On this day (August 28) in 1968, Tammy Wynette recorded “Stand by Your Man” at Bradley Studios in Nashville. The song became a multi-week No. 1 on the country chart and a top 20 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, giving her a crossover hit. The song helped launch Wynette to superstardom. It also brought her backlash from women’s groups across the United States.
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Wynette saw almost immediate chart success. She released her debut single, “Apartment No. 9,” in 1966, and it narrowly missed the top 40 of the country chart. She released 10 more singles throughout the 1960s, and only one of them missed the top 10. “It’s All Over,” a 1968 duet with David Houston, peaked at No. 11.
[RELATED: On This Day in 1968, Tammy Wynette Released Her First No. 1 Album ‘D-I-V-O-R-C-E’]
When she recorded “Stand By Your Man,” Wynette was riding the success of “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” The song went to No. 1 on the country chart and was her highest-charting single on the Hot 100, peaking at No. 63. She wrote the song with producer Billy Sherrill and released it as the lead single and title track from her next album in September 1968. It reached the top of the Hot Country Songs chart dated November 23. It occupied the top spot for three consecutive weeks. It reached No. 19 on the all-genre chart on February 1, 1969.
The song became an international hit upon its re-release in 1975. That year, it topped charts in Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
Tammy Wynette Faces Backlash Over “Stand By Your Man”
The women’s liberation movement was making strides in the late 1960s. Many members of the movement believed that Tammy Wynette’s massive hit set the movement back. They held her up as an example of a woman who was willing to defer to her husband and accept less-than-optimal treatment.
The backlash didn’t come solely from the song’s content, though. Wynette’s label, Epic Records, took out a full-page ad in Billboard advertising the song as “Tammy Wynette’s Answer to Women’s Lib,” according to NPR.
An article in Newsweek called “Stand By Your Man” a song for “the beleaguered housewife who grits her teeth as destiny dumps its slop on her head.” Her fellow country singer, Jeannie C. Riley, said, “It sounds like you should take anything he dishes out.”
“I can sympathize very easily because I have seen it happen in Mississippi, where I was raised, and Alabama, growing up as a child, where a woman couldn’t make a third of what a man could make doing an identical job,” Wynette said in response to the backlash. “A woman should be equal to a man for anything she’s capable of doing, but I still feel there’s a lot of things she isn’t capable of doing, physically,” she added. “I wouldn’t want to lose the little courtesies that we’ve always been extended, like lighting cigarettes and opening doors, and pulling out chairs and things like that. I enjoy that. I guess I just enjoy being a woman.”
Wynette famously said she spent 20 minutes writing the song and 20 years defending it.
Featured Image by Harry Langdon/Getty Images
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