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 Hollis 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 has often claimed that the state line ran right through their property. she jokingly said "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, learned to play the piano and the guitar.
As a child and teenager, country music provided 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 inexpensive children's record player she owned, dreaming of one day being a star herself.
Tammy Wynette's 1969 Greatest Hits collection was the first album by a female country artist to sell over one million copies.
She attended Tremont High School, where she was an all-star basketball player. A month before graduation, she married her first husband. He was a construction worker and they moved several times. Her early jobs included working as a waitress, a receptionist, a barmaid, and 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. Her first husband, whom she left before the birth of their third daughter, was not supportive of her ambition to become a country singer, and, is said by Wynette to have 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 repeadedly by every other record company she'd met with, she auditioned for producer Billy Sherrill, who signed her to Epic Records.
Once signed to Epic, Sherrill suggested she consider changing her name to something that might make more of impression with the public. 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 put him in mind 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).
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 first became involved somewhere 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, bolt every window and lock every door). They would continue to record together, even after their divorce, through the mid 1990s.
Aside from her music, Wynette's private life was as tumultuous as many of her songs. Over the course of her life, she had 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 well 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 and lasting love of her life. 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. But it is has been suspected for many years by Tammy herself, that George Jones had one of his men do that.
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.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Wynette dominated the country charts. She had seventeen number one hits. Along with Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, she helped redefine the role and place of female country singers. Beginning in the early 1980s, however, her chart success began to wane. 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. Although some saw the inclusion of Wynette as a novel ploy for attention[citation needed] to the song - The KLF were well known for scams and stunts - her inclusion was a mark of respect from The KLF and not an after-thought or marketing ploy.[citation needed] Wynette's vocal performance was exceptional and the song was probably one of the better dance songs of the early 1990s in terms of melodic construction and performance.[citation needed]
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.)
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.
After years of medical problems, numerous hospitalizations, approximately twenty-six major surgeries and an addiction to large doses of pain medication, Tammy Wynette died at age fifty-five while sleeping on the couch in her living room in Nashville, Tennessee. The coroner declared that she died of natural causes. She is interred in Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Nashville.
In 2002, she was ranked #2 on CMT's 40 Greatest Women in Country Music behind one of her childhood idols, Patsy Cline.
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.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You & Me
Tammy Wynette Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Arthritis, appendicitis, Bright's disease and gall stones
Bleedin' ulcers, ingrown toe nails, swollen adenoids
The Asian flu a time or two and inflamed vocal chords
I've had a toothache so severe my jawbone split in two
But nothing's ever hurt me half as bad as losing you
Well, I've had the lit end of a cigar pressed against my belly
Accidentally nailed my index finger to the wall
Cut off half my toes and soaked my foot in alcohol
Well I've had my pelvis ruptured by an angry kangaroo
But nothing's ever hurt me half as bad as losing you
Well, it's not because you measure fifty, twenty, forty-four
It's surely not because you own a chain of liquor stores
It's not because your daddy is the richest man in town
It's just that I've grown used to you and having you around
I've had my parents tell me son we don't love you at all
I've seen my sister's name written on a washroom wall
My best friend set my barn on fire and burned my horse to death
I went out with a girl who told me, "George you've got bad breath"
Last week I drew a crowd when I went to the city zoo
But nothing's ever hurt me half as bad as losing you
Well, I've had a splittin' headache from my eyebrows to my backbone
Arthritis, appendicitis, Bright's disease and gall stones
Bleedin' ulcers, ingrown toe nails, swollen adenoids
The Asian flu a time or two and inflamed vocal chords
Well I've had a toothache so severe my jawbone split in two
But nothing's ever hurt me half as bad as losing you
The lyrics to Tammy Wynette's "You and Me" convey a sense of hyperbole as she describes various physical ailments and injuries that she has endured, before finally revealing that nothing has hurt her as much as losing the person addressed in the song. In the first two stanzas, Wynette lists off a variety of medical issues and injuries, ranging from appendicitis to having her pelvis ruptured by an angry kangaroo. Although these ailments are clearly exaggerated for effect, they still serve to create a sense of sympathy and concern for the singer, and also suggest that losing someone she loves has caused her emotional pain that surpasses the physical.
