Chris Stapleton and Loretta Lynn Were Raised Six Miles and 46 Years Apart

There are a lot of similarities in the lives of country music's newest superstar Chris Stapleton and 58 year veteran Loretta Lynn. First of all, you can visit both their childhood homes quicker than you can play Chris's Traveler album or Loretta's All Time Greatest Hits CD. The short drive from Chris's Staffordsville, Kentucky home across Paintsville to the unpainted house where Loretta spend the first 13 years of her life would also give you time to stop at the Paintsville Dairy Queen for a famous foot long. Two of Nashville's biggest names share quite a few things in common other than being from Johnson County, Ky.

Loretta Lynn spend her childhood up Butcher Hollar in the coal mining town of Van Lear. Her coal miner father, Ted Webb, died in 1959 and didn't get to see his daughter make her debut on the Grand Ole Opry a year later.

Chris Stapleton spent his childhood in a solid middle class subdivision on Cross Creek Drive in Staffordsville, not far from Loretta's home. Chris's father Herbert, also a coal miner, died in late 2013 and never saw his son's awesome 2015 album Traveler blast Chris into superstardom. Chris named the LP after a drive across America he took after his father's death. There are many things Loretta and Chris don't share. Loretta left school at age 13 to get married. Chris has taken on the outlaw persona but at Johnson Central High School, he was a clean cut football player and the salutatorian of his 1996 class. Quite a few years separate the two. Chris is 41 and Loretta is Nashville's oldest star at age 87, but they have both won Grammy awards, and they are both welcome anytime in their old stompin' grounds--just 7 miles apart in Johnson County, Ky.