TAMMY WYNETTE

'Tammy Wynette' (May 5, 1942 – April 6, 1998) was an American country singer and songwriter. She was known as the "First Lady of Country Music" and one of her best-known songs, "Stand by Your Man," was one of the biggest selling hit singles by a woman in the history of the country music genre.

Contents

Early life

Rise to fame

Home life and problems

A country music queen

Comeback

Death

Legacy

Discography

Charted Singles

Albums

Awards

Grammy Awards

References

See also

External links

Early life

Tammy Wynette was born 'Virginia Wynette Pugh' near Tremont, Mississippi, the only child of William Hollice Pugh (died February 13, 1943) and Mildred Faye Russell (1922–1991). She was always called Wynette (pronounced Win-net), or Nettie, instead of Virginia.
Her father was a farmer and local musician. He died of a brain tumor when Wynette was nine months of age. Her mother worked in an office, as a substitute school teacher, as well as on the family farm. After the death of Hollice Pugh, she left Wynette in the care of her parents, Thomas Chester and Flora A. Russell, and moved to Memphis to work in a World War II defense plant. In 1946, she married Foy Lee, a farmer from Mississippi.
Wynette was raised on the Itawamba County farm of her maternal grandparents where she was born. The place was partly on the border with Alabama. She often claimed that the state line ran right through their property, joking "my top half came from Alabama and my bottom half came from Mississippi". As a youngster, she worked in the fields picking cotton alongside the hired crews to get in the crop. She grew up with her aunt, Carolyn Russell, who was only five years older than she was. Wynette sang gospel tunes with her grandmother and learned to play the piano and the guitar.
As a child and teenager, she found in country music an escape from her hard life. Wynette grew up idolizing Hank Williams, Skeeter Davis, Patsy Cline, and George Jones and would play their records over and over on the children's record player she owned, dreaming of one day being a star herself.

She attended Tremont High School, where she was an all-star basketball player. A month before graduation, she married her first husband, Euple Byrd. He was a construction worker, but had trouble holding down a job, and they moved several times. One of their homes had no running water. She worked as a waitress, receptionist, and barmaid, and also worked in a shoe factory. In 1963, she attended beauty school in Tupelo, Mississippi, and became a hairdresser; she would renew her cosmetology license every year for the rest of her life, just in case she should have to go back to a daily job. She left her first husband before the birth of their third daughter. He did not support her ambition to become a country singer, and, according to Wynette, told her "Dream on, Baby."
Her baby developed spinal meningitis and Wynette tried to make extra money by performing at night. In 1965, Wynette sang on the ''Country Boy Eddie Show'' on WBRC-TV in Birmingham, Alabama, which led to some appearances with Porter Wagoner. In 1966, she moved with her three girls from Birmingham to Nashville, Tennessee, where she pounded the pavement to get a recording contract. After being turned down repeatedly by every other record company she'd met with, she auditioned for producer Billy Sherrill, who signed her to Epic Records.

Rise to fame

Once she was signed to Epic, Sherrill suggested she change her name to make more of an impression. According to her 1979 memoir, ''Stand by Your Man'', during their meeting, Wynette was wearing her long, blonde hair in a ponytail, and Sherill noted that she reminded him of Debbie Reynolds in the film "Tammy and the Bachelor," and suggested "Tammy" as a possible name; thus she became Tammy Wynette.
Her first single, "Apartment #9" (written by Johnny Paycheck), was released in late 1966, and reached the top forty on the U.S. country charts. In 1967 she had hits with "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad," "My Elusive Dreams" (a duet with David Houston), and "I Don't Wanna Play House," all of which reached the country top ten.
Wynette had three number one hits in 1968: "Take Me to Your World," "D-I-V-O-R-C-E," and her best known song, "Stand by Your Man" (which she said she wrote in fifteen minutes). In 1969, she had two additional number one hits: "Singing My Song" and "The Ways to Love a Man." That same year, Wynette earned a Gold record (awarded for albums selling in excess of one million copies) for "Tammy Wynette's Greatest Hits." She was the first female country artist to do so.
Director Bob Rafelson used a number of her songs in the soundtrack of his 1970 film Five Easy Pieces. Her chart success continued into the 1970s with such hits as "Good Lovin' (Makes it Right)" (1971), "He Loves Me All the Way" (1971), "Bedtime Story" (1972), "Kids Say the Darndest Things" (1973), "Woman to Woman" (1974), "You and Me" (1976), "'Til I can Make it on My Own" (1976), and "Womanhood" (1978). Many of Wynette's early hits were either written or co-written by Glenn Sutton, husband to one of her biggest competitors at the time, Lynn Anderson.
She married her second husband shortly after her first divorce became final. While still married to him, however, she began a relationship with George Jones, a legendary country performer who was known to have a problem with alcoholism. (They were first involved around 1968.) Eventually Wynette parted with her second husband and married Jones in Ringgold, Georgia, with whom she had a daughter, Georgette (born in 1970.) It was a difficult marriage, however, due largely to Jones' drinking, and they were divorced in 1975; During their years together, they recorded a number of duet albums, starting in 1971, the first being the Top-10 hit "Take Me" (...''to your darkest room, close every window and bolt every door''). They would continue to record together, even after their divorce, through the mid 1990s.

