Tammy Wynette to Receive Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
The renewed attention continues to roll in for country music legend Tammy Wynette as she experiences a revitalization of interest in her important career. In late 2022, the Showtime limited series George & Tammy about the tumultuous relationship between George Jones and Tammy Wynette received massive audiences and rave reviews, causing many to reconsider Wynette’s catalog, and younger listeners to discover it for the first time. Jessica Chastain received an Emmy nomination for her role as Wynette.
Now Tammy Wynette will be one of the 2024 recipients of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Announced on Friday, January 5th, Wynette will be honored with Gladys Knight, Donna Summer, the Clark Sisters, Laurie Anderson, and N.W.A. as Lifetime Achievement recipients. Wynette will receive the award during “Grammy Week” on February 3rd at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre as part of the Special Merit Awards Ceremony.
Tammy Wynette earned the moniker of “The First Lady of Country Music” by becoming the first woman in country music to sell over one million albums. When Wynette released her signature single “Stand By Your Man” in 1968, it sold more than five million copies and became the largest-selling single ever recorded by a woman in country. She was the Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year from 1968 to 1970, and won two Grammy Awards as well.
Overall, Tammy Wynette sold more than 30 million records, grossing more than $100 million in sales, making her synonymous with country music. Though “Stand By You Man” might be her most identifiable song, Wynette often put the struggles of women into her music with songs like “D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad,” and “Run Woman Run.” Wynette secured seventeen #1 songs overall.
Tammy Wynette was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1998, the same years she passed away at the age of 55 on April 6th. Wynette had suffered from a lifetime of health problems, which some credit for helping her put such incredible pain into so many of her performances.
January 5, 2024 @ 2:36 pm
I’m a huge Tammy Wynette fan. I think her and Billy Sherrill together is perhaps the greatest artist/producer relationship in country music history. They made a ton of great album cuts too in addition to the umpteen hits, so I recommend anyone who hasn’t checked them out to do so.
January 5, 2024 @ 4:49 pm
I thought this was one of those times when you see some SCM headline pop up and it turns out to be from years ago.
No, Tammy Wynette will not “join Gladys Knight… on February 3rd at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre.” Gladys Knight may possibly join Tammy Wynette on that date, but that would be a very sad day for Ms Knight’s loved ones, as Tammy Wynette is dead–and has been so for over a quarter of a century.
January 5, 2024 @ 5:40 pm
The point was to say that Tammy Wynette is “joined” as an award recipient by other recipients. I thought the article made it obvious it was posthumous, if that isn’t obvious to the audience already. But I did go back and reword that sentence just to avoid any confusion.
January 6, 2024 @ 1:32 am
@Trig–I’ve said before that if I had to put out content constantly, instead of picking and choosing my drive-by remarks, I’d make a lot more awkward statements or errors than you do.
The above post by me was obviosly a bit snarky. It was an allusion to the weirdness of bestwoing such an award 26 years after Tammy Wynette’s death intended to elicit a quick chuckle from some readers–and I think it did. I notice that it received a few quick up-votes (though I don’t doubt that if this site allowed for down-votes, the post would have garnered even more of those.)
January 6, 2024 @ 1:07 pm
“bestwoing”
January 7, 2024 @ 7:27 am
And also “obviosly”.
January 5, 2024 @ 4:54 pm
Posthumous awards are well, kinda late to the party. I get it, but it only benefits the family I suppose. Georgette already knows her Mom was awesome, but I guess it’s another piece of hardware for the collection. Country stars and Grammys weren’t common in the past, so maybe they wanna catch up…kinda like putting Dolly in the RRHOF.
January 5, 2024 @ 5:23 pm
With Tammy Wynette dying relatively young at 55, I don’t know that the Grammys had any opportunity to give her a Lifetime Achievement Award when she was still living. Usually these awards go to people in their 70s or 80s, which strangely makes the timing of this award about right for Tammy. The benefit is to Tammy Wynette’s legacy, and I’d bet we wouldn’t have seen this if it wasn’t for the “George & Tammy” series doing so well. This is why these things matter, sort of like the Patty Loveless performance of “Never Leave Harland Alive” on the 2022 CMA Awards that put her in the Country Music Hall of Fame.
January 7, 2024 @ 2:54 pm
I greatly hope that all of Tammy Wynette’s daughters receive as much joy and gratification from this as possible. I also hope that news of this makes the “woman of the world” who ended up with Tammy’s money is instantly dragged to hell upon hearing the news.
