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Loretta Lynn Fans Leave Flowers Outside Her Tennessee Ranch: PHOTOS

Country music fans around the world are paying tribute to the life of Loretta Lynn who passed away at the age of 90 this week. Tributes have flooded in from people from all walks of life. Her music reached the hearts of countless listeners and now after her passing, those people are celebrating her legacy.

The steps leading up to Lynn’s stunning Tennessee ranch have become adorned with flowers from passers-by who wanted to honor their late singer.

Her illustrious Tennessee estate is a far cry from the way Lynn grew up. Her humble beginnings helped fuel a lifetime of incredible music that’s as timeless as it is catchy.

Lynn lived in poverty for much of her early life. She began having kids by age 17 and spent years married to a man prone to drinking and philandering. All of which became material for her plainspoken songs. Lynn’s life was rich with experiences most country stars of the time hadn’t had for themselves. But her female fans knew them intimately.

Lynn had no formal music training but spent hours every day singing her babies to sleep. She could churn out fully textured songs in a matter of minutes. She just wrote what she knew.

“So when I sing those country songs about women struggling to keep things going, you could say I’ve been there,” Lynn wrote in her first memoir, Coal Miner’s Daughter. “Like I say, I know what it’s like to be pregnant and nervous and poor.”

The Songs That Put Loretta Lynn on the Map

Lynn scored hits with fiery songs like “Don’t Come Home A’ Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind)” and “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man),” which topped the country charts in 1966 and made her the first female country singer to write a No. 1 hit.

Her songs recounted family history, skewered lousy husbands and commiserated with women, wives and mothers everywhere. Her tell-it-like-it-is style saw tracks such as “Rated X” and “The Pill” banned from radio. Even as they became beloved classics.

 ”I wasn’t the first woman in country music,” Lynn told Esquire in 2007. “I was just the first one to stand up there and say what I thought, what life was about.”

She documented her upbringing in the bestselling 1976 memoir Coal Miner’s Daughter, co-written with George Vecsey. A 1980 biographical film by the same name won an Academy Award for actress Sissy Spacek and brought Lynn wider fame. Lynn’s success also helped launch the music careers of her sisters, Peggy Sue Wright and Crystal Gayle.

“I never, never thought about being a role model,” Lynn told the San Antonio Express-News in 2010. “I wrote from life, how things were in my life. And I never could understand why others didn’t write down what they knew.”