Tammy Wynette Biography
American singer-songwriter Tammy Wynette (1942-1998), one of the most attractive figures in country music, rose from extreme poverty and became the first female performer to sell a million albums of her genre.
Photo Pixabay
Nicknamed the «First Lady of Country Music,» she scored 57 top 40 national hits between 1967 and 1988 and won dozens of awards from her industry peers.
Despite worldwide acclaim and wealth, the singer-songwriter did not enjoy a particularly happy life and her death in 1998 remains a controversial subject.
Born Virginia Wynette Pugh, on May 5, 1942, in Itawamba County, Mississippi, she was the daughter of a local musician, William Hollice Pugh, who recorded briefly in 1939 and 1940. When Wynette was only eight months old, her father died of a tumor. cerebral.
Subsequently, her mother, Mildred, left her with her grandparents while she took a wartime factory job in Birmingham, Alabama.
Cutting cotton and baling hay on her grandfather’s farm to spend money, the young woman discovered her musical inclinations at the age of nine when she began picking out little tunes on her father’s old instruments.
She first sang publicly in church and liked it so much that she started attending two different churches so she could sing even more.
Teaming up with her high school friend Linda Cayson, she sang gospel tunes at church events, on local radio, and even tried a little Everly Brothers-style rock’n’roll on local TV.
While listening to stars like George Jones, Webb Pierce, Kitty Wells, Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline on the radio, Wynette dreamed of stardom.
However, at 17, she married Euple Byrd, an itinerant carpenter, and the routine of a housewife and mother temporarily buried her career ambitions.
By all accounts, the marriage was a rocky marriage, heavy on financial burdens and light on luxuries, ending five years later in a nasty divorce and an even nastier custody battle.
Supporting the children with her esthetician salary proved difficult, especially when her third child contracted spinal meningitis.
Hoping to raise money to pay the doctor’s bills, she started singing again in the town.
A stint on WBRC-TV’s Country Boy Eddie Show in Birmingham, Alabama, and a 10-day tour with Porter Wagoner gave him enough confidence that he could pack up his kids and move to Nashville.
Discovered by Billy Sherrill
After suffering rejections from United Artists, Hickory and Kapp, producer Billy Sherrill took pity on the desperate singer-songwriter and signed her to Epic Records.
Sherrill is known today as the architect of the «Countrypolitan» sound, a hybrid of country music that employs copious amounts of adult contemporary strings and backing vocals.
Sherrill, who had previously recorded hits with pop singer Bobby Vinton and country singer David Houston, was a gifted songwriter as well as a commercial music visionary.
The Alabama-born producer and songwriter knew how to pick songs that fit his artist’s style and often helped writers hone their material to make it catchier and more direct.
He would eventually write or co-write many of Wynette’s biggest hits while preparing her to be a fine songwriter in her own right.
In addition, he knew how to create the image of a singer, whether recorded or not. Sherrill’s first step in that process with Wynette came when she observed that her bottle blonde ponytail made her look like a Tammy, so she renamed the singer Tammy Wynette.
Under Sherrill’s direction, Wynette made her recording debut with a Bobby Austin cover of the regional hit «Apartment #9.» It was so successful that Wynette received hundreds of sympathy letters from fans who thought the song was the true story of her.
The follow-up, «Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad,» was raucous on Loretta Lynn’s command, but became the first of Wynette’s 20 number-one records.
Few artists sang about domestic discord as convincingly as Wynette; Her confidential vocal tone and the small catch in her voice combined to create the illusion of a woman who is trying not to scare you to death as she tells you something horrible.
This schism gave his work undeniable power and personal credibility.
Wynette’s early big hits – «I Don’t Wanna Play House,» «DIVORCE» and «Kids Say the Darndest Things» – were greeted by American women, who felt she was singing about their lives.
As a result, in a matter of a few months, he became one of the top singing stars in America.
The singer’s most enduring classic, «Stand by Your Man,» was written at the end of a session when Sherrill and Wynette realized they needed one more song.
The resulting recording shot to the top spot for three weeks in the fall of 1968, angering members of the feminist movement along the way.
Sherrill was quoted in The Billboard Book of Number One Country Hits as saying that critics of the song can «like it or rave about it,» before clarifying, «Stand by Your Man» is just another way of saying `ʻI love you, without reservation? Wynette herself has said: «I spent 15 minutes writing, and a lifetime defending it.»
