At 52, Tammy Wynette’s Still Cookin’ Up Music : ‘Heart Songs’ Are Ageless Specialty of Country Queen

You find exactly what you’d expect phoning Tammy Wynette at home.

“I’m knee-deep in cookin’,” says the country music queen, all Southern warmth and charm. The reason, she explains, is that singer “Lorrie Morgan is coming over to dinner tonight and we’re having chicken and dumplings and pineapple and banana pudding and fresh green beans and corn and stuffed bell peppers. A good ol’ country meal.”

Wynette, who plays the Crazy Horse Steak House tonight, has been right busy lately outside the kitchen too.

Last year, the doyenne of done-me-wrong songs, who has racked up more than 50 albums and 19 No. 1 country hits in the last three decades, was briefly hospitalized for a severe bile-duct infection, a recurrent problem that has required surgery before.

These days, though, she’s feeling “wonderful,” as she said on the phone from Nashville, and at 52 she’s “on the move again.” Booked to play festivals in England and Switzerland in May, she expects to release in June a collection of duets, most of them new, with former husband and fellow country legend George Jones. The pair, who plan a tour together this year or next, cut several such albums in the ‘70s but haven’t worked together in 15 years.

“One main reason to do the album was our daughter” Georgette, who is now grown and has two children of her own, Wynette said. “She has wanted so badly to go to a show where her mom works and her dad works, just like she did when she was a little bitty girl.

“It’s for the fans too. Every time I do a concert, they say ‘Where’s George? Are you two gonna get together again?’ He’s just the greatest talent there is in country music. I was thrilled we could put all of our personal feelings behind us and do this.”

In fact, the ‘90s have been busy for Wynette, best known for “Stand By Your Man,” the song she says she wrote in 20 minutes but has spent 27 years defending, thanks to the women’s movement. It is still hugely popular at concert time.

Born Wynette Pugh, the Mississippi native was a leading force in country music from her 1966 debut through the late ‘70s.

The ‘80s were not as productive, but Wynette has released three albums in the last two years: “Honky Tonk Angels,” a collaboration with Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn that made the country Top 10 in 1993; “Tears of Fire,” a CD retrospective, and “Without Walls,” duets with country and pop stars, including Sting and Wynonna.

She appeared in a CBS-TV special “The Women of Country Music,” crossed musical genres for “Justified & Ancient,” a collaboration with the British dance group KLF that was a hit in Europe, and has sung at recent fund-raisers for AIDS, cerebral palsy, rain-forest preservation and children’s hunger.

She says she doesn’t believe she’s been working much more than usual, although she noted there were times in her 29-year recording career when she released three albums a year.

Today, Wynette and her contemporaries don’t get much, if any, play on mainstream country radio: “I don’t, Dolly doesn’t, Loretta doesn’t. That hurts.

“I think once you’re over 40, you’re just (not worth) zip anymore,” she said. “I’ve never been able to figure out what age has to do with talent, and they don’t do that to the rockers--who are in their late 40s and 50s. Look at Elton John (who is 47). I don’t know what it is about country music that they won’t play our records.”

Fortunately, she added, fans she attracted years ago provide her with a steady annual income today. But she’d hate to be breaking into the youth-oriented industry now. “I don’t know if there are going to be any 20- and 30- and 40-year careers anymore.”

Other aspects of the current country scene trouble the singer. Despite gains in pay, respect and chart success for women, the typical ratio of male to female country singers on the Billboard charts is still about 5 to 1. Some weeks it’s less. Additionally, she noted, women who tour with men are rarely allowed to close their shows--they’re usually relegated to the opening slots.

“Now, I’m not a feminist,” Wynette said. “I am very independent, I do what I want to do and I make my own living. I always have. But I still like the little courtesies afforded me by my husband, whether that’s opening my car door or lighting my cigarette--though I quit smoking one year and four months ago. But it does drive me crazy when I hear something about how a woman can’t do something. I raised five girls and they are as good as any man I’ve ever known.”

The ‘90s infusion of rock and pop into country music--which has fueled an explosion in the format’s popularity--is a concern too. Sometimes “you can’t tell it’s a country song,” Wynette said.

There’s also a void of “good heart songs,” she said, that tell a story. “Everybody’s writing and recording songs people can dance to. I don’t think that’s going to (be popular) very long with fans who want songs with a beginning, middle and an end.”

Overall, however, Wynette is content these days, citing her 1994 appearance at Carnegie Hall for Sting’s annual Rainforest Foundation Benefit. Parking her king-size tour bus outside the venerable theater, she shared the stage with Sting, Whitney Houston, Luciano Pavarotti, Elton John and Branford Marsalis and sang a duet with James Taylor.

“I went out to the bus to eat,” she said, “and my husband came in and I said, ‘Now this is success. I’m in New York City, out in front of Carnegie Hall, eating corn bread and pinto beans.’ ”

After Wynette’s notoriously hard early years, which included four divorces, her 17-year marriage to manager George Richey also has been a source of fulfillment.

“I don’t have any advice to newlyweds,” she said, “other than just do what your heart says. George is just wonderful for me and to me. I don’t know how I ever lived without him, and I certainly wouldn’t want to try it now. We have our ups and downs like anybody does, but we get along great.”

And the future? “Maybe I’ll slow down in a couple of years, but I don’t want to quit yet. I’d be crazy if I said I wouldn’t want to have another No. 1 hit, but I feel a little bad when I say that” after having had so many. “I’m just really happy with where I am and what I’m doing.”

* Tammy Wynette sings tonight at the Crazy Horse Steak House, 1580 Brookhollow Drive, Santa Ana . 7 and 10 p.m. $37.50. (714) 549-1512.