The Day My Mama Socked It To The Harper Valley

The Day My Mama Socked it to the Harper Valley P.T.
A:
Country Music Womanhood in the Second Wave of Feminism (1966-75)
Joyce Linehan
UMass Boston American Studies Graduate Program
September 21, 2003
In 1992, Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of a Presidential candidate addressed
questions about her husband and a woman named Gennifer Flowers. She told a 60
Minutes interviewer, "I'm not sitting here like some little woman standing by my man like
Tammy Wynette" (CBS). And so it was that the soon-to-be First Lady of the United
States and the undisputed First Lady of Country Music squared off in an exchange that
becomes all the more interesting in retrospect.
Wynette demanded an apology, replying that Mrs. Clinton "offended every true
country music fan and every person who has made it on their own with no one to take
them to a White House." She added that if she and Mrs. Clinton ever met, "I can assure
you, in spite of your education, you will find me to be just as bright as yourself" (AP).
Mrs. Clinton quickly apologized, and Wynette eventually performed at a fundraiser for
Mr. Clinton. The Wellesley-educated junior Senator from New York is still seemingly
standing by her man, despite subsequent revelations, and the country star who never let
her beautician’s license lapse "just in case," was married to her fifth husband when she
died in 1998. Just as this proves that life, with all of its surprises and contradictions, is
complicated, it also beautifully illustrates the complexities of an artist like Wynette and a
song like "Stand By Your Man” (1968). It further illustrates a multifaceted women’s
struggle, often at odds with the larger movement, developed in working class homes, and
articulated in popular country music.
Some of the women who charted in country music at this time could be seen as
voices representative of a domestic social movement, and their songs, marketing images
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and public personas projected a confusing jumble of mixed messages that has sometimes
been construed as politically conservative. However, this amalgam of words, sounds and
images can be viewed as indicative of some of the confusion surrounding the re-ordering
of American gender roles in the late 60’s and early 70’s. In popular country music, the
political is personal, and in this era, among working class women, the personal often bore
characteristics of the more liberal social movements occurring at the time, tempered and
adapted for survival in a social system primarily informed by economic reality. The
resulting confusion and mixed messages, and the personal nature of the subject matter, is
apparent in the content and presentation of some of the popular country music made by
female artists at the time. The music and the performers gives voice to a struggle that was
taking place in the bedrooms, kitchens, offices, towns and lives of women during a
tumultuous time. Their popularity strongly suggests that this voice significantly resonated
with listeners. Their visibility demands a redefinition of what is thought of as "the
women's movement," leaving room for this domestic personal-is-political struggle. While
they may not have stopped to attach social and psychological imperatives to what they
were experiencing, the performers, and many of the women who supported them were
living the struggle.
This paper will examine some popular female country artists and songs of the late
60’s to mid 70’s, positioning them in relation to a national movement in which some
American women tried to figure out and claim their place in their world. It will examine
the art and the artists, considering their connections to each other, the audience, the
women’s movement and the music business. It will explore the commodification of
“authenticity” in the music as it relates to issues of womanhood, and look at how
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mediated representations of both the music and the movement might have influenced
each and its audience. It will try to situate the voices of these performers and the
audiences who were touched by these works in their place in women’s history.
For the purposes of this paper, only popular songs, that is, songs that made the
country radio and retail charts, will be examined. According to Gramsci, the success of a
work of literature indicates “the philosophy of the age,” or the feelings and conceptions of
the silent majority (349). In order to have struck a chord with the public, it must have
been heard. Related to this, the music industry itself is taken into consideration, because it
is not possible to separate the cultural artifact from its commodification. The need to sell
the artifact dictates the need for it to connect with an audience, and this means that it must
resonate with social experience (Kellner 16). Also, as Michael Denning puts it in his
study of dime novels in popular culture, it is important to pay close attention to the
rhetoritician as well as the rhetoric (3). In this case, the rhetoritician is not just the singer,
the songwriter, the image consultant, the marketing team or any individual involved in the
creation of the hit song or the star; it is a combination of those and perhaps other things.
