Tammy Wynette’s Voice Still a Barn-Burner

While country music has been going through some turbulent changes, it is reassuring to know that a few timeless artists transcend trend. George Jones is still the ultimate country crooner, Merle Haggard the bard of the working man. And Tammy Wynette remains First Lady of Country Music with that powerful, bleeding wail, which turned such songs as “Stand by Your Man,” “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” and “I Don’t Want to Play House” into unbridled country classics.

Though she has spent much of the ‘80s battling health problems, 1987 turned out to be a very strong year for her. “Higher Ground,” her ’87 album release, found her working with many of country music’s emergent newcomers, including Ricky Skaggs, the O’Kanes, Rodney Crowell and Vince Gill. The album also marked a return to stripped-down country for the 46-year old singer who was born in a tar-paper shack in Mississippi.

“This is one of those records where you do what your heart tells you to do,” Wynette said on the phone from her Nashville home recently, on a rare day off. “I’d been wanting to get back to this kind of music for a while, since I cut ‘Unwed Fathers’ by John Prine. The only trouble is that sometimes you figure you should stick with what you did on the last album, wanting to keep up with the times.

“But I decided that I really wanted to get back to basic country. For over a year, I had an idea in the back of my mind for an album called “Out With the Boys,” which came from a duet of ‘Sometimes When We Touch’ I did with Mark Gray. I found that I really liked working with all these great young talents, so making an album like this was a way to do two things I liked!”

When Emmylou Harris joined Wynette for “Beneath a Painted Sky,” a decision was made to change the title from “Out With the Boys.” But otherwise, the album turned out exactly as Wynette had pictured it.

“I still can’t believe that all these artists would take time out of their busy schedules to come sing with me,” said Wynette (who, though she has racked up 35 No. 1 hits, three Grammys and sales of more than 30 million records, seemed totally serious). “They were all so nice. I can’t tell you how that made me feel.”

It wasn’t quite as simple as Wynette made it sound. Shortly before she began work on the project, she landed in the Betty Ford Center, because of an addiction to painkillers. While there, recurrent stomach problems grew worse, and she was hospitalized.

“After I’d been in the hospital for 16 weeks, they told me I wasn’t healing properly and that I needed another operation that was too complicated for them to do,” Wynette recalls. “They wanted me to go to the Mayo Clinic--and when I heard that, I got so scared! Here they were telling me that my only chance was going to be at the Mayo Clinic. . . .

“When I got there, I was told I had a 50-50 chance of getting better. I might even get worse. One of my earlier operations had caused a lot of scarring, leaving me with a stomach opening the size of a quarter (three times smaller than normal), so I was getting gangrene from the poisons backing up.

“The doctors had to go in and remove 25% of my stomach, make a complete revision. But, now I’m not in pain and I can eat! Finally, all my health problems are solved. And you know, I almost can’t believe it.”

This isn’t the first time Wynette has beaten incredible odds. Indeed, beating the odds has been the story of her career, right from the time in 1966 when the hairdresser-mother of three convinced Epic Records producer Billy Sherrill to take a chance on her. The gamble paid off when Wynette took Johnny Paycheck’s “Apartment Number 9” to the Top Ten.

The platinum blonde has had to overcome a turbulent personal life that has included a stormy marriage to George Jones along with her recurring health problems.

Now, though, she has been happily married to record producer George Richey for nearly 10 years, and she is enjoying a relatively new role--as a grandmother. She is finding that a balanced, healthy life is making it easier for her to cope with the strain of the music business.

“To tell you the truth,” she said, “if I never had another No. 1 record, I wouldn’t complain because I’ve had more than enough, more than most. Right now, all I want to do is make the best records possible--that’s enough for me.”

Laughing, she recalled her biggest fear during the operation. “You know, I’ve always said that I might not sing the best, but I always sing the loudest. I was concerned that having them cut through my diaphragm a third time might weaken what I do best. . . . I guess I shouldn’t have worried!”

TAMMY WYNETTE

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