The Intro
One of America’s biggest-selling singers, Tammy Wynette was known as the ‘First Lady of Country Music’. However, her most famous hit, Stand by Your Man, has long been derided by feminists for its slavish devotion to men, and it takes on new meaning when her stormy marriage to singer-songwriter George Jones is considered.
Before
Virginia Wynette Pugh was born near Tremont, Mississippi on 5 May 1942. Her father, a local musician, died of a brain tumour when she was only nine months old. Her mother left her in the care of her grandparents and moved away. Pugh taught herself music with the instruments her father had left behind.
A month before graduating, Pugh married Euple Byrd. They moved around and Pugh took on a number of jobs to make ends meet, including working in a shoe factory and as a barmaid. She began performing at night, but Byrd didn’t support her ambitions in country music. When she left him, she claimed he said ‘Dream on, baby’ as she drove away. Years later at one of her concerts he asked her for her autograph and she signed it ‘Dream on, baby’.
In 1966 Pugh and her three daughters moved to Nashville, Tennessee in the hope of a record deal. She was turned down repeatedly, but her luck changed when she met Epic Records producer Billy Sherrill. He got her signed and it was he that suggested the name change to Tammy Wynette when he noted she reminded him of Debbie Reynolds in the film Tammy and the Bachelor (1957).
Wynette’s first single Apartment No. 9 failed to chart but Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad went to three on the Billboard country chart, and several hits followed. In 1967 her duet with David Houston, My Elusive Dreams, was a country number 1, and she won a Grammy for I Don’t Wanna Play House. Further country number 1s followed, notably D-I-V-O-R-C-E (a number 1 for Billy Connolly later this year) in 1968. For a time, Wynette and Sherrill thought this would become her signature song, but it was followed by the original release of Stand by Your Man.
The song that elevated Wynette to superstar status came very quickly, written in 15 minutes at Columbia Recording Studios in Nashville. It was the first time Wynette had written with Sherrill, and she had little faith in her ability. She wasn’t keen this song and felt it stretched her voice too far. When she went home and played it to Jones, who she married a year later. He wasn’t a fan either and that could well be due to perhaps feeling it was a comment on their rocky relationship.
Review
Stand by Your Man may have made Wynette a legend in country music, but in a way it haunted her for the rest of her life. To its critics it made Wynette seem weak, that no matter her man’s flaws, she would stay by their side and thinks others should too, because you need a companion ‘When nights are cold and lonely’. And she had more than her fair share of troubled times with men, which makes the song seem even more autobiographical. She had already been married twice by the time she was with Jones, and after their divorce she claimed that he would beat her and even threaten her with a shotgun.
This information can’t help but cloud your opinion of the meaning behind this song, yet Wynette always maintained that the message she was trying to send to women is that if they truly love a man they should forgive him his shortcomings, ‘Cos after all he’s just a man’. Sorry Tammy, but considering what you went through, I’m going to side on the feminists on this one.
Another problem I have with Stand by Your Man is – and I know to some this may be sacrilege – but I really do not enjoy Wynette’s voice here. That faux-emotional way of wringing out every word gets my back up, as does the way she sings the title. I prefer Dan Akroyd and John Belushi’s rendition in The Blues Brothers (1980). And yet she won a Grammy in 1969 for Best Female Country Vocal Performance for it, so what do I know? Worth noting that it’s Elvis Presley’s favourite backing singers, The Jordanaires, on this single and many of Wynette’s others.
After
Stand by Your Man was her highest-charting single in the US, reaching 19 in the Billboard Hot 100. It was also used in the drama Five Easy Pieces in 1970. The 70s saw Wynette and Loretta Lynn rule over the country charts. Between 1970 and 1975 she scored eight country number 1s.
It is unclear why Stand by Your Man went to number 1 in the UK in 1975, but the most likely reason was the high-profile divorce of Wynette and Jones, which was finalised that March. The split inspired Til I Can Make It On My Own, one of her biggest hits, in 1976. Despite the divorce, they continued to work together until 1980, and her final country number 1 was a duet with him, Near You, in 1977.