To a degree, it is also the listener, the critic, the disc jockey and other disseminators and
consumers who add their own collective dimensions of meaning. The time period
examined will be roughly 1966-1975, which covers the period from the formation of the
National Organization for Women to the time when legislative support for the Equal
Rights Amendment began to unravel. This period also corresponds roughly with a rise in
popularity of country music and its women performers. All of the texts examined were
performed by women, and because of the particular nature of the relationship between
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country music and its listeners, the performance and the public persona of the artist are
considered as much “texts” as are the lyrics to the songs.
Country radio enjoyed explosive growth in the 1960's. From 1961 to 1970, the
number of full-time country music stations went from 81 to 650, with more than 1200
stations programming country music at least part of the time (DiMaggio and Peterson 39).
In the late 60's and early seventies, female country performers were enjoying successes
that had evaded them since the inception of the music industry. In the 1950's there were
just five Number 1 records by women. In the 1960's, there were 12. (Seven of those
belonged to Tammy Wynette from 1967-69.) In the 1970's, there were 80 (Bufwack and
Oermann, Finding 388-9). In 1969, Billboard ran an article about the newfound
prominence of female songwriters. It lists earlier exceptions to the rule such as Felice
Bordleaux-Bryant and Liz Anderson, but concludes that women were making inroads in
what was very much a man's world (Williams May 10). The cover of a 1967 country
music trade magazine exclaimed, “It’s a Woman’s World!” and featured photos of chart
toppers like Wynette, Lynn Anderson, Jeannie Seely, and Donna Fargo. Inside the same
issue, there is a photo of the newly elected officers of the Music City Women’s
Association, “a group of smart girls who serve as secretaries and assistants to Nashville’s
music trade moguls” (Sound Format Trade Talk 4). By 1974, the women of Nashville
being profiled in magazines had infiltrated the ranks, at least somewhat. In Country
Music’s “Women of Country” issue, Jackie White profiles some successful women in the
Nashville music business like Jo Walker, the Executive Director of the Country Music
Foundation who thinks that more might be expected of her because she’s female; Bonnie
Garner, an A&R Executive at Columbia Records who does embroidery while listening to
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tapes and was refused entry to the Playboy Club when she went there to scout some
musical talent; Gayle Hill, who was responsible for placing “Country Sunshine,” a song
co-written by Dottie West, in a wildly successful Coca-Cola commercial which spawned
a #2 hit for West; and Mary Reeves, who runs Jim Reeves Enterprises, which owns radio
stations, real estate and a recording studio (63-66).
In terms of the overall radio chart, a 1975 Billboard article claims that women
performed 25% of the songs on Top 100 Country chart. In 1970, 17 of 75 (the size of the
chart changed in the early 70's) were women. The author claims that there was an
appreciable change from 1965-70, but that women's chart popularity plateaued from
1970-1975 (Williams April 12, 1975 p. 60). Around the same time that the Women's
Movement was garnering mass media attention, country's women were firmly entrenched
on the radio and in record stores. This is noteworthy especially in light of the fact that in
rock music, things were different. By the late 60’s, when the women’s movement was
grabbing the attention of the country, the girl groups who had spent so much time at the
top of the charts in the previous years had all but disappeared. Popular rock music was
becoming re-masculinized. Though there were a couple of notable exceptions, the charts
belonged to the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Cream, the Doors, the Who and other male artists
(Douglas 149-50). Additionally, many of the highest charting country songs performed by
women at this time also crossed over to the pop charts, where they resonated with even
more people. This signifies a conscious effort on the part of some segments of the
Nashville music business community to move toward broadening the base of support of
country music by making music that they thought might be palatable to more urbane
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audiences in various regions of the country. This movement was undoubtedly
economically motivated, but the influence of the crossover hits is interesting to consider.
