Loretta Lynn Inks Multi-Album Deal for First New Music in a Decade

It’s been more than a decade since Loretta Lynn released the Grammy-winning Van Lear Rose, and the First Lady of Country Music is finally ready to open the floodgates once again. Today, less than 24 hours after duetting with Song of the Year winner Kacey Musgraves at the 2014 CMA Awards, she announced a multi-album record deal with Legacy Recordings, the catalog branch of Sony Music. The partnership centers around the material Lynn has reportedly been writing, recording and storing since 2007.

While most Legacy releases tend to be greatest hits compilations, Lynn’s albums will focus on new recordings, including a handful of country standards and updated versions of Lynn’s own classics. Also included in the mix are gospel tunes and Appalachian folk songs that she learned from her mother while living in Butcher Holler, Kentucky, as well as a group of newly-penned originals. Although few additional details have been released, a press release promises the albums will focus on “intimate new performances, the way they might’ve sounded growing up in the 1930s and Forties in Butcher Hollow.” In other words, don’t expect any blues-rock guitar solos from Jack White. 

Lynn’s own daughter, Patsy Lynn Russell, is producing the recording sessions with John Carter Cash. According to a recent interview with the Nashville Scene, Lynn and company cut more than 90 songs for the project, with the first collection of tunes due out sometime in 2015.