Why Tammy Wynette Matters

Journalist Easton’s illuminating debut focuses on the eponymous “First Lady of Country Music,” who died in 1998, and how she “made her life into her work.” Among other aspects of her subject’s complicated history, Easton delves into Wynette’s “poor and rural” childhood in northeastern Mississippi, her work as a beautician in her 20s, her skyrocketing music career after signing a record deal with Epic Records in Nashville, her addiction to pain pills, and the string of abusive husbands she married and divorced. Though Wynette often centered her songs around “domestic heartbreak,” with “Stand By Your Man,” her 1975 superhit, she “took the melodrama of her previous work and pushed it into the national conversation,” Easton writes. The song sparked controversy, including when Hillary Clinton made derisive reference to it during her husband’s first presidential campaign, an incident that “cratered [her] approval ratings” until Wynette appeared at a political rally to smooth things over. In Easton’s view, Wynette’s self-conscious persona-building is its own achievement, drawing on her working-class roots and notions of domesticity to present an image so “hermetic and seamless [that] we don’t think about it as a kind of art.” Combined with in-depth discussions of such hits as “I Don’t Wanna Play House” and “Apartment No. 9,” Easton paints a riveting portrait of an oft-misunderstood star. Country music fans won’t be disappointed. (May)