The Death of Tammy Wynette | Last Days

Tammy Wynette is one of the most important and influential singers in the history of country music. Known as the first lady of country music, Wynette recorded 39 top 10 country hits, 20 of which reached number one, and by the end of the 1980s had sold more than 30 million records. Her voice could be fragile and wounded one moment and soaring and defiant the next, and she helped define the Nashville sound of the late 1960s and 1970s. Her first solo number one, I Don't Want to Play House, won Wynette a Grammy. Then came D-I-V-O-R-C-E, the devastating 1968 ballad about a marriage falling apart, sung from the perspective of a mother trying to shield her young son from what was happening. And later that same year, Wynette and her producer Billy Sherrill wrote the song that would forever define her career, Stand By Your Man. It went to number one on the country chart, crossed over to the pop charts, earned Wynette another Grammy, and became one of the most recognizable songs of any genre ever recorded. Wynette won three consecutive CMA Female Vocalist of the Year awards, and with her third husband, George Jones, became one half of country music's most famous couple. Billed as the president and first lady of country music, Jones and Wynette turned their turbulent marriage into art, recording classics like We're Gonna Hold On and Two-Story House. Even after they divorced in 1975, they recorded a string of hits together, each centered on heartache and loneliness, including by far the duo's biggest hit, Golden Ring. And that contradiction was at the heart of Tammy Wynette's appeal. She became famous singing about women who endured, women whose husbands cheated, whose marriages collapsed, whose families broke apart, but who somehow kept going. Her songs were filled with pain and humiliation, but also survival, and increasingly they sounded less like songs Tammy Wynette performed than a description of the life she was actually living. Because behind the rhinestones and platinum records, Wynette spent most of her adult life in extraordinary physical and emotional pain. She underwent repeated surgeries and suffered from serious intestinal and other health problems. And over time, prescription medication became an increasingly significant part of her life. By the 1990s, Wynette's health had badly deteriorated. Decades of chronic intestinal problems had subjected her to dozens of hospitalizations and operations, and she appeared increasingly frail, even as she continued to record and perform. And through it all, there were the drugs. Wynette had struggled with an addiction to prescription painkillers early on, and by the final years of her life, powerful narcotics and sedatives had again become part of her medical regimen. By the spring of 1998, Wynette's already fragile health had taken a dramatic turn for the worse, and she confined herself to her Nashville home with her fifth husband, songwriter and producer, George Ritchie. Wynette had a history of dangerous blood clots, and on April 5th, Ritchie became so concerned about her latest symptoms that he urged her to go to the hospital. But the following morning, Wynette said she was feeling better and declined to be admitted. She would never get another chance. That afternoon, Wynette and Ritchie were resting on separate couches in the living room of her Nashville home. At some point, Wynette fell asleep. When Ritchie later tried to wake her up, she was unresponsive. The woman, who had survived decades of illness, repeated surgeries, addiction, and crippling physical pain, had finally reached the limits of what her body could handle, and she passed away. Tammy Wynette, the first lady of country music, was just 55 years old. I'm Jason Beckerman. I'm Derek Hoffman. This is Last Days. Tammy Wynette. Wynette's longtime personal physician, Wallace Marsh, initially attributed her death to a blood clot in her lung, and within days, one of the most celebrated women in country music history was laid to rest. Thousands mourned her. Merle Haggard, Wynonna Judd, Randy Travis, and others participated in a nationally televised memorial at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium. Dolly Parton said, quote, I feel I have lost a sister, a friend, and a wonderful singing partner, and the world has lost one of the most unique stylists in the music industry. Loretta Lynn called Wynette, quote, my best girlfriend in country music, while Naomi Judd counted her among, quote, the three queens of country music, alongside Parton and Lynn. The memorial ended with Lori Morgan singing Just months later, Wynette was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. But even as the country music world celebrated her legacy, questions were emerging about how she had died. Her four daughters questioned the medical treatment she had received, particularly the powerful prescription drugs administered during her final years, and soon became embroiled in a bitter dispute with Wynette's husband, George Ritchie, her physician, Wallace Marsh, and ultimately one another. In 1999, the daughters filed a $50 million wrongful death lawsuit against Ritchie and Marsh, alleging that their mother had been given excessive quantities of painkillers and that her deteriorating condition had not been adequately monitored. More than a year after Wynette's death, her body was exhumed, and Tennessee's chief medical examiner performed the autopsy that had never been