The final four lines of each verse are the key to understanding what the song is really about. Wynette sings about how none of the physical pain she has experienced compares to the emotional pain of losing this person. The last verse makes it clear that it's not any particular detail or aspect of the person that she misses, but simply the fact that they've become a constant in her life. The final line of the song is particularly poignant as it drives home the idea that sometimes emotional pain can be just as debilitating as physical pain.
Line by Line Meaning
Well, I've had a splittin' headache from my eyebrows to my backbone
I've experienced excruciating pain in my head and spine, causing distress throughout my entire body
Arthritis, appendicitis, Bright's disease and gall stones
I've dealt with various illnesses and conditions, such as joint inflammation, appendix inflammation, kidney disease, and gallstones
Bleedin' ulcers, ingrown toe nails, swollen adenoids
I've suffered from painful stomach sores, toenails growing into the skin, and swollen glands in my throat
The Asian flu a time or two and inflamed vocal chords
I've also caught the highly contagious Asian flu, and experienced irritation and swelling in my vocal cords
I've had a toothache so severe my jawbone split in two
I've undergone immense pain from a toothache, causing my jaw to break into pieces
But nothing's ever hurt me half as bad as losing you
However, the emotional pain of losing you outweighs any physical pain I have ever endured
Well, I've had the lit end of a cigar pressed against my belly
I've been burned by a lit cigar on my stomach
Whupped upon with a crowbar till my eyeball turned to jelly
I've been beaten with a crowbar so severely that my eye became immobile
Accidentally nailed my index finger to the wall
I have also accidentally hammered a nail through my finger, causing pain and injury
Cut off half my toes and soaked my foot in alcohol
I have lost half of my toes in an accident, and had to soak my foot in alcohol for relief
Well I've had my pelvis ruptured by an angry kangaroo
I've suffered a severe pelvic injury from being attacked by a kangaroo
Well, it's not because you measure fifty, twenty, forty-four
I don't love you because of your physical measurements or appearance
It's surely not because you own a chain of liquor stores
I'm not with you for your wealth or possessions, such as owning a chain of liquor stores
It's not because your daddy is the richest man in town
I'm not with you because of your father's wealth or status in the town
It's just that I've grown used to you and having you around
I love you simply because I've become accustomed to having you in my life
I've had my parents tell me son we don't love you at all
I've been rejected and unloved by my own parents
I've seen my sister's name written on a washroom wall
My family has also experienced public humiliation and disrespect, such as my sister's name being written on a bathroom wall
My best friend set my barn on fire and burned my horse to death
Someone I trusted and considered my best friend committed a heinous act, burning down my barn and killing my horse
I went out with a girl who told me, "George you've got bad breath"
I've been insulted and embarrassed by someone I've dated, who mocked my bad breath
Last week I drew a crowd when I went to the city zoo
Recently, I gained attention and attracted a crowd while visiting the city zoo
But nothing's ever hurt me half as bad as losing you
Despite all of these experiences, nothing has ever been as painful as losing you
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: BOBBY BRADDOCK
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
KD 68
It’s sad this has only 67,000 views in 8 years. Of all the top country singers, I don’t think any can rip out your heart like Tammy Wynette.
Johnny NotEnglish
now 71,000... still.. way too low for this classic
Ross Southerland
When I saw her sing this in the mid 1970’s I froze. The greatest! What a Beautiful woman. This put tears in my eyes. I sure miss her
funkyfoo1212
You and Me" is a 1976 single written by Billy Sherrill and George Richey and recorded by Tammy Wynette. "You and Me" was Tammy Wynette's sixteenth and final number one country hit as a solo artist. The single stayed at number one for two weeks and spent a total of twelve weeks on the country chart.
Sandra Pister
How George Richey could co-write such a beautiful song and yet physically abuse Tammy (and his exam/wife) is such an oxymoron.
Paul Sakai
Great song. She was one of the greatest songwriters. She was very underrated as a songwriter. Miss hearing her on today's country radio. Paul Sakai
Lisa White
Listen to 101.5, has all the old classics.
Linda Wojtas
PHT..
WHAT COUNTRY RADIO STATION......??
THAT DOESN'T EXIST ANYMORE.....!!!!
Jim Warren
This is about the wonderful voice in the world singing realistic ballads! Hands down...score of 10 out of 10!!! We lost a gem¡
Sandra Pister
What a lovely song and sung so beautifully.