Home life and problems

Aside from her music, Wynette's private life was as tumultuous as many of her songs. Over the course of her life, she had five husbands: Euple Byrd (married 1959–divorced 1966); Don Chapel (married 1967–annulled 1968); George Jones (married 1969–divorced 1975); Michael Tomlin (married 1976–annulled 1976); and George Richey (married 1978–her death 1998).
She and Byrd had three children, Gwendolyn Lee ("Gwen") Byrd (born 1961), Jacquelyn Faye ("Jackie") Byrd (born 1962) and Tina Denise Byrd (born 1965), and she and Jones had one child, Tamala Georgette Jones (born 1970).
Tammy had a publicized relationship with actor Burt Reynolds in the 1970s. Her fourth marriage, to Michael Tomlin, lasted only six weeks. She then married George Richey, who became her manager. In 1978, she was mysteriously abducted by a masked man at a Nashville shopping center, driven 80 miles south in her luxury car, beaten and released. No one was ever arrested or identified. Initially, that was the story told to the press by Tammy. Years later, Tammy's daughter, Jackie Daly, alleges that Tammy told her that the kidnapping was a fabricated incident to disguise the fact that George Richey was beating her.
She also had a number of serious physical ailments beginning in the 1970s, including operations on her gall bladder, kidney and on the nodules on her throat.

A country music queen

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Wynette dominated the country charts. She had seventeen number one hits. Along with Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Dottie West, and Lynn Anderson, she helped redefine the role and place of female country singers. Beginning in the early 1980s, however, her chart success began to wane, although she was still a name remembered in popular culture (the 1980s game show ''Press Your Luck'' had a country-singing Whammy known as "Tammy Whamette"). While her singles and albums continued to reach the country top forty, they occurred with less frequency than the previous decade. Meanwhile, her medical problems continued, including inflammations of her bile duct. In 1986, she acted on the CBS TV soap opera ''Capitol''. In 1988, she filed for bankruptcy as a result of a bad investment in two Florida shopping centers. Her 1987 album "Higher Ground" broke through with a new contemporary sound, broadening her audience.
She recorded a song with the British electronica group The KLF in late 1991 titled "Justified and Ancient (Stand by the JAMs)," which became a number one hit in eighteen countries the following year. In the video, scrolling electronic titles said that "Miss Tammy Wynette is the first lady of country music." Wynette appeared in the video seated on a throne.
In 1992, future First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton said during a ''60 Minutes'' interview that she wasn't "some little woman, standing by my man, like Tammy Wynette." The remark set off a firestorm of controversy and Wynette demanded, and received, an apology from Clinton. (Hillary Clinton's remark aside, Wynette was nonetheless a Clinton supporter, and later performed at a Clinton fundraiser.)

Comeback

The 1993 album ''Honky Tonk Angels'' gave her a chance to record with Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn for the first time; though yielding no hit singles, the album did well on the country charts. The following year, she released ''Without Walls,'' a collection of duets with a number of country, pop and rock and roll performers, including Wynonna Judd, Elton John, Lyle Lovett, Aaron Neville, Smokey Robinson, Sting and a number of others.
Wynette also designed and sold her own line of jewelry in the 1990s. In 1994, she suffered an abdominal infection that almost killed her. She was in a coma for six days. In 1995, she and George Jones recorded their first new duet album in thirteen years. They last performed together in 1997 at Concerts in the Country Lanierland, Georgia
Wynette lent her vocals on the UK #1 hit Perfect Day in 1997, which was written by Lou Reed.

Death

After years of medical problems, numerous hospitalizations, approximately twenty-six major surgeries and an addiction to large doses of pain medication, Tammy Wynette died while sleeping on the couch in her living room in Nashville, Tennessee in 1998. The coroner later declared that she died of a cardiac arrhythmia over the phone without ever seeing her. Her daughters appeared on the Biography Channel and alleged that Richey played some part in her death. She is interred in Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Nashville.

