Stand By Your Man [AAA Blue Galaxy Vinyl]

AAA Lacquers Cut From Tapes by Ryan Smith, Sterling Sound; Plated at Welcome to 1979 for VMP

Knowing Tammy Wynette’s troubled history, and with 50-plus years of social change since the recording and release of Stand By Your Man, it’s difficult to hear the album and not want to scream: Tammy, get out of there; you’re so much better than him! But that’s not to say that the album, which ascended to No. 2 on Billboard’s Country Albums chart and earned a Country Music Association Album of the Year nomination in 1969, isn’t worth listening to. Wynette’s mournful voice, described by her longtime producer Billy Sherrill as ‘husky and soulful and tearful and dynamic,’ was made for songs like these; frankly, so were her real-life experiences. ‘She lived it, you know. She lived every tear every-body ever heard her sing,’ Sherrill once said of Wynette, and he assembled talented musicians to match her delivery in lush, Nashville Sound-era style.