She rounded up the decade with her 1979 autobiography Stand by Your Man, by which point she was on her fifth and final marriage, to singer-songwriter George Richey. A year previous she had claimed she was kidnapped and assaulted by a masked man, resulting in a broken cheekbone and bruising. One of her children, Jackie Daly, claimed in her 2000 memoir that the claim was in fact made to cover up domestic violence from Richey, which he denied.
Like so many stars of the 60s and 70s, the 80s were difficult for Wynette. Her iconic status slipped along with her sales. Plagued by illness since the 70s, with a chronic bile duct problem, she became addicted to painkillers, resulting in a stay at the Betty Ford Center in 1986, the same year she joined the cast of CBS soap opera Capitol. She enjoyed a minor comeback with 1987 album Higher Ground and collaborated with Emmylou Harris, but in 1988 she filed for bankruptcy.
In 1991 Wynette suddenly found she was a pop star once again thanks to The KLF. Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty asked her to record vocals for a new version of Justified and Ancient (Stand by the JAMs). Wynette didn’t have a clue where or what Mu Mu Land was and must have found the video particularly baffling, but did it anyway and the single went to number 1 in 18 countries, though not in the UK sadly, where it stayed at two.
She then found herself involved in a very public argument with future First Lady Hillary Clinton, when she said in a 60 Minutes TV interview ‘I’m not sitting here as some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette’. The singer was furious and penned a letter to her, saying ‘With all that is in me, I resent your caustic remark. I believe you have offended every true country-music fan and every person who has made it on their own with no one to take them to the White House’. Clinton later apologised when she saw the negative press she was getting.
Her 1993 and 1994 albums, Honky Tonk Angels and Without Walls respectively, featured duets with big names including Dolly Parton, Elton John, Smokey Robinson and Sting. A duets album with Jones also followed in 1995, called One. There was one more UK number 1, sort of, when she was among the stars on the Children in Need version of Lou Reed’s Perfect Day in 1997.
The Outro
Wynette was only 55 when she died on 6 April 1998 of a blood clot in her lung, but so bad had her health been over the years, it’s a wonder she lived as long as she did. Much like her most famous song, her life divides opinion. You may see her as a strong role model for women or a domestic violence victim who couldn’t help being attracted to horrible men. The truth is likely somewhere inbetween, and whatever her private life, she was a much-loved entertainer.
The Info
Written by
Billy Sherrill & Tammy Wynette
Produced by
Billy Sherrill
Weeks at number 1
3 (17 May-6 June)
Trivia
Births
18 May: Scottish snooker player John Higgins
22 May: Badminton player Kelly Morgan
27 May: Chef Jamie Oliver
29 May: Spice Girl Melanie Brown/Comedian Sarah Millican
4 June: Comedian Russell Brand
Deaths
20 May: Sculptor Barbara Hepworth
21 May: Historian AH Dodd
3 June: Admiral Sir Christopher Bonham-Carter
5 June: Actor Lester Matthews
Meanwhile…
27 May: The Dibbles Bridge coach crash becomes the worst accident ever on UK roads when a coach runs away following brake failure and falls off a bridge near Hebden in North Yorkshire, killing the driver and 31 female pensioners.
28 May: Bayern Munich defeat Leeds United 2-0 in the European Cup final in Paris, France. When Leeds player Peter Lorimer has a goal disallowed, angry supporters invade the pitch and tear seats away from the stands.
31 May: The European Space Agency is established, with the UK being one of the 10 founding members.
Also on this day, vile depraved Jimmy Savile began his long-running family show Jim’ll Fix It on BBC One.
2 June: Freak snow showers occur across the country, even as far south as London, which hadn’t happened since 1761.
5 June: In the EEC referendum, 67% of voters support continuing membership. There weren’t buses travelling round with lies emblazoned on them back then, you see.