Legacy

In 2002, she was ranked #2 on ''CMT's 40 Greatest Women in Country Music''.
In 2003 a survey of country music writers, producers and stars listed "Stand By Your Man" as the top country song of all time. Country Music Television broadcast a special for the top 100 songs, with the #1 song performed by Martina McBride.
Judson Baptist Church, who neighbors Wynette's house, purchased the house, which belonged to Hank Williams before he died, and the land for a little over a million dollars. The Wynette house is used as a Youth Center as well as a guest house.
''Stand By Your Man'' is sung in ''The Blues Brothers'' 1980 motion picture, by both Jake and Elwood Blues, at Bob's Country Bunker. Wynette sued the Blues Brothers because she thought they were destroying her classic. That's why the song can only be heard in the movie and was never released on any Blues Brothers album.—

Discography

Charted Singles

'Year'	'Single'	'US Pop Singles'	'US Country Singles'	'Album'
1967	"Apartment No. 9"	-	#44	''Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad''
1967	"Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad"	-	#3	''Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad''
1967	"My Elusive Dreams" (with David Houston)	#89	'#1'	''My Elusive Dreams'' (with David Houston)
1967	"I Don't Wanna Play House"	-	'#1'	''Take Me to Your World''
1968	"Take Me to Your World"	-	'#1'	''Take Me to Your World''
1968	"It's All Over" (with David Houston)	-	#11	''My Elusive Dreams'' (with David Houston)
1968	"D-I-V-O-R-C-E"	#63	'#1''	''D-I-V-O-R-C-E''
1968	"Stand by Your Man"	#19	'#1'	''Stand By Your Man''
1969	"Singing My Song"	#75	'#1'	''Tammy's Greatest Hits''
1969	"The Ways to Love a Man"	#81	'#1'	''The Ways to Love a Man''
1970	"I'll See Him Through"	#100	#2	''Tammy's Touch''
1970	"He Loves Me All the Way"	#97	'#1'	''Tammy's Touch''
1970	"Run Woman, Run"	#92	'#1'	''The First lady''
1971	"The Wonders You Perform"	-	#5	''Greatest Hits Vol. 2''
1971	"We Sure Can Love Each Other"	-	#2	''We Sure Can Love Each Other''
1971	"Good Lovin' (Makes It Right)"	-	'#1'	''My Man''
1972	"Take Me" (with George Jones)	-	#9	''We Go Together'' (with George Jones)
1972	"Bedtime Story"	#86	'#1'	''Bedtime Story''
1972	"Reach Out Your Hand (And Touch Somebody)"	-	#2	''Bedtime Story''
1972	"My Man"	-	'#1'	''My Man''
1972	"The Ceremony" (with George Jones)	-	#6	''Me and the First Lady'' (with George Jones)
1973	"Old Fashioned Singing" (with George Jones)	-	#38	''We Love to Sing About Jesus'' (with George Jones)
1973	"Let's Build A World Together" (with George Jones)	-	#32	''Let's Build A World Together'' (with George Jones)
1973	"Till I Get It Right"	-	'#1'	''My Man''
1973	"Kids Say the Darndest Things"	#72	'#1'	''Kids Say the Darndest Things''
1973	"We're Gonna Hold On" (with George Jones)	-	'#1'	''We're Gonna Hold On'' (with George Jones)
1974	"Another Lonely Song"	-	'#1'	''Another Lonely Song''
1974	"(We're Not) The Jet Set" (with George Jones)	-	#15	''We're Gonna Hold On'' (with George Jones)
1974	"Woman to Woman"	-	#4	''Woman to Woman''
1975	"You Make Me Want To Be A Mother"	-	#4	''Greatest Hits Vol. 3''
1975	"God's Gonna Get' Cha For That" (with George Jones)	-	#25	''George and Tammy and Tina''
1975	"I Still Believe in Fairy Tales"	-	#13	''I Still Believe in Fairy Tales''
1976	"'Til I Can Make It on My Own"	#84	'#1'	'Til I Can Make It on My Own''
1976	"Golden Ring" (with George Jones)	-	'#1'	''Golden Ring'' (with George Jones)
1976	"You and Me"	-	'#1'	''You and Me''
1977	"Near You" (with George Jones)	-	'#1'	''Golden Ring'' (with George Jones)
1977	"Let's Get Together (One Last Time)"	-	#6	''Let's Get Together''
1977	"Southern California" (with George Jones)	-	#5	''Greatest Hits'' (with George Jones)
1977	"One of a Kind"	-	#6	''One of a Kind''
1978	"Womanhood"	-	#3	''Womanhood''
1979	"They Call It Makin' Love"	-	#6	''Just Tammy''
1979	"No One Else In The World"	-	#7	''Just Tammy''
1980	"Two Story House" (with George Jones)	-	#2	''Together Again'' (with George Jones)
1980	"He Was There (When I Needed You)"	-	#17	''Only Lonely Sometimes''
1980	"Starting Over"	-	#17	''Only Lonely Sometimes''
1980	"Pair of Old Sneakers" (with George Jones)	-	#19	''Together Again'' (with George Jones)
1981	"Cowboys Don't Shoot Straight Like They Used To"	-	#21	''You Brought Me Back''
1981	"Crying in the Rain"	-	#18	''You Brought Me Back''
1982	"Another Chance"	-	#8	''Soft Touch''
1982	"You Still Get to Me in My Dreams"	-	#16	''Soft Touch''
1983	"A Good Night's Love"	-	#19	''Good Love and Heartbreak''
1983	"Unwed Fathers"	-	#63	''Even the Strong Get Lonely''
1984	"Lonely Heart"	-	#40	(Single Only)
1985	"Sometimes When We Touch" (with Mark Gray)	-	#6	''Sometimes When We Touch''
1986	"Alive and Well"	-	#53	(Single Only)
1987	"Your Love"	-	#12	''Higher Ground''
1988	"Talkin' to Myself Again"	-	#16	''Higher Ground''
1988	"Beneath a Painted Sky"	-	#25	''Higher Ground''
1989	"Next to You"	-	#51	''Next to You''
1991	"We're Strangers Again" (with Randy Travis)	-	#49	''Heart Over Mind''
1993	"Silver Threads and Golden Needles" (with Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn)	-	#68	''Honky Tonk Angels'' (with Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn)
1994	"Girl Thang" (with Wynonna)	-	#64	''Without Walls''
1998	"Stand by Your Man" (re-release)	-	#56	''Collector's Edition''