January 5, 2024 @ 5:34 pm
Tammy Wynette was amazing of course and, thankfully, she won quite a few awards in her lifetime and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame the year she passed away. I can’t say I know much about the Clark Sisters or Laurie Anderson, but Wikipedia says they are all living, as are all but one member of NWA and the great Gladys Knight. And I know we don’t all get into Donna Summer, but apparently the Grammys were and saw fit to give her five awards while she was around to accept them. Anything that gets Tammy’s name in a headline and maybe helps someone discover her music isn’t something I’ll quibble with too much. But I do wish this award was going to somebody who is still around to enjoy the recognition.
January 5, 2024 @ 8:03 pm
This may be somewhat divisive, but in 1991, Tammy teamed up with. British House music band the KLF. the lead singer had a fondness for Tammy’s music and personally made contact to record with her in the song “Justified & Ancient (Stand by The JAMs)” it put Tammy in the spotlight to a group of people whom may have never heard of her before. It also came about long after her hit making heydays had long finished (although “One” with George Jones made a minor hit.). It’s similar to Willie collaborating with Snoop Dog or Allison Krauss collaborating with Robert Plant. An artist can find a way to transcend genres and make some interesting music.
January 7, 2024 @ 11:56 am
Justified & Ancient is a good song, although not everybody visiting this site will agree.
January 5, 2024 @ 9:03 pm
I don’t foresee Tammy being there in person to receive the award.
January 5, 2024 @ 9:14 pm
I had an opportunity to work with her at the Roy Clark celebrity theater in Branson Missouri in 1990 I did six shows and she was fantastic her backup singer girls were just incredible they were singing the real high notes that she used to sing and they did such a great job it was so impressive if she deserve to be she is so wonderful and she was a wonderful person I remember her producer who had one of the finest deep voices but I don’t know if he ever recorded but he could really sing it was a pleasure working with her I love her George Jones would be working a club across the street and she would open the show was saying I guess you know who’s across the street it was funny if she did great songs she did wonderful job I was always a pleasure to work with her it’s one of my Fondest Memories working the Roy Clark Celebrity Theatre in Branson, Missouri
January 5, 2024 @ 9:50 pm
I liked Tammy I loved GEORGE I thought you had to be alive to recieve lifetime award. They are a little late…..she was very good at what she did. But are they going to do this to all dead good singers…
January 6, 2024 @ 12:15 am
I love Tammy, but she is not the first woman to sell over 1 million albums according to the RIAA. The first country female to receive a platinum album was Crystal Gayle in 1978. Tammy’s Greatest Hits album has always been announced as the first album by a female to sell a million copies, and according to the RIAA, it wasn’t certified platinum until 1989. Dolly Parton, Lynn Anderson, and even Reba McEntire also beat Tammy to platinum. If you throw Linda Ronstadt in the mix, which I am not sure she fits due to what genre she was claiming at the time, then there’s another female platinum success.
There is no RIAA record of Stand By Your Man being certified. None of her singles are certified gold or platinum.
Loretta Lynn was the first woman to be titled The First Lady of Country Music for being the first woman to achieve a gold certified album. Somehow the title shifted to Tammy, probably because the statistical discussion was brewing as Loretta was closing in on the title Queen of Country Music. Loretta was dominating all of her contemporaries in the 1970s, and eventually passed Kitty Wells in all categories.
I’m a statistics maniac haha and I should work for the Hall of Fame research department. I love your site and certainly no disrespect to your article and info.
January 6, 2024 @ 8:58 am
Hey Mike,
A few things here.
First, in my experience, the RIAA is not a good source for sales information, especially when you’re comparing one single to another. For the RIAA to certify something, the label or copyright holder has to solicit the RIAA, and do so with “certified” sales. If a label does not do this, the song or album will not be certified, even if it has enough sales to be certified. This situation came up in regards to the effort to get Conway Twitty’s RIAA certifications in order:
https://savingcountrymusic.com/famous-conway-twitty-songs-receive-long-overdue-gold-certifications/
To certify something via the RIAA takes a lot of accounting and effort on a label’s part. And if they don’t have the resources to do it, or the will to, it doesn’t get done. This is why with Conway, they’ve only committed to working on a handful of singles and albums each year. Further complicating this matter is how for sales to be “certified,” you have to be able to “prove” them. Sometimes this is difficult when you’re dealing with records that are many years old. Sometimes the RIAA won’t certify them.
There huge swaths of country music’s back catalog that are not updated with the RIAA. In fact, there are huge swaths of some artist’s catalog that are completely out of print and unavailable.
The stats cited here came from the Grammy Awards, which generally speaking is a pretty good source for information. But I will look deeper into them and make corrections if necessary. But I wouldn’t be able to use RIAA certifications as a source to discredit them.
January 6, 2024 @ 9:40 am
Just to follow up, the fact that “Stand By Your Man” isn’t even Certified Gold by the RIAA tells you all you need to know. The song has 73 million spins on Spotify alone, not to mention whatever sales it accrued in its original era. Clearly nobody is managing the Tammy Wynette catalog when it comes to RIAA certs.