conducted before. The results complicated the story rather than resolving it. Traces of prescription sedatives were found, but the medical examiner concluded that Wynette had died of natural causes, heart failure resulting from damage caused by repeated blood clots, and said too much time had passed to determine precisely what role drugs might have played. But by then, the damage to Wynette's family had been done. The woman who had spent her career singing about broken marriages and women enduring heartbreak was, even in death, at the center of another fractured family. Her daughters were fighting in court, accusations were flying over drugs, doctors, and her care, and her body had been removed from its grave. Even the people closest to Tammy Wynette could not agree on the story of her final days. Yet, bitter as this final chapter was for a woman whose music had made suffering sound almost beautiful, it could not diminish Tammy Wynette's extraordinary contributions to country music or silence the unmistakable voice that would endure for generations. The story of Tammy Wynette's rise to country music superstardom began in a tiny corner of rural Mississippi when her name was Virginia Pugh. Her father was a cotton farmer and amateur musician who dreamed of becoming a professional singer, but he developed a brain tumor and died when Virginia was only eight months old, leaving behind a guitar and piano that she would grow up playing. She played in a church trio as a girl until one day a local Methodist minister invited her onto his Saturday morning radio program. Everyone immediately recognized her talent, but becoming a country star remained a fantasy, and real life arrived quickly. At 17, she got married, and within a few years, she was the mother of three daughters. The marriage eventually collapsed and Virginia moved to Alabama. By 23, she was divorced, raising three daughters, living in government housing, and working long days as a beautician. But she still hadn't given up on music and was invited to become a regular on Birmingham's Country Boy Eddie show, walking before dawn to sing on a television before heading to the salon to cut hair. One of the things I wanted to notice here is she grew up in a level of poverty that I think it's hard for people, anybody in the modern era, to quite understand. Literally dirt farming in the south, not eating parents would go for days without eating. Her father then dies of a brain tumor, leaving her mother to, I forgot how many siblings she had, leaving her mother to raise a bevy of kids. And again, it's just a level of poverty that I don't think in the modern age still really exists. It's hard to fathom. And not only, she has these kids at 17. She's married within a few years of 17. She's the mother of three kids. She's just having to make ends meet. This is a perpetuation of the cycle of poverty and could have just stayed in it. I mean, it sounds like music was a refuge for her and maybe her sort of only hope of a better life for her family. It doesn't seem like she acquired many other skills in life. And one thing I didn't include in this script just for time is that her first husband, the father of the first three kids, was just not a kind person and wouldn't allow her to pursue her dreams, but that's fine. She had to work and everything else. Not uncommon for the time. Right. But just a deeply unkind person. And she suffered at his hand. Not physically. I didn't see any evidence of that, but suffered certainly emotionally. And she was expected, despite the deep, deep poverty they lived in, to just stay home and take care of these kids and not really have a life. It's interesting because you can see how these experiences shaped the type of music that she did. It was always full of heartache, but there was a little hopefulness in some of what she did. Yeah. Whenever she could, she drove to Nashville, knocking on doors and auditioning for anyone who would listen. After months of making the rounds on Music Row, she got in front of a producer at Epic Records named Billy Sherrill, who fell in love with the quivering vulnerability in her voice. Sherrill harnessed her talent, helping shape her image and gave her a new name, Tammy Wynette. After her first few songs failed to gain traction, she released Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad, which reached the country top ten. And from that point forward, she seemed bound for superstardom. Her duet with David Houston, My Elusive Dreams, became her first number one country record and I Don't Wanna Play House gave Wynette her first solo number one and her first Grammy. Then in 1968 came D-I-V-O-R-C-E, the story of a mother spelling out painful words so her young son wouldn't understand that his family was breaking apart. It went to number one in real life when it had already endured an unhappy marriage and divorce while raising three children. So when she sang about a woman watching her family fall apart, listeners believed D-I-V-O-R-C-E. This is the definition of authenticity to me. Like that song is still one of the songs that I know of hers other than Stand By Your Man, which is obviously the biggest song she has. But spelling that out is something parents do. Parents spell out words, so it seems so deeply personal and so sincerely authentic that you just feel it. All those years back, she went through a divorce. You're listening to someone who you know went through exactly what they're singing about, which