Sunday, October 21, 2012

Tammy Wynettes & David Houston~ "My Elusive Dreams"



My Elusive Dreams - Tammy Wynette & David Houston  

Virginia Wynette Pugh, known professionally as Tammy Wynette, (May 5, 1942 – April 6, 1998) was an American country music singer-songwriter and one of the genre's best-known artists and biggest-selling woman singers.

Wynette was sometimes called the "First Lady of Country Music", and her best-known song, Stand by Your Man, was one of the best-selling hit singles by a woman in the history of the country music genre.

Many of Wynette's hits dealt with classic themes of loneliness, divorce, and the difficulties of man-woman relationships.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Wynette charted 23 No. 1 songs. Along with Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, Wynette defined the role of women in country music during the 1970s.

Wynette's marriage to the country singer George Jones in 1969, which ended in divorce in 1975, created a country music "couple", following the earlier success of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash.

Jones and Wynette recorded a sequence of duet albums and single records that hit the charts throughout the 1970s.

Early years

 

Childhood & teen years

Tammy Wynette was born Virginia Wynette Pugh[1] near Tremont, Mississippi, the only child of William Hollice Pugh (died February 13, 1943) and Mildred Faye Russell Pugh (1922–1991).[2]

Wynette's father was a farmer and local musician. He died of a brain tumor when Wynette was nine months of age.[3] Her mother worked in an office, as a substitute school teacher, as well as on the family farm. After her husband's death, Mildred Pugh left her daughter in the care of her own parents, Thomas Chester and Flora Russell, and moved to Memphis to work in a defense plant during World War II.

In 1946, Mildred Pugh remarried, and her husband was Foy Lee, a farmer.[4]

Wynette was born and raised on a farm in Itawamba County, Mississippi that belonged to her maternal grandparents. This farm was located very close to the border with Alabama.

Wynette claimed that the state line ran right through their farm, joking that "my top half came from Alabama and my bottom half came from Mississippi."

As a girl, she worked in the fields picking cotton along with the crews of hired hands to harvest the crops. She grew up with her aunt, Carolyn Russell, who was only five years older than she was. As a girl, Wynette taught herself to play a variety of musical instruments that had been left by her deceased father.[5]

Rise to fame

Wynette attended the Tremont High School, where she was an all-star basketball player.

A month before graduation, she married her first husband, Euple Byrd. He was a construction worker, but he had trouble keeping a job, and they moved from place to place several times.

Wynette worked as a waitress, a receptionist, and a barmaid, and she also worked in a shoe factory.

In 1963, she attended beauty school in Tupelo, Mississippi, where she learned to be a hairdresser. She continued to renew her cosmetology license every year for the rest of her life—just in case she ever had to go back to a daily job.

She left her first husband before the birth of their third daughter. He did not support her ambition to become a country singer, and, according to Wynette, as she drove away he told her "Dream on, Baby". Years later he appeared as she was signing autographs and asked for one. She signed "Dream on, baby."[6]

Wynette's baby developed spinal meningitis, and she tried to earn extra money by performing at night.

In 1965, Wynette sang on the Country Boy Eddie Show on WBRC-TV in Birmingham, Alabama, and this led to performances with Porter Wagoner.

In 1966, Wynette moved with her three daughters from Birmingham to Nashville, where she attempted to get a recording contract. After being turned down repeatedly by all of the other record companies, she auditioned for the producer Billy Sherrill.

Sherrill was originally reluctant to sign her up, but decided to do so after finding himself in need of a singer for Apartment No. 9

When Sherrill heard Wynette sing it, he was impressed and decided to sign her up to Epic Records in 1966.[7]

Source: Wikipedia

 



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