Albums

'Year'	'Album'	'U.S. Country'
1967	''My Elusive Dreams''	'#11'
1967	''Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad''	'#7'
1968	''D-I-V-O-R-C-E''	'#1'
1969	''Inspiration''	'#19'
1969	''Stand by Your Man''	'#2'
1969	''Tammy's Greatest Hits''	'#2'
1970	''Christmas With Tammy''	-
1970	''Tammy's Touch''	'#1'
1970	''The First Lady''	'#2'
1970	''The Ways to Love a Man''	'#3'
1970	''The World of Tammy Wynette''	'#8'
1971	''Tammy's Greatest Hits: Volume 2''	'#5'
1971	''We Go Together''	'#3'
1971	''We Can Sure Love Each Other''	'#8'
1972	''Bedtime Story''	'#7'
1972	''Me and the First Lady''	'#6'
1973	''Kids Say the Darndest Things''	'#3'
1973	''Let's Build a World Together''	'#12'
1973	''My Man''	'#2'
1973	''The First Songs of the First Lady''	'#17'
1974	''Another Lonely Song''	'#8'
1974	''We're Gonna Hold On''	'#3'
1974	''Woman to Woman''	'#21'
1975	''George & Tammy & Tina''	'#37'
1975	''I Still Believe in Fairytales''	'#24'
1975	''Tammy Wynette's Greatest Hits: Volume 3''	'#28'
1976	''Til' I Can Make It On My Own''	'#3'
1976	''Golden Ring''	'#1'
1976	''You and Me''	'#4'
1977	''Greatest Hits''	'#23'
1977	''Let's Get Together''	'#19'
1977	''One of a Kind''	'#32'
1978	''Greatest Hits: Volume 4''	'#37'
1978	''Womanhood''	'#14'
1979	''Just Tammy''	'#25'
1980	''Only Lonely Sometimes''	'#37'
1980	''Starting Over''	'#17'
1980	''Together Again	'#26'
1981	''You Brought Me Back	'#21'
1981	''Encore''	'#44'
1983	''Biggest Hits''	'#64'
1983	''Even the Strong Get Lonely''	'#66'
1983	''Good Love and Heartbreak''	'#62'
1985	''Sometimes When We Touch''	'#32'
1987	''Higher Ground''	'#43'
1989	''Next to You''	'#42'
1990	''Heart Over Mind''	'#64'
1993	''Honky Tonk Angels''	'#6'
1994	''Without Walls''	'-'
1995	''One''	'#12'
1995	''George and Tammy Super Hits''	'-'

Awards

Grammy Awards

★ 1967: Best Female Country Vocal Performance

★ 1969: Best Female Country Vocal Performance

References

★ Bufwack, Mary A. (1998). "Tammy Wynette". In ''The Encyclopedia of Country Music''. Paul Kingsbury, Editor. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 602-3.

★ Daly, Jackie, 2000. ''A Daughter Recalls Her Mother's Tragic Life and Death''. G.P. Putnam's Sons New York. ISBN 0-425-17925-7

★ Wynette, Tammy, 1979. ''Stand by Your Man''. Simon & Schuster, New York. ISBN 0-671-22884-6

See also

★ Academy of Country Music

★ Country Music Association

★ Country Music Hall of Fame

★ List of country music performers

★ List of best-selling music artists

External links

★ Official Site

★ Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum — Tammy Wynette

★ Tammy's Official Discography With Original Picture Sleeve

★

★ Tammy Wynette at Rolling Stone