Tammy Wynette – "Stand By Your Man" (1968)

‘Cause after all

He’s just a man 

[NOTE: Much of today’s 2 or 3 lines was adapted from a February 2013 post that featured “Stand By Your Man.”]

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I hate to pick a fight with the fairer sex (which is and always has been my personal numero uno favorite among all the sexes), but a lot of purportedly intelligent women got this song exactly backwards.  

And yes, I'm talking about Hillary Clinton in particular, who famously told a 60 Minutes interviewer in 1992 that “I’m not some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.”  (Of course, that’s exactly what Mrs. Clinton did do a few years later when we learned that her husband was being ministered to by Monica Lewinsky.)

Hillary Clinton sitting by her man in 1992

Like so many other things, Hillary and those of her ilk have this song 100% wrong.  (Let the hate mail begin.)  

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If anyone should take exception to Ms. Wynette’s song, it’s men.  That’s because the essential message of this song is that men are undisciplined and selfish creatures – on about the same level as infants and   dogs when it comes to morality and controlling their bodily functions.

When a baby boy spews strained peas all over the kitchen, that doesn’t surprise his mother – after all, he’s just a baby.  

And when a puppy poops on the rug, the lady of the house just cleans it up without getting angry – after all, he’s just a dog.

The message of “Stand By Your Man” is that a woman should be equally tolerant of her man’s bad behavior – after all, he’s just a man.   

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Perhaps cheating husbands deserve to have their asses kicked out of the house by their long-suffering wives.  But where would society be then?  

Men already watch too much football on TV, eat a lot of crap that will eventually kill them, and spend every available moment surfing the ’net for porn.

(By the way, when someone watches porn, what is it that first captures their attention?  A 2007 study found that women on oral contraceptives focus on the actors’ clothing, background imagery, and other contextual aspects of the porn – not the genitals.  Women who were not on the pill looked first at genitals, then turned their attention to the female body or bodies – but didn’t look at anyone’s face.  Men looked at genitals, but spent more time looking at female faces.  Go figure.)

Without the civilizing influence that comes from their living under the same roof as wives, men would do that bad stuff 24 HOURS A DAY and the world would go to hell in a handbasket.

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Or at least we men like to think so.  In reality, women could do very well without men – other than providing a needed Y chromosome on occasion, we are much more trouble than we are worth.  Ants and bees and other social insects have figured out how to minimize the role of males and still survive quite nicely, and it would serve us men right if women did the same to us.  

Fortunately, most of them are like Tammy Wynette.  We treat them badly and are more trouble than we are worth, but they are as tolerant of us as they are of their children (who can also be a gigantic pain in the tuchus, but are inconveniently necessary for the survival of the species) – they look the other way and turn the other cheek, all in the interest of promoting the greater good.

Tammy Wynette didn’t necessarily walk the walk when it came to putting up with the men she was married to.  Fellow country music superstar George Jones was her third husband (she had five altogether), and she put up with his drinking and other nonsense for only six years before filing for divorce.  Standing by her man George was all well and good, but enough was enough.

“Stand By Your Man” was supposedly written by Wynette and her producer, Billy Sherrill, in fifteen minutes.  The song reached #1 on the country and western charts late in 1968, and also cracked the top 20 on the pop charts.  The country-music cable network, CMT, named it the greatest country music song of all time, and I can’t disagree.

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“Stand By Your Man” is featured in the opening credits of one if my all-time favorite movies, Five Easy Pieces (1970).  In that movie, Karen Black’s character – who has a room-temperature IQ but a heart of gold – gets knocked up by her boyfriend (portrayed by Jack Nicholson), a child prodigy on the piano who had run away from his wealthy, cultured family to slum it as a roughneck in the California oil fields.

Mr. Jack and Ms. Black in “Five Easy Pieces” 

Nicholson’s character proves he is all man by cheating on and abusing her verbally and physically before he learns she is pregnant  . . . then cheating on and abusing her verbally and physically her after he learns she is pregnant. . . and eventually deserting her at a gas station out in the middle of nowhere.  

Five Easy Pieces was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and both Nicholson and Black were nominated for acting Oscars as well. 

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Tammy Wynette, whose 1998 death was caused by a pulmonary blood clot, had quite a few things in common with Bobbie Gentry, whose song “Fancy” was featured in yesterday’s 2 or 3 lines.

Both were born in 1942 in rural Mississippi.

Both spent their early childhoods on farms without electricity or indoor plumbing under the care of their grandparents.  (The mothers of both had moved away in search of economic opportunity.)

And both took Hollywood-inspired stage names.  Bobbie Gentry’s name came from the 1952 movie, Ruby Gentry.  Tammy Wynette’s name – she was born Virginia Wynette Pugh – came from the 1957 film, Tammy and the Bachelor.  (Record producer Billy Sherrill – who suggested that Wynette change her name after she signed a record deal in 1966 – said that the long, blonde ponytail she was wearing when they met reminded him of the one Debbie Reynolds wore as the character Tammy Tyree in that movie.)

But while the teenaged Gentry had moved to posh Palm Springs, California, to live with her mother, Wynette stayed in Mississippi and married a local boy named Euple Byrd when she was just 17.  

Wynette left Byrd shortly before the birth of their third daughter.  She had gone to beauty college and gotten a cosmetology license, and she supported herself and her children by working as a hairdresser until she got that recording contract.

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Click here to hear Tammy Wynette sing “Stand By Your Man.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: