 Tammy Wynette Legacy Records has been quietly reissuing some country classics in their "American Milestones" line – as with most Legacy series, it's both immaculately done and a bit revisionist. Digging into the Sony vaults, they've pulled some of the most memorable country albums and cleaned them up for CD, and the results are very impressive. The presentation tends to argue a bit too forcefully that each of these are masterpieces of some sort (Big City by Merle Haggard is a good album, but hardly a work of art), but appreciating them on the level of being very cool rediscoveries seems to be the way to go. Few country artists have made their careers on great albums, and Nashville has always been characterized by lots of great singles, and loads of filler. Of course, it's all brilliantly played, especially stuff from the late 60s/early 70s. Stand By Your Man may be Tammy Wynette's best individual album, and it's the classic Nashville sound at its peak. Billy Sherill produced the record (he's sort of the country George Martin), which is a collection of pathetic hurtin' songs much in the vein of the title cut. Tammy Wynette was one of the best country singers of all time, and that fact is even more evident after you realize that you've been totally sucked into her songs for half an hour, although you disagree with pretty much everything she says. I won't bother discussing the anti-feminist angle to "Stand By Your Man," which seems more ironic than anything else. Whatever it means on a social level, it's a totally convincing song because Tammy is just so damn good. The rest of the songs are similarly achin', like the desperate "Forever Yours" and the tear-jerkin' "Don't Make Me Go to School," which is actually not the only song on the disc that takes the point of view of a child whose mommy and daddy aren't together anymore. There's a definite camp value to some of the album, being so over-the-top weepy, but moreover these are just great beer-drinkin' country songs with Tammy's exceptionally earthy voice sailing on top of the pedal steel. "I Stayed Long Enough" and "It Keeps Slipping My Mind" are lesser-known Nashville classics, more traditional and less overtly submissive, and "My Arms Stay Open Late" is as touching as they come, quasi-comical though it kind of is. "Cry, Cry Again" (another "Mommy, daddy, don't fight" song) is like a lost Connie Smith song, and probably my favorite song on the disc. This reissue adds two previously unreleased tracks, "I'm Only a Woman" and "There's Quite a Difference." The former isn't what you'd think, in fact, it finds Tammy in more of a rebuking mode (though still, as always, pleading). "There's Quite a Difference" ends the (very short) album, discussing the difference between a girlfriend and a wife. This one is the biggest guilt trip ever set to music ("Can she choose between new shoes for the kids and a payment to the bank?/Will she do all these things the way I did and expect only love, never even thanks?"). It's a standout, and a wonder that it went unreleased before. Stand By Your Man is perhaps not the milestone Legacy wants us to see it as, but it's a damn good album full of drama, and most importantly, Tammy Wynette's wonderful voice. It's an album your drag queen brother and bursitic mother can equally enjoy, though probably for very different reasons.
Review by Janis Jop |