According to various demographic studies, the country music audience is made up
primarily of mature adults of the working class. From 1960-70, country fans were urban
living white people with country roots who held low-esteem jobs (DiMaggio 50). In a
1973 poll conducted at the Grand Ole Opry, 60% of the audience said they had not
graduated from high school, and only 13% said they had some college (Bufwack and
Oermann Women in Country Music 92). In their study of American women in the 1960’s,
Blanche Linden-Ward and Carol Hurd Green contend that country music appealed to
working-class people in the South and Midwest, age thirty to forty (219). According to
Bufwack and Oermann, one 1975 Redbook article by Joan Dew claimed that 80% of
country records were purchased by females (Women in Country Music 93). This could
certainly say something about the structure of the households and who was doing the
shopping. Whatever the reason, it puts a good deal of the choice squarely in the hands of
the female. Bufwack and Oermann also point to the proliferation of country songs in
jukeboxes in truck stops, working-class bars and union halls as evidence of the class
appeal of the genre (Bufwack and Oermann Women in Country Music 92). Some working
class women were buying country music for the home, while their husbands were
listening to country music in more public spheres.
Women country stars of this time period cannot be neatly filed into political
factions. With few exceptions, these artists’ views of their own womanhood, as
communicated through their work, perceived private lives, and public personas, traversed
the lines between old-fashioned and modern. Thus, the contradictions abounded. Country
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music lyrics tend to be realistic, and as a result, “as inconsistent and contradictory as the
people whose values they project. They describe life as it is, not as one might wish it to
be” (Malone Country 298). While most of these country singers were “walking the walk”
as it were - working, divorcing, and raising children by themselves, they frequently
rhetorically retreated to the warm and comfortable nostalgic world where men were
supposed to make the decisions and support the family. Their demands for equality, when
put forth in song, were more apt to call for equal treatment in love than equal pay at the
factory. This notion of equality in love has a long tradition in R&B music (like Aretha
Franklin’s “Respect” for example) and may be seen as a starting point for thinking about
other types of equality. Most of these country music women deliberately distanced
themselves from the label of “feminist,” but they all reflected working class women in
song. They couldn't really relate to the middle-class women's movement of the time, but
they could and did relate to ordinary people (Bufwack 325).
The public social women’s movement in the late 60’s and early 70’s has been
widely written about, lauded, criticized, examined and misrepresented. It encompassed a
wide range of politics, from liberal to radical, and all things in between. It attracted
intense media scrutiny, much of which reinforced negative images. In 1969, Time and
Newsweek ran cover stories in which they exaggerated the extremist antics of some
members of the movement, and cemented the man-hating, anti-family, bra-burning image
that still dogs feminist activists (Friedan 47). Media attacks on the weight, clothes and
sexuality of leaders of the movement were commonplace. One Newsweek cover carried
the headline “Women are Revolting” (Wolf 76). The media helped make “feminism” and
“liberation” negatively loaded words, if not epithets (Linden-Ward 442). In Where the
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Girls Are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media, Susan Douglas says that the media
saw to it that feminism was positioned as deviant, and coverage of the movement was
overwhelmingly dismissive. She goes on to say that the media reporting had a
schizophrenic quality to it, serious one minute and condescending the next, and this may
have been a reflection of the country’s “cultural schizophrenia” (156). This could also be
seen in the emergence in the media and in advertising of the new liberated women as
consumer, who seemed to confuse self-gratification with self-determination (Faludi 75).
These characterizations left the feminist activist portrayed by the media with little to
which the working-class woman could relate. In “One’s on the Way (1971),” Loretta
Lynn’s character sings:
The girls in New York City, they all march for women’s lib,
And Better Homes and Gardens shows the modern way to live
And The Pill may change the world tomorrow, but meanwhile today
Here in Topeka, the flies are a buzzin’, the dog is a barkin’
And the floor needs a scrubbing
One needs a spankin’ and one needs a huggin’ and
One’s one the way (Silverstein).
