Product Description

A loving and astonishingly revealing portrait of America's most popular female country vocalist by her daughter, Jackie.

Tammy Wynette arrived in Nashville in 1964 in a dented station wagon with her three young daughters, whose tricycles were tied to the car's roof. Raw talent, gritty determination, and a bit of luck soon lifted Tammy from poverty to fame and ultimately fortune. Tammy Wynette: My Mother's Story looks behind the extraordinary success story, exploring Wynette's life from the vantage of her closest confidante: her daughter, Jackie--a life that continues to make headlines even after her controversial death.

Wynette was a survivor, but her journey was more than bumpy: five marriages; twenty-six major surgeries; multiple platinum hits; a stint at the Betty Ford Center for drug addiction; a mysterious 1978 abduction during which she was savagely beaten; millions of fans; the loyalty and friendship of Nashville's greatest stars, who would turn out in droves to mourn her passing. And always the little-known constant in her life: motherhood.

With the aid of veteran biographer Tom Carter, Jackie Daly recounts the tragedies as well as triumphs--and probes the final mysteries--of her beloved mother's remarkable life. Never-before-seen personal photographs, revealing interviews, and treasured memorabilia help bring Wynette's dramatic, inspiring story to life.

Illustrated with 16 pages of black-and-white photographs

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #964193 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-11
• Released on: 2002-06-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Country singer Tammy Wynette died in 1998 after a lifetime of medical problems and an addiction to painkillers. Now Daly, Wynette's second-oldest daughter, has written an account of the singer's troubled life from the perspective of a young woman who helplessly watched her mother fall apart. The memoir begins with the confusing, surreal days following Wynette's death. Daly then backs up, giving voice to the resentment she felt growing up, overlooked by a busy, famous mother who had little time for child rearing. Daly pays scant attention to Wynette's relationship to Nashville's country music establishment and scoots over the singer's rise to fame, choosing instead to focus on the personal problems that plagued Wynette's life and eventually ended it. An over-romantic dependence on men led Wynette to a string of loveless marriages and an increasing lack of control over her career. Recurring abdominal problems, compounded by multiple operations and a demanding performance schedule, left her dependent on feeding tubes and catheters. Most debilitating was her addiction to prescription painkillers (such as the opiate Demerol) that persisted despite several attempts at treatment and intervention. Daly, a loyal daughter, holds her mother's doctor and last husband responsible for not stemming her descent. This book captures the complicated relationship of a daughter to a mother who needed more parenting and guidance than her children did. Unfortunately, the writing is weak, and the tone of desperation that closes the book makes it feel more like a tabloid interview than a memoir. Photos not seen by PW. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Daly decided to write this touching biography while her mother was still alive and, with her mother's blessing, to pick up where Wynette left off in her autobiography, Stand by Your Man (S.&S., 1979. o.p.). To Daly, her mother was a down-to-earth, fun-loving woman who unwound by cooking for her family and friends and shopping with her children. Of course, she had heard stories about various events in Wynette's lifeDa failed stint at the Betty Ford Center, bankruptcyDbut had not witnessed much of it. Her intention was to clarify those events while getting to know her mother better. With her mother's death in 1998 at 55, the focus of Daly's book changed somewhat. Although Wynette was in poor health, her sudden death was still a shock, and its mysterious circumstances compelled Daly to seek the truth and protect her mother's legacy. A wrongful death suit is now pending. Libraries with Wynette's autobiography will want to acquire Daly's book, as fans will be requesting it. Recommended for country music collections and public libraries.
-DKathleen Sparkman, Baylor Univ., Waco, TX
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Tammy Wynette's April 6, 1998, death was a shock. An even greater shock came when her daughters demanded an autopsy in 1999. What did Daly and her siblings hope to discover? Well, the attending physician said she had died of a blood clot in a lung, and how could he have known that without an autopsy? The belated probe showed, according to one of two pathologists present, that prescription drugs had "played a significant role in the cause of her death." Samples of body fluids could have amplified the findings, but the "blood had been drained from her veins and organs" when she was embalmed immediately after death, "carr[ying] with it truths we would never know." Spooky stuff, the kind of thing associated more with the Jerry Lee Lewis than with the Tammy Wynette sector of country-music land. Daly and her sisters feel the whole story of Tammy's demise has not been told, and their suspicions about it center on Tammy's last husband, George Richey. Daly relates what she knows, what she suspects, and how it all fits together. Wynette was an American icon, far more complex than the "Stand By Your Man" image casual fans saw, even though she was tenacious enough to stand by George Jones, the Keith Richards of country music, for six years. There seems to be more real mystery in her death than in a year's worth of tabloid scandals. Daly doesn't have the ultimate solution, but with coauthor Carter's help, she asks haunting questions in this must-have item for active pop-culture collections. Mike Tribby