January 6, 2024 @ 10:56 am
Awesome info and some very good points. Thanks for sharing the Conway knowledge. There definitely is an issue with older artists not having certified results. Some labels or industry people were consistent and stayed on top of sales and stats for some artists. Conway, Loretta, and Merle are three artists that I am aware of that clearly do not have the certifications they deserve. Tammy is among them as well. The RIAA seems to be the final word in the certified world? Is there another organization that is a reliable source for sales numbers – I would be interested to research them. This would make for a great article – the dawning of certified sales and what is behind the the machines to do so – why does Shania Twain (for example) sell 10 million per album and Tammy Wynette (for example) has barely gone gold? Maybe not that interesting to most people haha.
Thanks Trigger for your info!
January 6, 2024 @ 8:02 pm
I appreciate you bringing scrutiny to those statistics Mike. Normally I wouldn’t just rattle things off without checking them myself. But there really aren’t a lot of great resources for numbers over decades like this. Billboard would be one source, but those are mostly chart-driven. The Grammy Awards probably have access to deeper data than any of us.
January 6, 2024 @ 3:06 am
…to me her “till i can make it on my own” is still the absolute benchmark for any female singer, if she wants to find out how good a vocalist she is. over the years only martina mcbride could actually match the young tammy there. none of the other great female countryvocalists have mastered this beast of a song – technically – as well as ms wynette or ms mcbride in her prime, although faith hill did a very good job on the “tammy wynette remembered” tribute album too. later even tammy struggled to get up to the high notes there. quite hard to imagine a grammy lifetime achievement award being more deserved – not only from a country music perspective.
January 6, 2024 @ 8:15 am
I saw her when she did her last show in phoenix,az.lwas there with a good fried of mine. Because my friend was in a wheelchair, they took her up front to see the show. It was all shee talked about for days. The kindness of Tammy to her.
January 6, 2024 @ 11:48 am
As much as I love Barbara Mandrell, and she will always be my favorite…I honestly think that Tammy Wynette was the greatest female “vocalist” in country music history. It’s nostalgia for me. I remember being very young and listening to my Mom’s records and being completely mesmerized by her. She just had this genuine, life-lived-hard quality to her voice that you cannot fake. Fantastic singer. I still get chills hearing Apartment #9. I don’t get really emotional over celebrities dying, but the day Tammy passed away, it was a really sad one for me. This award is long overdue.
January 8, 2024 @ 7:57 am
This is exactly right. Barbara’s a great musician and a very good singer. Like any good singer, you can verify that empirically by measuring timing, pitch, etc. Tammy was a pretty poor singer, but she was one heck of vocalist and that’s where all the magic is. One’s a technical exercise, and the other is getting the dang song across. Like you say; making folks feel like you lived it. This is a bit off topic, and maybe also completely wrong, but I think when you choose songs to market by algorithm rather than gut instinct, two things happen. First, everything starts to sound the same. Second – and relevant to this conversation – you end up with songs that way overemphasized the technical accomplishment of the singer and underemphasize the vocalist (and the song). There’s no algorithm that can you tell if whatever unique thing a vocalist is bringing to a song is going to resonate with a million people. it’s hard to imagine another Tammy Wynette ascending to the heights in mainstream country that Virginia Pugh – a hairdresser off the streets with little “obvious” musical talent – did. I suppose that’s the great thing about sites like this: while it may never happen in mainstream music, it definitely stills happens in the independent world. Last thing… she sure wasn’t a bad songwriter either. Just the other day, I was listening to the George Jones album With Love. There’s a nice gospel song that closes out side 1. I was curious who wrote it. I’ll give you one guess…
January 6, 2024 @ 2:11 pm
Pete Drake’s steel guitar should not be underestimated in making “Stand By Your Man” a great song.
January 6, 2024 @ 6:25 pm
I went and looked it up, and,the Grammys have given the lifetime achievement award to deceased artists with some frequency over the years.
In 1972, they gave the award to Mahalia Jackon and Louis Armstrong, both of whom had died within the preceding year. But they’ve also gone further back in time: In 1987, they awarded it to Toscanini (died 1957), Billie Holiday (died 1959) and Caruso (died 1921)!
And in the country and roots area, they gave the Grammy lifetime achievment award to Hank Williams in 1987, Patsy Cline in 1995, Woody Guthrie in 2000, Janis Joplin and the Carter Family in 2005, Robert Johnson in 2006, Bob Wills in 2007, and Jimmie Rodgers in 2017.
So, in that sense Tammy Wynette winning it this year is not even an outlier.
February 18, 2024 @ 11:23 pm
Way minute ….isn’t a Lifetime Award a little too late ?