While the character in the song is not really passing judgment with regard to what the
women in New York are doing, she is perhaps pointing to some of what she sees as
frivolity with respect to what she has to contend with. Earlier in the song, she lists some
of the activities of people like Elizabeth Taylor, Raquel Welch, Jackie Kennedy and
Debbie Reynolds, which she has probably seen on TV or read about in magazines. As she
sees it, these women are movie stars and famous people, with all the time and money in
the world, and by including the New York women’s libbers in this mix, she is assigning
them the same fairy-tale celebrity status she does Liz and Jackie. She has caricaturized
them. In Topeka, they’re interesting and entertaining, but they’re not relevant. Neither
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self-gratification nor self-determination really has a place in her world. To a woman
whose only short-term dream is that she’s not pregnant with twins again, Liz and Jackie
and the women’s libbers don’t live in the real world. She does not seem bitter or angry
about it, but she knows that her life is different from theirs.
The women’s movement has often been criticized for leaving out working-class
and minority women. These groups had trouble relating to some of the theories espoused
by the women in the movement, especially as the message was filtered through the media.
Equal Rights Amendment activists were predominantly white and middle class in relation
to the general population (Mansbridge 15). For many American women, as for the woman
in “One’s On the Way,” the ideas and goals of the movement were far removed from their
reality (Linden-Ward xviii). Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, widely recognized
as one of the opening salvos in the Second Wave of feminism, focused on middle-class
women, and thus, cast their working-class sisters into the shadows. Though many
working class women were skeptical of women’s libbers, they saw the value of bringing
attention to inequities (Linden-Ward 102). Working class women who weren’t part of the
public social movement may have been making progress but if they were, it may not have
been linear. They were learning to see things in new ways, but they weren’t always able to
apply those new visions to their day-to-day lives. The problem working-class women
faced was not the difficulty of leaving home to work; they were already in the labor
market, and had no choice but to stay there. According to Linden-Ward and Green, blue-
collar males with two kids had costs exceeding income in 1967, so many wives were
already working outside of the home (95). In popular country music of the time, there
aren’t a lot of songs about women who want to go to work. Inspired by her own
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experience at the Beaumont (TX) Bag & Burlap Company, Billie Jo Spears’ working
woman is fed up with the New York secretary’s life in “Mr. Walker It’s All Over (1969).”
Norma Jean’s waitress sings, “Heaven help the working girl in a world that’s run by men
(1967),” and characterizes her male customers as lying, cheating drunkards. Dolly
Parton’s take on Jimmie Rodgers’ “Muleskinner Blues (1970)” provides an interesting
twist in this regard. She was an unhappy waitress who dreamed of being a “lady
muleskinner.”
It is fascinating to consider that working-class women might have been slightly
ahead of the curve in terms of understanding the individual realities of workplace
dynamics. As women entered the workforce, they found that while working might have
enfranchised them economically, it tended to disenfranchise them politically. Once in the
workforce, they had to work within the patriarchal system in order to keep their positions.
As media consultant Nancy Woodhull said, “You don’t rock the boat while you’re in it”
(Wolf 72). This idea was compounded by what has come to be called “the feminization
of poverty” (Linden-Ward xix). The divorce rate in the United States doubled between
1965-70 (Linden-Ward 401). By 1974, millions of women were divorced and supporting
children on very low wages (Linden-Ward 95). Every year from 1969 to 1978, 100,000
more female heads-of-household fell below the poverty line (Davis 286). The first no-
fault divorce law was passed in California in 1970, and child support, which seldom
attached more than 1/3 of a man’s income, and wasn’t adjusted for inflation or the child
getting older, was very difficult to collect. In a few popular country songs of the time,
this has nightmarish repercussions. In “The Back Side of Dallas” (1969), Jeannie C. Riley
is an abandoned woman who becomes a pill-addicted prostitute. Sammi Smith’s “Girl in
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New Orleans” (1972) is also forced into prostitution when her man leaves, and in Bobbie
Gentry’s “Fancy” (1969), a dying abandoned mother sends her tarted-up teenage daughter
out into the world alone, saying “Just be nice to the gentlemen, Fancy and they’ll be nice
to you” (Gentry). The economics of divorce and desertion in country music are
devastating.
