May 5, 1942 - April 6, 1998

She was once a beautician, once picked cotten but she will always be remembered as The First Lady of Country Music. Tammy Wynette, who died at age 55, often lived a life similar to some of her more downbeat songs, including the controversial hit "Stand by Your Man." Wynette recorded more than 50 albums and sold more than 30 million records, scoring 39 Top 10 hits from 1967 to 1988. Twenty topped the charts. She won three Grammy awards. Married five times -- the first time at age 17 -- country music's "heroine of heartbreak" had a history of health problems, including depression, drug addiction and intestinal ailments.

"She was a wonderful and brave girl."--Elton John "I'm devastated and deeply saddened. We've truly lost a legend."--Lorrie Morgan "Tammy came to town about the same time that I did, in the '60s. There was no question that she was going to make it--and she did!"--Waylon Jennings

Dubbed "The First Lady" because she was the first female country act to have a million-selling album, Tammy Wynette was far from finished as she neared her Silver Anniversary as an Epic Records star. She marked her 25th Anniversary as a record maker with a top selling 1991 retrospective Best Loved Hits That June during Nashville´s famed Fan Fair celebration, Tammy Wynette was stunned on national television when Merle Haggard presented her with the TNN/Music City News Living Legend Award. Less than a year later, she scored the biggest hit of her life, the No. 1 single on the planet, when she teamed up with the British pop act The KLF in 1992, to create the international smash "Justified & Ancient." It topped the charts in 18 nations.

"Country music has lost its queen," admits longtime Wynette fan Tanya Tucker, who was enroute to Pittsburgh when she heard the tragic news. "Tammy and Loretta have always been my favorites. Growing up, Tammy's songs were too high for me to sing. Now that I'm older, I can finally hit those notes and sing her songs. We always talked about doing a song together, and now I regret that we never had the chance to do that," continues Tanya. "Tammy's voice was like non-other. She was an original, and I am very proud to be able to say that she was my friend. I will miss her very much."

"I think her music was the thing that made her strong," said Reba McEntire. "She told her life story through her music."


FANS OF WYNETTE began lining up at the Ryman Auditorium, historic home of the Grand Ole Opry, at 5:30 a.m. for the 4:30 p.m. event. Some said they had driven all night to attend the ceremonies. In addition to the more than 2,000 who filled the auditorium, hundreds more stood outside. The stage of the Ryman was filled with floral arrangements, with a portrait of Wynette in the center. When George Jones, the singer’s third and most famous ex-husband, entered and took his seat in the front row, the crowd, made up mostly of fans, gasped audibly. Following the opening prayer, J. D. Sumner and the Stamps sang the classic “Peace in the Valley” and “Angel Band.” A visibly shaken Randy Travis then did an a cappella version of “Precious Memories.” A tearful Naomi Judd called Wynette the “most distinguished female vocalist in our history” and said she was “one of the biggest-hearted people I’ve ever known.”

Wynette shrewdly put all her pathos into her powerful voice. "The way she got into a song, with such fragility," says singer Ricky Skaggs, "you could tell there was hurt there." But Wynette always regarded her voice as just average. "I'm not the best singer in the world," she liked to say, "just the loudest."

George Jones. "I loved him from the start," said Wynette, who used to daydream about him back on the farm. After they married in 1969, they became Nashville's answer to Liz and Dick. "That's the way people felt about us," she later recalled. In the studio they were in perfect harmony on such classic duets as "We're Gonna Hold On" and "Near You." But their home was a battleground. Jones, at the time an alcoholic and cocaine addict, once chased his wife with a rifle. As Wynette later summed it up, "I was naggin' and he was nippin'." ....the couple divorced in 1975.

In 1992, her name and best-known song entered the presidential campaign when Hillary Rodham Clinton, stressing that her support of her husband was more than routine, said: ''I'm not sitting here like some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.'' Wynette replied angrily that Mrs. Clinton ''offended every true country music fan and every person who has 'made it on their own' with no one to take them to a White House.'' She added that if she and the Yale-educated Mrs. Clinton ever met, ''I can assure you, in spite of your education, you will find me to be just as bright as yourself.'' Mrs. Clinton said she didn't mean to hurt Wynette's feelings, and Wynette later performed at a Clinton fund-raiser. Today, President Clinton issued a statement saying he and Mrs. Clinton were saddened over the death. He said Wynette ''defined the Nashville sound that helped to make American country western music popular all over the world.''

Throughout her 25-year career, her stormy marriages and hospital stays, even a kidnapping and beating for which no one was ever convicted, threatened to overshadow one of the most successful singing careers in country music history. But she didn't emphasize the negative. ``I've had a wonderful life,'' she said in a 1991 Associated Press interview. ``I absolutely feel I've been blessed tremendously. I can't complain at all.''


Tammy was laid to rest in Woodlawn Memorial Park in Tennessee.


Click Here for some photos I scanned of Tammy.