Pages 274-366 in Jimmy McDonough’s Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen (2010)
Tuesday evening, I finished Tammy Wynette. The book kept me up well past my bedtime and I really enjoyed the ride.
Unfortunately, it’s a tragic tale. The material that I read Tuesday concerns Wynette’s life from the early-1980s to her death in 1998. Author McDonough also includes a lengthy discussion of the battle over Wynette’s estate that pitted her four daughters against her fifth husband, Glenn Richey (1935-2010).
By the early 1980s, Wynette’s recording career had foundered. She was a legend, but she had very few songs on the record charts. Author McDonough decries country music’s turn toward second-rate soft rock – and away from its roots.
Even worse for Wynette, her addiction to prescription drugs reached crisis proportions. A series of doctors gave her access to massive doses of painkillers. As a result, she began a regular cycle of trips to the hospital and – as McDonough notes – became more famous for being famous than for anything else. The “medical side” of Wynette’s death greatly resembles the deaths of Elvis and of Michael Jackson – sycophant doctors giving in to the self-destructive wishes of a celebrity patient.
Once again, the “heavy” in all of this is George Richey. Wynette’s weakened state and need for a man in her life allowed him to take over all of her affairs. After Wynette died, Richey and his family inherited almost her entire estate. In 2001, Richey secretly married a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader who was many years his junior.
One odd aspect of the book is that periodically author Jimmy McDonough devotes a page to addressing Tammy. The text is always in italics. At the end of the book he does so. I suspect that readers will have mixed reactions to this technique. Certainly, it gets your attention.
At the end of Tammy Wynette, McDonough writes that “There was no joy taken in telling the end of this story” (p. 365). Perhaps not, but Wynette’s life was like a massive pileup on the interstate – you can’t help but look. Tammy Wynette is a page turner. I give it 9.5 out of 10.
I don’t know which book is next. Perhaps I’ll read one of the collections of John Parris’ columns from the Asheville Citizen-Times newspaper.
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