Don Chapel, the second husband of country singer Tammy Wynette who was responsible for hits by George Jones and Conway Twitty, died on this day in 2015 from complications from heart failure and pneumonia. He was 84 years old.
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Born Lloyd Franklin Amburgey, Chapel grew up among a musical family in Neon, Kentucky. His sisters Irene, Bertha and Opal performed together as Martha, Minnie and Mattie, the Sunshine Girls. Irene kept her stage name after she left the group and began performing with her husband, mandolin player James Carson, as country-gospel singer Martha Carson. Meanwhile, Opal adopted the stage name Jean Chapel, finding success as both a rockabilly singer and songwriter.
Taking on Jean’s nom de plume, Lloyd Amburgey became Don Chapel and joined his sisters in Nashville following a Korean War stint in the Air Force. More than 50 artists recorded his songs over the years, including Ernest Tubb, Kitty Wells, Faron Young, Rhonda Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, Lynn Anderson, Johnny Paycheck, The Osborne Brothers, Webb Pierce and Conway Twitty.
Don Chapel’s Marriage to Tammy Wynette
In the ’60s, Tammy Wynette arrived in Nashville from Birmingham, Alabama, freshly divorced from her first husband, Euple Byrd. Initially, she stayed at the Red Anchor Motel. That’s where she met Don Chapel, who was working there as a front desk attendant. The pair soon married and moved into an East Nashville apartment.
The couple met and befriended George Jones, who would tour with Wynette. Chapel penned the song “When the Grass Grows Over Me,” which Jones recorded for his 1969 album I’ll Share My World with You. (Wynette would later claim she actually wrote the track, which rose to No. 2 on the Billboard country singles chart.)
Ultimately, Chapel’s marriage to Wynette ended when she fell for Jones. Following his death in 2015, bluegrass singer-songwriter Rhonda Vincent wrote on Facebook, “As we talked, he told me how he was once married to Tammy Wynette, and how he had heard the magic of the voices of Tammy and George Jones, when they first sang together. That’s a classy man, who though heartbroken over his marriage, still shows tremendous respect for the legacy of music left in the duets of Tammy & George.”
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