Tammy Wynette’s Band Had a Code Name for Whenever the Singer Showed up Impaired
Tammy Wynette is one of the most popular figures in country music. Fans love the music Wynette released before her death in 1998, and the singer’s personal life also piqued fans’ interest. Toward the end of her life, Wynette became dependent on painkillers and would sometimes perform and rehearse while under the influence. Because of this, Wynette’s band had a code name for the singer regarding her painkiller use.
Tammy Wynette started using painkillers
As she got older, Wynette started experiencing health issues. From 1978 until her death in 1998, Wynette was married to George Richey.
It is often speculated that Wynette’s relationship with Richey was abusive, a claim Wynette’s daughter Georgette Jones corroborates in her 2011 memoir The Three of Us: Growing Up With Tammy and George.
According to Country Living, Jones wrote that Richey, “tried very hard to separate mom from her family and friends so he could be the only person she could turn to. I think she felt like she had no choice and it was too difficult to fight.”
The Boot also reports that Jones wrote in her book that Richey enabled and pushed Wynette’s dependence on painkillers.
“There are some people who witnessed mom saying she didn’t want any pain medication, to not give her anymore and Richey would continue to inject her anyway,” Jones wrote in the memoir according to the Boot. “There were times when she did want it because she was in pain and he refused to give it to her.”
Tammy Wynette would perform while impaired
Wynette was born in Mississippi in 1942. Her father died when she was less than a year old, and after her father’s death, her mother moved to Tennessee.
The singer lived in Mississippi with her grandparents, and she moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1966 to pursue a music career.
While she was widely known as Tammy Wynette professionally, the singer’s birth name was Virginia Wynette Pugh. When Wynette began showing up to perform while impaired, her birth name became a code name.
According to Jimmy McDonough’s 2010 biography Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen, “The band even had a saying to clue one another in that Tammy was seriously under the influence: ‘Virginia’s in the house.’ Virginia Pugh was Tammy’s real name, and when Virginia’s name was invoked, it indicated an overmedicated Wynette.”
The singer was married five times
Wynette married her first husband Euple Byrd when she was 18 years old in 1960. She left him when she moved to Nashville in 1966 with her three daughters.
After arriving in Nashville, she married Don Chapel in 1967. Her third marriage was to fellow country music artist George Jones. The two married in 1969 and divorced in 1975, but they continued to work together on music after their divorce.
Wynette’s fourth marriage was to Michael Tomlin. The two married in 1977 and were only married for 44 days. Richey was Wynette’s fifth husband, and they were married until Wynette died in 1998.
