Look back: Country star Loretta Lynn’s 1978 Penn State visit brought fans to their feet

Country music star Loretta Lynn, who died Tuesday at age 90, performed in Centre County almost 45 years ago.

Lynn played two shows at Penn State’s Eisenhower Auditorium as part of the Nittany Mountain Summer Festival in July 1978. Festival ads called them the “First Performances at PSU by the Queen of Country Music.”

Lynn, born in Butcher Hollow, Ky., enjoyed a six-decade career as the most acclaimed woman in country music. A statement from her family Tuesday said she passed peacefully at her Hurricane Mills, Tenn., home.

During her State College visit, the singer “brought a packed Eisenhower Auditorium house to its feet at the end of the first of her two performances last night,” the CDT reported July 29, 1978.

Lynn told the crowd to shout out their requests (“It’s your show. And if I can’t hear you, at least you’ll have fun yelling.”), but most of the fan comments went unheard in the noisy room.

Performing with her backing group, the Coal Miners, she discussed her friend Patsy Cline before performing a medley of Cline’s songs. She later launched into “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and other tunes about her life interspersed with stories about her family, marriage and children.

Lynn closed the concert with a medley of “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” which brought audience members out of their seats, the CDT reported.

There was no encore.