Tammy Wynnette Part I

Tammy Wynnette was born in Mississippi in 1941, the daughter of a farmer.  Her birth name was Virginia Wynnette Pugh.

Her father died when she was a baby so her mother was left badly off-  Mildred Pugh  had to leave her daughter in the care of her own parents, while she took a job in a defence plant.
Tammy grew up without much in the way of material comforts.  Her mother remarried a farmer called Foy Lee.

Tammy attended high school but married young, to a construction worker Euple Byrd, who was not very good at holding down a job. She had to take low paying jobs to help support herself and their children.  She worked at jobs like waitress, and barmaid, but then went to Beauty College and trained as a hairdresser. She had dreams of becoming a singer but her husband was far from supportive and she left him after the birth of their third child.

In 1965, she appeared briefly on TV and then in 1966 she moved with her three daughters to Nashville. She finally succeeded in getting a recording contract and had a hit with a Johnny Paycheck song “Apartment Number 9”. She changed her name, using her middle name Wynnette and called herself Tammy after the heroine of a film with Debbie Reynolds.  Her first hit was followed by "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad” which did even better on the country charts.