As early as 1992, President Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, caused a rift with her husband’s southern base when she declared on 60 Minutes that she was «not like a little woman standing with my man, like Tammy Wynette.» (Ms. Clinton later apologized.)
Married to George Jones
More out of convenience than love, Wynette married Don Chapel in 1967. Known for writing the hit «When the Grass Grows Over Me» for George Jones, the singer-songwriter tried to cash in on his wife’s newfound fame by becoming an addition prominent to his show.
When a dispute with David Houston’s manager left her without a stage partner for her hit duet «My Elusive Dreams,» Wynette sang for the first time with her childhood hero George Jones.
Jones, who had been a renowned country hitmaker since the mid-1950s, was instantly smitten. His infatuation with her grew as Wynette’s marriage to Chapel began to disintegrate.
When Wynette divorced Chapel in 1968, the two stars married in 1969. Two years later they welcomed their only daughter, Tamala Georgette Jones.
Jones paid Musicor $300,000 to end his contract with them so he could sign with Epic in 1971.
In place of her old singing partner Melba Montgomery, Wynette recorded a series of hugely popular duet hits with her new husband, including «We’re Gonna Hold On,» «Golden Ring,» and «We’re Not the Jet.» Set».
Nicknamed Mr. & Mrs. Country Music, their harmony was lively yet tender, and together they presented the perfect sonic picture of a couple who sang their way through life’s troubles.
As a solo artist, singles like «There Are So Many Ways to Love a Man,» «My Man,» and «Singing My Song» perpetuated Wynette’s mythology as a woman who triumphed over adversity because, presumably, she was well-loved.
In reality, her marriage to Jones began to fall apart almost from the start due to his long, drunken absences and abusive behavior.
In the book he wrote with Tom Carter, I Lived to Tell It All, Jones disputed many of his ex-wife’s claims, adding: «A lot of people think that if it hadn’t been for my drinking, Tammy and I would have had a fairytale marriage. But that’s not true. We argued about other things besides the bottle.»
When they finally divorced in 1974, the media blamed Wynette, saying the woman who wrote «Stand by Your Man» was getting a «DIVORCCE.»
Meanwhile, her personal life seemed to be in free fall.
Her third marriage, to real estate agent Michael Tomlin, lasted just 44 days. A highly publicized relationship with actor Burt Reynolds fizzled out.
More sinister, a botched kidnapping, a series of vengeful robberies and mysterious muggings were seen by a cynical press, and some friends, as a cry for attention. His 1977 hit «Til I Can Make It On My Own» became his personal survival anthem.
He tried to divert media attention with his 1979 autobiography Stand by Your Man, but the book only seemed to exacerbate the bad press it was receiving.
(The book was later made into a 1981 TV movie starring Annette O’Toole as Wynette and Tim McIntyre as Jones.)
Despite the acrimony that led to this, Jones and Wynette enjoyed a reasonably happy period after their divorce; Wynette wrote the hit «These Days I Hardly Get By» for her ex-husband, and Jones gave him her touring band.
In 1982 they reunited to record Wynette’s «Two-Story House», which reached number one on the pop charts. To the delight of their legions of fans, in the mid-1980s they made highly publicized appearances, both in and out of theaters.
Bad health
However, the eventual departure of Billy Sherrill from his creative team and changes in country music trends saw Wynette’s hits wane in the late 1980s.
But there were bright spots. Her 1978 marriage to songwriter and producer George Richey (also known as George Richardson), turned out to be her longest-lasting.
She even tried acting in a recurring role as a singing waitress on the daytime drama Capitol in 1986.
In 1987, his LP Higher Ground was critically acclaimed. And just when everyone realized her chart-topping days were over, she teamed up with British synth-pop group KLF and recorded the 1992 international chart-topping hit «Justified & Ancient.»
Wynette, Loretta Lynn, and Dolly Parton teamed up for the 1993 Honky Tonk Angels, which achieved instant gold record status.
As Wynette was enjoying her business resurgence, a bile duct infection nearly took her life; the national media, which had previously treated her with contempt, provided vigilant coverage of her condition.
Eventually, Wynette recovered and went on tour with more favorable publicity than she had enjoyed in decades.
It was not the first time that the singer was hospitalized. Since 1972, she had had to undergo 30 surgical procedures to correct various medical problems, and subsequently she was forced to increasingly rely on higher doses of medication to control her pain.
However, no one was prepared for her death in 1998, least of all her daughters, who were suspicious of the events surrounding Wynette’s death.
They sued…