"I've got my story." "And I've got mine too"

July 9, 2024 12:42 PM

Country legends George Jones and Tammy Wynette recorded and scored a string of duet hits during and after their legendarily tumultuous marriage. Widely acclaimed as the greatest husband-and-wife duo—and among the greatest duos, period—in country music history, George and Tammy scored three no. 1 hits amid a total of eight Top 10 singles during their recording career. Despite their individual and collective health and addiction issues (e.g., the lawnmower incident), they made music and built an image that fans cherished long after the couple divorced.

Following the track listing for the 1977 Greatest Hits collection released by Epic Records, here are live versions (in all but two cases) of some of their biggest hits:
"Golden Ring"
"We're Gonna Hold On"
"We Loved It Away"
"Take Me"
"Near You"
"Southern California"
"God's Gonna Getcha (For That)"
"(We're Not) The Jet Set"
"Let's Build a World Together"
"The Ceremony"

Bonus G&T hit, their last Top 10, and my personal favorite of their duets: 1980's "Two-Story House"

posted by the sobsister (7 comments total)

Season 2 of the masterfully-created country music history podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones is about George Jones and deals extensively with his relationship with Wynette
It’s an absolute banger of a podcast that gets into the songwriting, the storytelling, the technology and politics of how records get made, and is great at pointing the listener at some of the best country music in the 20th century.
posted by Jon_Evil at 1:03 PM on July 9 [10 favorites]

I wrote extensively about this, in my book about Tammy Wynette--but one of the things that I found incredibly frustrating, is how little of Tammy's output featured George, and how much their legend overpowered it. Also, George was incredibly abusive to her, and to romanticise that relationship denies that complexity.

https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477324646/
posted by PinkMoose at 1:30 PM on July 9 [18 favorites]

Thanks so much for this post, the sobsister! I have the same cognitive dissonance about how they were able to create such beautiful music together, even after their divorce.

Another favorite of mine: Someone I Used to Know

Me and the ex would harmonize along to this in the car. Wistful emoji.
posted by ishmael at 2:05 PM on July 9 [4 favorites]

@PinkMoose Where is the relationship being romanticized? In the public eye? Yes, definitely. Comments throughout the YT links I posted speak about "how much in love" they seemed to be in the videos. Which does appear to be the case, at least in a few of them, and they seem at least professionally cordial in the ones they made after their divorce. The fact that they continued to work together after she divorced him may speak more to business realities than to any lingering affection, but it did happen, and several of the videos I linked are from their post-divorce years. Beyond that, I'm not sure I understand your comment.
posted by the sobsister at 8:01 PM on July 9

Wonderful post, the sobsister, about two human beings with an all too human reaction from PinkMoose, on a topic that matters to him. We all look at the world from the wrong end of our own telescopes sometimes. Well, alI can say is Oh, the humanity!
posted by y2karl at 6:04 AM on July 12 [1 favorite]

Well, all I can say, to be sure...
posted by y2karl at 8:26 AM on July 12

(they not him)

no, that's fair, i think i just got a little frustrated by tammy and george content which i thot reified the myth, sorry about that
posted by PinkMoose at 7:22 PM on July 13