means a lot to me. The song, which I know my parents were sort of country fans and I listened to and prepped for the podcast, it's heart-wrenching. I mean, it's really sad. Not just the demise of the marriage, but also trying to protect from the kid and spelling it out, which is a clever little trick, but it's a heart-wrenching. All of her songs are heart-wrenching. Yeah, the fact that it's a 60s song, I didn't realize it's that old because it still feels very timely to me. And later that year came the song that Stand By Your Man. Wynette and Cheryl wrote a deceptively simple tale. Men make mistakes and life with them isn't easy. But if you love your man, stand beside him anyways. The song spent three weeks at number one in the country charts and crossed into the pop top 20. It became Wynette's signature song, a country standard, a political talking point, and a feminist battleground. It was about this time that Wynette met her singing idol, George Jones, and just weeks later, the two of them were madly in love. Jones was 11 years older than Wynette and was already country music royalty, nearly as famous in Nashville for his drinking as for his extraordinary voice. Alcohol could transform the shy, funny man his friends knew into someone volatile and unpredictable. Their relationship became one of the most famous and turbulent in country music history. They married in 1969 and recorded hits including Take Me, The Ceremony, and We're Gonna Hold On, singing about marriage, jealousy, betrayal, and reconciliation while living those same dramas at home. They had a daughter and presented themselves to the world as the perfect couple, earning the nickname, The President and First Lady of Country Music. But behind the image, Jones' alcoholism was consuming their marriage. He disappeared for days, missed recording sessions, and behaved recklessly. Just to show the difference in time, so he tells a story, George Jones did, that he would tell at concerts as sort of like a comedic interlude between songs, you know, because they would perform together. And the song is that one night, Tammy Wynette had to hide the keys to their car to stop him from getting into the car and driving down to buy alcohol. So Jones climbed into a riding lawnmower and drove to the liquor store to get it. Now, is there anything more country and funny than that? But underneath it is a very serious problem. Exactly, but it is funny to hear about. I mean, it's hilarious. It's very country. You know, like get on your riding mower and make your way to the liquor store, but your wife having to hide your car keys because you're incorrigible is, I'm asking something deep. Right. Through the more modern lens, it's a completely tragic story. Of course, Wynette is desperately trying to keep her family together. She's a very young parent. He's a slightly older parent of their, I believe they had a daughter together. She's like trying to have this incredibly successful career and raise their family. And meanwhile, he's getting so hammered on a regular basis that she has to hide the keys. The funny part, I guess, is that he allegedly, who knows if it's pocketful, steals the tractor and does that whole thing. But she's got to hide the key. Right. But she's quite traditional. At the end of the day, she also lives the value of standing by her man. She's trying desperately any way possible, including hiding his car keys so he can't move to stand by him. And so, you know, eventually this marriage did give way. They divorced in 75. But this was it's quite emblematic of who she was as a person. But though they were no longer together, they continued recording. And in 1976, they released Golden Ring about a wedding ring that travels from a pawn shop to a marriage. And after that marriage collapses back to the pawn shop, the song went to number one and solidified Wynette and Jones as arguably the most successful singer songwriter duo in country history at the time. I actually know this song as well. It's one of my favorite types of country songs where it loops back around. Right. It's the journey of this of this ring and the fact that it starts at the pawn shop and ends at the pawn shop. It's just sort of a beautiful sort of funny. It's funny because you're a huge rap fan and there's a lot similarities. And I'm not the first person to remark on this between country and rap, obviously not in the musicality of it, but in the storytelling. Right. You're you're telling a story about where you come from. That's the origins of rap. Right. And there's often this looping around from beginning to end stories. And again, I'm not the first person to talk about this similarity, but it definitely exists. Yeah. And in 1977, she married Nashville real estate developer Michael Tomlin. The marriage lasted 44 days. Then in 1978, she married songwriter and producer George Ritchie, who would remain with her for the final 20 years of her life. Ritchie increasingly involved himself in her career and eventually became her manager, producer and constant companion. The one weird thing about it is this short marriage, this 44 day marriage. I don't know what to make of that. Maybe she was just like, this one's not going to work, not going to stand by this man. Well, I mean, remember, so she spends the last 20 years of her life with Ritchie. So I mean, she's about 35 years old when she divorces her fourth husband at 35 years old. She was married for the first time. I think it was 17 years