As for the social downside of divorce, in “Rated X,” her 1972 song about the
plight of the divorcee, Loretta Lynn sings:
Well if you’ve been a married woman

And things didn’t seem to work out
Divorce is the key to being loose and free
So you’re gonna be talked about
Everybody knows that you’ve loved once
They think you’ll love again
You can’t have a male friend
When you’re a has-been of a woman
You’re rated X.
…
Why us woman don’t have a chance, because if you’ve been married,
you can’t have no fun at all. No, you’re rated X. No matter what you
do, they’re gonna talk about it, look down their noses… (Lynn)
Lynn’s character is railing against the double standard. Her feelings about men’s
nature are clear in the song, as she remarks that the divorcee will be accosted by
her best friend’s husband, saying she looks good. In “D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” (1967)
Tammy Wynnette’s character wonders about what kind of example adults are
setting for their kids when she sings about overhearing her four year old at play
saying she doesn’t want to play house because when Mommy does, Daddy goes
away. Divorce and its economic impact were becoming a frightening reality for
American working class women, and this is clearly reflected in these songs.
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Women who stayed home to raise children were vilified by some segments of the
women’s movement. “Status degradation” caused some homemakers to blame working
women for making them look bad (Mansbridge 106). In 1971, Elsie Adams and Mary
Louise Briscoe condemned “superior” women who had achieved some success in the
business world, for looking down on the “masses” of women as largely the victims of
their own circumstances (473-47). Dolly Parton probably voiced a little bit of the
frustration of working-class homemakers when she said, “Everybody should be free. If
you don’t want to stay home, get out and do something. If you want to stay home, stay
home and be happy” (Grobel 110). In a 1975 interview, Loretta Lynn said, “I guess that’s
why I’m not much for women’s liberation. I have every opportunity to do what I please,
and I’d like to be at home, canning and cooking for my family” (Battle 75). This is a
theme that comes up many times in Lynn’s interviews and biography, but the truth is, if
she truly wanted to, she could have spent more time at home. This is the kind of thing that
made Lynn so beloved. She spoke for the housewife, by validating and even elevating
her position at the same time that she spoke for the working girl that had no other choice.
According to Linden-Ward and Green, the women who resisted change reacted against
women’s liberation’s insistence on every woman’s right to all of the choices men had
(98). However, factions within the movement all but eliminated the choice to stay home
and raise one’s family as valid. This was problematic for many American women, not
necessarily just those of the working class.
According to Susan Faludi, working-class men were the most fearful of being left
behind by the women’s movement. They saw themselves as losing on a number of fronts.
“Poorer or less-educated men have not so much been the creators of the anti-feminist
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thesis as the receptors” (66). These men were part of the target audience for a media
establishment that was doing its best to distort the image of the women’s movement. As
has been well argued in many social studies, the groups that have the least often feel they
have the most to lose in any social upheaval. Thus, in navigating their relationships,
working-class wives might have sought to validate the lifestyles, assuage the fears and
bolster the confidence of their partners. While there were certainly scores of songs that
characterized men as less than upstanding, there were many hit songs that extolled the
virtues of men, and highlighted the importance of supporting them. Songs like Lynn
Anderson’s “You’re My Man (1971),” Wanda Jackson’s “A Woman Lives For Love
(1970),” Patti Page’s “Give Him Love (1971),” Jean Shepard’s “With His Hand in Mine
(1971),” and Tammy Wynette’s “I’ll See Him Through (1970)” could surely be
characterized as submissive, but they can also be seen as reactions to the fear and
uncertainty of working-class husbands, seeking to be musical reassurances. In addition,
this could perhaps be seen as an extension of the liberal feminist belief that men are
socialized to oppress women (Davis 70). The women of country music might have been
making excuses for men they believed didn’t know any better, but were worth standing
by, and perhaps even teaching.
Feminists were, by and large critical of the country music they took notice of
publicly, and by the same token, many of the women of country music were critical of the
feminists. Loretta Lynn fell asleep in Betty Friedan’s presence on the David Frost show
(Dew 8). Many feminist critics disparaged Tammy Wynette’s songs and Dolly Parton’s
looks. This lack of understanding and inability to recognize the potential convergence of
objectives in their respective plights kept these two groups from uniting across class lines
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to call for the destruction of the double standard together. In The Second Stage, Betty
Friedan discusses what she sees as the failures of the women’s liberation movement.
