’s New York studio while Jimmie Rodgers made his final recordings. Between songs, he lay down to recover enough strength for another take. It was May 1933. Rodgers was 35 and had battled tuberculosis since 1924. As his health deteriorated, his earnings had dwindled. Victor was paying $250 per recorded side, and he wanted to provide for his wife, Carrie, and their daughter, Anita. The sessions started on May 17. Within days, standing to sing became impossible. He worked from an easy chair, supported by pillows that brought him close enough to the microphone, then returned to the cot. On May 24, two musicians accompanied him through three songs. After they left, Rodgers recorded one more with only his guitar: “Years Ago.” He had completed twelve songs in eight days. The following night at the Taft Hotel, severe coughing gave way to hemorrhaging in his lungs. The hotel doctor could not be located. Rodgers fell into a coma and died on May 26, roughly 36 hours after his last recording. Before music made him famous, he had worked as a railroad brakeman. A Southern Railway train carried his body home to Meridian, Mississippi, in a baggage car. According to accounts of the journey, the engineer kept sounding the whistle along the way.

Country

Randy Owen sometimes stopped his tour bus at truck stops to call radio DJs from pay phones. Alabama had already made him a country star. These calls were about persuading stations to help children at St. Jude. He knew what it meant to grow up with little. On his family’s sharecropper farm near Fort Payne, Alabama, he picked cotton and corn to help put food on the table. At school, other children mocked his scarred hands and the cotton dust on his clothes. Years later, after millions of record sales, Owen met St. Jude founder Danny Thomas in Atlanta. Thomas asked him to bring the country music community into the hospital’s fundraising work. When illness prevented Thomas from speaking at Nashville’s Country Radio Seminar, Owen took his place and proposed a nationwide radio effort. Winning support required persistence. He later described himself as “begging, pleading” with DJs. Some stations remained unconvinced. The first Country Cares radiothon aired on November 19, 1989: twelve hours, 45 artists and more than 800 stations. It raised approximately $1 million. By its 35th year in 2024, the initiative had brought in more than $1 billion. Owen has said helping St. Jude may be his most important work beyond being a husband and father. That enormous total began with individual requests, including calls made beside the highway between shows. Owen kept asking stations to participate. Across the country, their listeners kept answering.

Country

Lorrie Morgan saved the card Keith Whitley gave her at the Nashville airport for her flight home. When she finally opened it, her husband was dead. It was early May 1989. Lorrie was heading to Alaska to promote her first RCA album, while Keith was enjoying the strongest run of his career. Just weeks earlier, “I’m No Stranger to the Rain” had become his third consecutive No. 1. At home, success had brought little reassurance. Keith had struggled with alcohol for years. A period of sobriety beginning in 1987 lasted about six months. Lorrie later described the fear surrounding his drinking as living with a ticking time bomb. In her 1997 memoir, she recalled tying her leg to his while they slept so she would know if he got up to drink. During her trip, he began drinking again that weekend. On Tuesday morning, May 9, his brother-in-law, Lane Palmer, visited the house in Goodlettsville. They drank coffee and discussed golf and lunch. Palmer left around 8:30 a.m. When he returned roughly an hour later, Keith was lying on the bed, fully dressed and unconscious. The medical examiner determined that he died from acute alcohol poisoning. Traveling back to Nashville, Lorrie read the card she had set aside. She later said its words left her feeling that Keith had been trying to tell her something—a feeling she was left to carry without the chance to ask him.

Country

For Vince Gill, the memory of singing with Dolly Parton came down to their final note together at the 1995 CMA Awards. Thirty-one years later, on the day she died, he shared that performance again. “We are all crushed here at our house,” he wrote. He called the closing note of their duet one of the most beautiful sounds he had ever heard. Their recording of “I Will Always Love You” began with Dolly’s album *Something Special*. That summer, she revisited three of her classics, including the farewell she had written for Porter Wagoner in 1973. It had already topped the country chart twice in her own voice, and Whitney Houston’s 1992 recording had brought it to listeners worldwide. For this version, Dolly invited Vince to join her. They performed it on the Grand Ole Opry on August 26, 1995, during a TNN broadcast. Radio programmers began playing the duet before Columbia officially issued it as a single. That unsolicited airplay carried it onto Billboard’s country chart at No. 53. On October 4, they sang it again at the CMA Awards. Vince, then 38, was hosting the broadcast at the Grand Ole Opry House. He stepped away from those duties to sing beside the woman who had written the song when he was sixteen. As the performance ended, their voices met on one sustained note. Decades later, that was the moment he singled out. Released as a single that November, the duet reached No. 15, received a Grammy nomination and won the 1996 CMA award for Vocal Event of the Year. But Vince’s remembrance centered on what he had heard standing beside her. Dolly died in Nashville on August 25, 2026, at 80, after a brief battle with cancer. Two days later, Vince appeared at the Midland Theatre in Kansas City. He told the audience how deeply his family was hurting, then began “I Will Always Love You.” This time, he sang it alone. Fan footage captured him struggling with his emotions throughout the performance. When he stepped back to compose himself, people in the audience carried the words. Musicians behind him wiped their eyes. He reached the closing note without Dolly’s voice beside his. After finishing, he moved away from the microphone, placed a hand over his chest and lowered his head.