I dunno, I think "former child star who struggled with drug addiction dies young" and we're not sure what social pressure it was that killed them first is a timeless classic look, myself.
I'm reading this great magazine (I think it's a Music Spotlight Special Issue) about Loretta Lynn right now, and pretty much everyone they mention that was one of her friends seems to have died under the age of 65 (including 2 of her 6 children and one grandson). Though it was the 60/70's and then car and plane crashes took a bigger role (though that did have it's comeback in the 90's/early OO's). When Conway Twitty died of an aortal abdominal embolism at 57, collapsing during one of his concerts (she collapsed a lot in her early career - they don't sleep or eat properly while travelling), she spent the night running back and forth between his bed and her husband - who had just had major heart surgery - as they just happened to be in the same hospital at the same time.
I suppose something has still changed, though; Loretta lived well to a ripe old age, and the whole magazine breaks from the format of her being some sort of singular star held up above the others, to being this bright light amongst this ecosystem of incredible people all doing the same thing and building on each other at the time. I have such a long list of albums and biographies to look up now from the 60's/70's heyday of country music - the time of Owen Bradley at Decca Records pioneering the Nashville sound and raising up pretty much every female country singer you can think of at that time.
She was a really wonderful person, who had no illusions about reality.
"I was never ashamed of not having an education... There was nothin' I could do about it. If there'd a-been something I coulda done about it, then I'd a-been ashamed."
On her husband, Doolittle, who married here when she was 15 (he 21; and it's not like she was "old for her age" he gave her a children's doll when they were dating, and got her pregnant before she even knew what that was), and cheated on her relentlessly, usually also beating her drunkenly, - she still also credits him with her career. Both are completely true: he bought her her guitar, encouraged her to play and sing, and acted as her agent, living in their car and driving around the country with her. (Also, she always hit him back, one time knocking out his two front teeth. She thought he would kill her, but he laughed and never got them replaced. He was proud of it.) She just says, "Just remember, I'm explainin', not excusin'." They stayed married until he died of diabetes when he was 69, but her daughter Cissie said, "She lived a lonely life, a lonely life and so did Dad."
Ah well. It ends with a short profile of one of her grand-daughters (she had 20 grandchildren - she was a grandmother at 34 - 24 great-grandchildren and 3 great-great-grandchildren when she died at 90) and her album with a bunch of the grandchildren of other musicians from Lynn's era (including Twitty's granddaughter). Tayla Lynn "spent years dealing with substance abuse, which she ultimately got through with the help of Loretta." She says she got out of the extreme depression by duetting with Loretta, and covering her songs. That's when she stopped going solo and joined with the other grandchildren to cover their grandparents' original collaborations.
Re: Another sudden celebrity death
I'm reading this great magazine (I think it's a Music Spotlight Special Issue) about Loretta Lynn right now, and pretty much everyone they mention that was one of her friends seems to have died under the age of 65 (including 2 of her 6 children and one grandson). Though it was the 60/70's and then car and plane crashes took a bigger role (though that did have it's comeback in the 90's/early OO's). When Conway Twitty died of an aortal abdominal embolism at 57, collapsing during one of his concerts (she collapsed a lot in her early career - they don't sleep or eat properly while travelling), she spent the night running back and forth between his bed and her husband - who had just had major heart surgery - as they just happened to be in the same hospital at the same time.
I suppose something has still changed, though; Loretta lived well to a ripe old age, and the whole magazine breaks from the format of her being some sort of singular star held up above the others, to being this bright light amongst this ecosystem of incredible people all doing the same thing and building on each other at the time. I have such a long list of albums and biographies to look up now from the 60's/70's heyday of country music - the time of Owen Bradley at Decca Records pioneering the Nashville sound and raising up pretty much every female country singer you can think of at that time.
She was a really wonderful person, who had no illusions about reality.
"I was never ashamed of not having an education... There was nothin' I could do about it. If there'd a-been something I coulda done about it, then I'd a-been ashamed."
On her husband, Doolittle, who married here when she was 15 (he 21; and it's not like she was "old for her age" he gave her a children's doll when they were dating, and got her pregnant before she even knew what that was), and cheated on her relentlessly, usually also beating her drunkenly, - she still also credits him with her career. Both are completely true: he bought her her guitar, encouraged her to play and sing, and acted as her agent, living in their car and driving around the country with her. (Also, she always hit him back, one time knocking out his two front teeth. She thought he would kill her, but he laughed and never got them replaced. He was proud of it.) She just says, "Just remember, I'm explainin', not excusin'." They stayed married until he died of diabetes when he was 69, but her daughter Cissie said, "She lived a lonely life, a lonely life and so did Dad."
Ah well. It ends with a short profile of one of her grand-daughters (she had 20 grandchildren - she was a grandmother at 34 - 24 great-grandchildren and 3 great-great-grandchildren when she died at 90) and her album with a bunch of the grandchildren of other musicians from Lynn's era (including Twitty's granddaughter). Tayla Lynn "spent years dealing with substance abuse, which she ultimately got through with the help of Loretta." She says she got out of the extreme depression by duetting with Loretta, and covering her songs. That's when she stopped going solo and joined with the other grandchildren to cover their grandparents' original collaborations.