(M)any feminists knew all along that the extremist rhetoric

of sexual politics defied and denied the profound, complex,
human reality of the sexual, social, psychological,
economic, yes, biological relationship between woman and
man. It denied the reality of woman’s own sexuality, her
childbearing, her roots and life in connection to the family
(51).
While Friedan has been roundly criticized for The Second Stage, Linden-Ward and Green
validate her assertion that the Movement’s blind spot with regard to family was
something that kept women away (117). Friedan said that feminists ended up seeing
family as their main obstacle to self-realization (95). While it may not have been that
simple, Lynn seemed to have a handle on the shortcoming Friedan articulates. In one
interview she said, “We know we can’t leave the farms, can’t abandon our children, can’t
all have careers, can’t even get out of the kitchen – but we CAN show our men that
what’s fair for the goose is fair for the gander, and we have just as much right to get some
fun out of life as they do” (Dew 8). Lynn’s acknowledgement of the fact that there are
inequities that must be addressed, along with her realistic vision of family life, point
toward a kind of feminism that was incompatible with the larger movement at the time.
According to Friedan, “the true potential of women’s power can be realized only by
transcending the false polarization between equality and the family” (218). Loretta Lynn
would no doubt agree.
As the women’s movement progressed, radical feminists became its major
theorists (Davis 70). There are many reasons for this, but the fact that the media focused
largely on the exploits of these radicals, creating a negative public image for the women’s
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movement, cannot be discounted. This exposure created even more distance between
these groups. According to Mansbridge: “Like nationalism and some forms of religious
conversion, some forms of political activity engender a transformation of self that
requires reconfiguring the world into camps of enemies and friends. The ERA struggle
solidified in-group ties without creating dialogue with ‘other’” (179). Internal, domestic
forces fettered working class women, while activist feminists were more concerned with
social and political forces, and they grew further and further apart as the focus of the
movement narrowed. There were collectivist, Marxist tendencies in the movement, which
doesn’t work well for people more comfortable thinking in terms of individualism (Wolf
68). To make a generalization that might be helpful in positioning these people, short-
term reality informed the plight of the working class women, while feminist activists
looked more toward the long-term objectives of the movement.
THE TRIUMVERATE – LORETTA, DOLLY AND TAMMY
In any discussion of female country music performers, whether it is within the
aforementioned time frame or the entire history of the genre, the triumvirate - Loretta,
Tammy and Dolly - emerge as major forces. Over their entire careers, they have
addressed issues of love, loss, womanhood, fidelity, loyalty, and home both in song and
in interviews. They inhabit contested ground, often saying one thing, and doing another.
Lynn has supported conservative causes, donating money and performances to right-wing
Republican candidates and performing benefits. She stood by a man who cheated on her.
However, she’s the “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (1970), wearing her working-class identity
on her sleeve, and proclaiming in song, “This woman’s liberation, honey, is gonna start
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right now” (“Hey Loretta”). Wynette is the very voice of traditional femininity, often
perceived as submissive, but in real life she achieved success on her own terms, and
raised a family by herself. Parton uses exaggerated femininity to simultaneously exploit
male fantasies and engage female fantasies in a non-threatening manner, while being one
of the most savvy businesswomen and successful songwriters in the history of any kind of
music. They are living, breathing, singing paradoxes, but they sing about the very
personal issues that confront their listeners, and give voice to unspoken feelings for many
of them. When tremendous change is afoot, the political becomes very personal, and
popular culture gives voice to some of the resulting confusion.
