Tammy Wynette, 55, a former beautician who became one of the legends of country music during a career that began in the 1960s and included much of the emotional travail of which she sang, died yesterday at her home in Nashville.
One of the foremost figures in the country music movement, which spread from rural America in recent decades to win the loyalties of much of the nation, Wynette was known in particular for "Stand By Your Man." It was one of the many songs she made into No. 1 country hits.
That 1968 chart-topper, which she co-wrote with her producer, Billy Sherill, advised women to forgive an errant mate because "after all, he's just a man."
Her other trademark numbers included "D-I-V-O-R-C-E," "I Don't Wanna Play House," "Womanhood," "Take Me to Your World," "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad," "Singing My Song" and "The Ways to Love a Man."
Wynette was a woman who could recall picking cotton as a child, and her songs of romance, hurt and hardship won fans throughout the world. She recorded more than 50 albums and sold more than 30 million records.
Three times in succession (1968, 1969 and 1970), she was named the Country Music Association's female vocalist of the year. In 1991, she was voted a Legend of Country Music.
In 1992, Wynette's name and her signature song became a significant part of American political discourse.
At a crucial moment of Bill Clinton's first campaign for the presidency, Hillary Rodham Clinton, trying to emphasize the range and depth of her support for her husband, told an interviewer:
"I'm not sitting here like some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette."
Although the language might have been new to the vocabulary of American politics, Hillary Clinton's audience knew exactly what she was referring to.
Wynette, whose hardscrabble origins and lack of advanced formal education seemed to qualify her for a degree from the school of hard knocks, responded that if she and Hillary Clinton ever met, "in spite of your education, you will find me to be just as bright as yourself."
Hillary Clinton said she did not intend to hurt Wynette's feelings, and the singer later performed at a Clinton fund-raiser.
Wynette was born Virginia Wynette Pugh on May 5, 1942, in Itawamba County, Miss., near the town of Tupelo. Her father died before she was a year old. Her mother went to Birmingham to do war work, and she was raised on her grandparents' farm, where she worked in the fields.
There was also music: Her father had left instruments behind, and she taught herself to play the guitar and piano. Singing lessons were available, and she took them with what biographers said was an eye toward someday going to Nashville, the beckoning capital of country music.
However, these dreams, though never abandoned, were apparently sidetracked after she married construction worker Euple Byrd at 17. She and Byrd had three children, but the marriage ended before the birth of the third.
The baby developed spinal meningitis, and to pay the medical bills, Wynette, who had trained as a beautician, began work in that occupation in Birmingham. Still, her interest in singing remained, and she appeared on a Birmingham television station.
Soon she was in Nashville, making the rounds and making a strong impression on producer Sherill. Her first notable Nashville success came in 1966, with "Apartment No. 9," a Johnny Paycheck song.
Shortly after came "I Don't Want to Play House," expressing a small boy's lack of interest in children's games because of awareness of his parents' difficulties. Students of her career saw that song as the lineal ancestor of "D-I-V-O-R-C-E."
Meanwhile, Wynette was experiencing emotional turbulence in her personal life. She married guitarist Don Chapel, but the marriage ended in divorce.
Later, she eloped with country star George Jones. As early as 1968, Wynette became the target of barbs from feminists for what they viewed as her acceptance of a subordinate role in marriage, as expressed in "Stand By Your Man."
However, Wynette has said that she and producer Sherill "didn't have women's lib in mind."
"All we wanted to do was write a love song," she said.
Some students of country music have interpreted the song's explanatory line "after all, he's just a man" as expressing pity rather than uncritical support.
Subsequent songs -- sung in duets with Jones -- have been said to reflect some of the emotional ups and downs of her marriage to Jones, which also ended in divorce.
There was a later marriage to Michael Tomlin, which lasted 44 days, and one to record producer George Richey in the late 1970s.
In addition to the emotional turmoil of her personal relationships, she was the victim of a serious crime. In 1978, she was abducted at a Nashville shopping center by a masked assailant who drove her 80 miles in her own car, beat her and robbed her before releasing her.
She had health problems, and her hospitalizations were said to number many more than a dozen. In the 1980s, she was admitted to a clinic to be treated for drug dependency.
That stay -- a story of survival over hard times -- was transmuted, as were so many other events of her life, into country music: It became the single "Alive and Well."
In May 1992, she underwent 14 hours of bile duct surgery apparently necessitated by complications from previous surgery. She was hospitalized for a bile duct infection in late 1993 and early 1994.
Known variously as "The Queen of Nashville," "The First Lady of Country Music" and the "Heroine of Heartbreak," Wynette wrote an autobiography, "Stand By Your Man," which was made into a television movie in the early 1980s.
In 1988, she filed for bankruptcy after an investment in Florida shopping centers went bad.
In summing up her career in 1991, in an interview with the AP, Wynette appeared more than willing to take the good with the bad.
"I've had a wonderful life," she said. "I absolutely feel I've been blessed tremendously. I can't complain at all." In addition to her husband, survivors include five daughters, a son and seven grandchildren. CAPTION: Singer Tammy Wynette was dubbed the "Heroine of Heartbreak."
