Table of Contents
ALSO BY JIMMY McDONOUGH
The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan
Shakey: Neil Youngs Biography
Big Bosoms and Square jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer,King of the Sex Film
For my mother
Janet Wicht McDonough
an artist
Reality can never fulfill fantasys expectations. Why? Because fantasy is always perfect.
Dark Dreams, Hazelwood and Michaud
Sometimes its hard to be a woman.
Stand by Your Man, Sherrill and Wynette
Dear Tammy,
I figure I should drop you a line now and then, say hello, tell you how its going. Dont worry, I wont spill all the beansI cant. Theres just too much about you that will never be resolved. I dont think anybody knows the whole storynot even your last husband, Mr. Tammy Wynette himself, George Richey.
Allow me to bore you with a story concerning your favorite recording. You know, the one that brought together the three men in your life. Billy Sherrill, the person who discovered you, produced it. He helped you pen the lyrics, as did George Richey, and this particular number was inspired by the collapse of your marriage to Jones, the great love of your life.
A few years back a dame I was crazy about was about to walk out the door and I was losing my mind. In the midnight hours I once again turned to you, digging out the dusty old vinyl to spin your masterpiece, Til I Can Make It on My Own.
And each time I played the song it hurt worse than the time before. I hated it, and I hated you. I wanted to take that record and smash the damn thing. Instead I just played it again.
For we both know what that records about, and it isnt making it on your own.
You never, ever wanted to be alone. Tammy had to have a man, your friends all tell me. Tammy just had to have a man.
Virginias in the House
I believe you have to live the songs.
Tammy Wynette
October 1968. The Country Music Association Awards. After a peppy introduction by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Tammy Wynette wafts to the mic like shes in a trance. Skinny as a matchstick, wearing a fancy, futuristic housecoat dress, Tammy looks like her ratted-out beehive and big lapels might consume her at any second. Just a country girls idea of glamour, explains Dolly Parton. Tammy didnt have any more fashion sense than I did, really. I always say me and Tammy, we got our clothes from Fifth and Parkthat was, the fifth trailer in the park.
Wynettes a striking woman, with an elegant neck, beautiful lips, and a stunning profile, but one with an extreme, elongated face set beneath feline, close-set eyes. Unimaginative types who dont savor esoteric looks might be dim-witted enough to consider her a tad homely. Hell, head-on Wynette looks like a Siamese cat in a wig hat. Not that Tammy was particularly vain. As she told Alanna Nash, my necks too long, my nose has a hump in it, my boobs are too saggy and the kids call me weenie buttcause I have no rear end.
Tammy never had the movie star looks of her lesser rivals, but she had a tough beauty, a no-messin allure, wrote the KLFs Bill Drummond, who would collaborate with Wynette near the end of her life on a wacky and improbable dance hit, Justified and Ancient. Only twenty-six, Tammy already seems a bit shopworn. The mountain of makeup cant completely hide the worry, the fear, the dark circles lurking below tired eyes. She stands so stiff youd think the hanger was still in the damn dress.
And then this tiny, troubled wisp of a human being opens her mouth, and out comes an atom-bomb voice. The bands playing too fast, which only accentuates her odd phrasing. Our little boy turned four years old ...
The particular song shes singing tonight is a cockamamie number called D-I-V O-R-C-E, and its content is a bit mucha mother spelling out the hurtin words so Junior cant understand that Mommys split with Daddy becomes final today. But Wynette invests the song with such feeling that anybody with half a heart would have to acknowledge the sheer conviction on display, the utter reality of her pain. For when Tammy sings, as her longtime producer Billy Sherrill once said, there is a tear in every word.
When she gets to the chorus, Wynette belts out the words with the force of an air-raid siren, yet barely bats an eyelash. Theres zero body languagethe dramas all in the voice. She doesnt act out the song or punch her fist in the air; in fact, she barely moves an inch. Tammy the statue. Until a Tinseltown choreographer teaches her some questionable dance steps in the mid-eighties, Wynette will remain frozen onstage. The antistyle of Tammys wax-figure performances absolutely mystified Dolly Parton. I could not believe that all of that voice and all that sound was comin out of a person standin totally still. Id think, How is she doin that? It seems like youd have to lean into your body or bow down into it or somethinto get all of that out. Ive never seen anything like it to this day. I was in awe of her. I thought she had one of the greatest voices of all time.
Wynette finishes her devastating performance and meekly walks off the stage. She wins Female Vocalist of the Year tonight, as she would the following yearand the one after that. For all her talent, she is not only a genuinely humble person, but, unfortunately, one with little self-confidence. She never knew she was Tammy Wynette, said more than one friend.
September 30, 1982. The White House. Performing at a barbecue for President Ronald Reagan, Tammy serenades the commander in chief with her signature song, Stand by Your Man. The day before, shed sung it in Alabama for that steely firebrand of the South, George Wallace. A few years previous shed done it for Jimmy Carter. Indifferent to politics, Tammy likes em all. She didnt know anything about what was goin on in the world, said her friend Joan Dew. She wasnt interested. It wasnt that she was stupid, she just didnt care. For Reagan, Wynette is wearing a red antebellum gown with a hoopskirt which was just gorgeous, said her hairdresser Jan Smith, who had not only flown in with the coveted dress, but had to buy it a ticket and sit it next to me.
There they were, the president, the country singer, and her hairdresser, walking across the White House lawn, Smith recalled. All of a sudden Tammy pokes me, I look down and she sticks her foot out and wiggles it! She was barefoot under that dress.
Barefoot on the White House lawn. Classic Tammy. As is what transpires during her performance. She parks herself down in the presidents lap and sings Stand by Your Man right in Ronnies face. The act isnt unusual for Wynetteduring live shows, shed often go out in the audience, zero in on some hapless husband, and melt him down in a similar fashion. But this is the president. I didnt know it wasnt proper protocol, claimed Miss Tammy. He certainly didnt say anything. As far as Wynettes performance went, I had goose bumps, the Gipper confessed to the New York Times. Months later, on June 20, 1983, Tammy sings for the president at a catfish dinner in Jackson, Mississippi. He