old. And she went through rapid succession. I mean, again, to your point you made earlier, she was writing and singing the songs that she knew. She was experiencing it in real time. She had a lot of heartbreak in her life. Some of these stories that we tell about people who have died too young or whatever it is, sometimes there's a lot of hope and a lot to look back on with fondness in life. But unfortunately, they died too early. It's hard to find, except for the music she created, which was unbelievable. And she had a bunch of kids and by all accounts, appears to have loved them, been a great mother to them. It's a lot of lack of hope to find in her life. It's a really, it's a tragic tale. It really is. Yeah. And she chronicled it all. So you hear it throughout the decades of her music. She chronicled it all and was not shy about telling the stories later in life. But it's a pretty incredible story to go through. So she marries Ritchie in 78. And just when she was appearing to achieve stability, Wynette's health began to deteriorate. She suffered from severe gastrointestinal problems and underwent during the course of her life, more than 30 operations, including procedures for intestinal obstructions and adhesions. She endured infections, recurring blood clots and repeated hospitalizations. With the illness came chronic pain and then prescription narcotics. Wynette later acknowledged becoming severely dependent on painkillers. At her worst, she was receiving frequent injections of the powerful opioid Demerol simply to function. In 1986, she entered the Betty Ford Center and broke the addiction, but she couldn't eliminate the illnesses that had caused her pain. And over time, narcotics returned to her medical regimen. Still, Wynette kept working. Though her dominance in the country charts have passed, her cultural stature only grew. In 1992, her signature song unexpectedly became part of a presidential campaign when Hillary Clinton, defending her decision to remain with Bill Clinton amid allegations of infidelity, told 60 Minutes, I'm not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette. Crazy. Do you remember that happening? How could you forget? This was the height of everything about the Clintons being controversial. And I can remember, I can see Hillary sitting there in that 60 Minutes interview saying, I'm not like Tammy Wynette. So this is in the 92 campaign before the election and the revelations about Bill Clinton's infidelity is starting to emerge. Long before Monica Lewinsky. Right. His pre-presidential infidelities. This is Paula Jones territory, all that stuff. Exactly. And so they're asking about this and they go on 60 Minutes to salvage his campaign because right now it is going down the drain. And they go on together and it's, by all accounts, an incredibly successful interview. Hillary Clinton is at the top of her intelligence. Bill Clinton comes off as charming and a man deeply apologetic for what he's done. Obviously all bullshit, but it's turned out. And so she says, I'm not just going to sit here like some Tammy Wynette standing by my man. Instead, I believe that this is the right guy for the That's right. And she was saying, I'm not meek. I'm not doing this. I'm doing this because I believe in this man and he's good for the country. And I'm not just standing by him like some weak doting wife. This made Wynette absolutely furious. Clinton would apologize and the two eventually made peace. But the episode demonstrated how deeply Stand By Your Man had entered American culture. More than two decades after its release, its title had become shorthand for an entire argument about women, marriage, loyalty, and independence. I remember this, the discourse about Standing By Your Man through infidelities and all this kind of stuff, because Tammy Wynette, I don't think, saw herself as meek. She saw herself as sort of fiercely independent and proud and feminist in her own way. Very different than a Hillary Clinton, but it did cause a lot of this consternation in the country. And by the mid nineties, Wynette was increasingly frail. Hospitalizations became as routine as infections, intestinal problems, and recurring blood clots compromised her health. Prescription drugs again became part of her daily life. And years of illness, surgeries, and powerful medications slowly and inexorably took their toll. As we have seen, the tragedy of Wynette's untimely death was compounded by what happened afterward. Her children at odds with her husband and doctors, accusations of poor treatment, disputes over money, and the eventual exhumation and autopsy of her body. And though nothing ever came from these extreme measures and no wrongdoing was ever uncovered, it forever estranged the people who had once been closest to her. And yet, for all the controversies surrounding Tammy Wynette's final years and death, none of it came to define her. What endures is that voice and the songs she used to bring it to life. D-I-V-O-R-C-E, I Don't Want to Play House, Golden Ring, and of course, Stand By Your Man. More than half a century after Wynette first sang these songs, they remained part of the foundation of country music, influencing generations of singers who followed her. The girl who grew up picking cotton in rural Mississippi became the first lady of country music and ultimately, something even more enduring, a legend whose voice, songs, and influence have long outlived the pain and turmoil of her final years.