Tammy Wynette
b. Virginia Wynette Pugh, 5 May 1942, Itawamba County, near Tupelo, Mississippi, USA. Wynette is primarily known for two songs, Stand By Your Man and D.I.V.O.R.C.E., but her huge catalogue includes 20 US country number 1 hits, mostly about standing by your man or getting divorced. After her father died when she was 10-months-old, she was raised by her mother and grandparents and she picked cotton from an early age. When 17-years-old, she married construction worker, Euple Byrd, and trained as a hairdresser. She subsequently made an album with their third child, Tina—GEORGE, TAMMY AND TINA in 1975. Byrd did not share her ambition of being a country singer, so she left and moved to Nashville. She impressed producer Billy Sherrill and had her first success in 1966 with a Johnny Paycheck song, Apartment No. 9. She almost topped the US country charts with I Don't Want To Play House, in which a child shuns his friends' game because he senses his parents' unhappiness. It was the template for numerous songs including Bedtime Story in which Wynette attempts to explain divorce to a three-year-old and D.I.V.O.R.C.E. in which she does not. 
Her own marriage to guitarist Don Chapel disintegrated after he traded nude photographs of her and, after witnessing an argument, country star George Jones eloped with her. Not knowing the turmoil of her own life, American feminists in 1968 condemned Wynette for supporting her husband, right or wrong, in Stand By Your Man, but she maintains, ‘Sherrill and I didn't have women's lib in mind. All we wanted to do was to write a pretty love song’. The way Wynette chokes on ‘After all, he's just a man’ indicates pity rather than than support. Having previously recorded a country chart-topper with David Houston (My Elusive Dreams), an artistic collaboration with George Jones was inevitable. Their albums scaled new heights in over-the-top romantic duets, particularly The Ceremony, which narrates the marriage vows set to music. In an effort to separate Jones from alcohol, she confiscated his car-keys, only to find him riding their electric lawn-mower to the nearest bar. The Bottle was aimed at George as accurately as the real thing. Stand By Your Man was used to good effect in Five Easy Pieces (which starred Jack Nicholson), and the record became a UK number 1 on its sixth reissue in 1975. It was followed by a UK Top 20 placing for D.I.V.O.R.C.E., but it was Billy Connolly's cover-parody about his D.O.G. that went to the UK number 1 slot. 
Wynette also had two best-selling compilations in the UK album charts. By now her marriage to Jones was over and Dear Daughters explains the position to them. Jones, in more dramatic fashion, retaliated with The Battle. Even more difficult to explain to her daughters is her 44-day marriage to estate agent, Michael Tomlin. After torrid affairs with Rudy Gatlin (of Larry Gatlin And The Gatlin Brothers) and Burt Reynolds (she saved the actor's life when he passed out in the bath), she married record producer, George Richey, whose own stormy marriage had just ended. In 1978, she was kidnapped outside a Nashville car-park and was subjected to a brutal beating. She has also experienced many health problems including several stomach operations. Throughout the traumas, she continued to record songs about married life, That's The Way It Could Have Been, Til I Can Make It On My Own, (You Make Me Want To Be) A Mother and Love Doesn't Always Come (On The Night That It's Needed). None of these songs have found acceptance outside the country market, but Stand By Your Man has become a standard with versions ranging from Loretta Lynn (who also took an opposing view in The Pill), Billie Jo Spears and Tina Turner, to two male performers, David Allan Coe and Lyle Lovett. 
Her autobiography was made into a television movie in 1981. In 1986, Wynette entered the Betty Ford clinic for drug dependency and, true to form, followed it with a single, Alive And Well. She played in a daytime soap, ‘Capital’, in 1987, although its drama was light-relief when compared to her own life. Her stage show includes a lengthy walkabout to sing Stand By Your Man to individual members of the audience. Her standing in the rock world increased when she was co-opted with the KLF on Justified And Ancient which became a Top 3 UK hit in 1991. Her duet album, HIGHER GROUND is more imaginatively produced than her other recent albums and, although she undoubtedly has many more dramas to come, she says, ‘All I really want to do is stay country and keep going ‘til I'm older than Roy Acuff.’