LORETTA LYNN
Lynn, the first woman ever to be named the Country Music Association’s
“Entertainer of the Year” in 1972, is a great example of this paradox. Her signature song,
“Coal Miner’s Daughter,” tells the story of her childhood, growing up in a poor miner’s
family. She sings about how proud she is of the impoverished, rural background she
comes from, and about how hard her father worked for every penny he made. Despite the
hardship, she communicates nostalgia for these days when she sings, “We were poor but
we had love. That’s the one thing that Daddy made sure of” (“Coal Miner’s Daughter”).
She has been known to say things in interviews that challenged social mores of the time.
In a 1972 profile, she told George Vecsey that people don’t start fighting until they get
married, and therefore, they should just live together (New York Times). She is critical of
her philandering man in “Your Squaw is on the Warpath” (1968) and “You’ve Just
Stepped in From Stepping Out on Me” (1968), while in “Fist City” (1968) and “Woman
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of the World” (1969), she excuses the philandering husband’s weaknesses while she
admonishes the other woman. Many of her hit songs deal with women’s issues like birth
control, pregnancy, unhappy marriages, cheating husbands, and she seems to fall squarely
into the character of a strong, independent woman of the working-class. According to
Curtis W. Ellison, she projects “an image of the woman’s assertive role in domestic
relationships that affirmed traditional marriage yet required of men a new degree of direct
personal attention from men” (171). Though it isn’t clear that she has the kind of control
of her situation that Ellison seems to be saying she has, or that the men in her songs/world
are rising to this requirement, it is clear that she is a multi-dimensional woman who is
acting out conflicted feelings on a public stage.
In a review of Lynn’s Love is the Foundation album, Robert Adels talks about the
“weak” and “strong” woman dichotomy in Lynn’s songs, and says that it’s not an
either/or proposition (80). She’s both, onstage and off, and she continually proves this by
singing about independence and freedom, while enduring a personal life full of the well-
documented transgressions of the man she married when she was thirteen and stayed with
until his death in 1996. As mentioned before, she also sings songs in which she blames
“the other woman” for her own husband’s misbehavior, making excuses for the man
while holding the woman to a different, perhaps higher, standard.
Lynn wed Oliver “Mooney” Lynn in 1947. She had four children before the age of
eighteen. Throughout her career, she has used her life experiences as a source of
inspiration in her songwriting and singing, which is part of the reason she is so popular.
She didn’t have the happiest home life. Her husband was a drinker and philanderer. She
has said that her children were disappointments to her, and she lost a young son. She was
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hospitalized for various ailments, and in 1976, had a breakdown on stage. These
weaknesses only served to endear her to fans even more (Bufwack 313). She is a figure
beloved by millions of country music fans, many of them women who closely identify
with her and the themes she explores in song.
Music critic Lester Bangs wrote in a review of Lynn’s One’s On the Way album,
It’s the life of every housewife stultified by the drudgery of

washing and ironing and struggling to keep the kids in line day
after day, seemingly without rhyme or reason, beginning or end, for
lifetimes…. And when they turn on the TV and look out at the rest
of the world which actually seems to be moving somewhere, other
than from kitchen to laundromat, I imagine they feel like Loretta
does. (Country Music, 14)
Bangs seems to be ascribing “the problem that has no name” to Lynn’s musical persona.
This implies that she feels trapped in her life, and yearns to escape from something. His
description contains an undercurrent of hopelessness that Lynn doesn’t really seem to
communicate, and her fans don’t really seem to feel.
“Most of the women like me…They could see I was Loretta

Lynn, a mother and a wife and a daughter, who had feelings
just like other women. Sure, I wanted men to like me, but
the women were something special. They’d come around
to the bus after the show, and they’d ask to talk to me. They
felt I had the answer to their questions, because my life was
just like theirs” (Bufwack, 312).
Her fans ostensibly identify with her because they see her struggling to figure out how to
assert her independence, not allow herself to be taken for granted, AND simultaneously
work at being a contributing member of her family and partner to her husband. It’s pretty
clear that she posits herself not as a victim of her circumstances, but as a woman working
her way through life, with all of its complications and rewards. However, it’s also
obvious that her life is nothing like that of the women who adore her. Bufwack and
19
Oermann call her “an articulate spokeswoman for abused working-class women.” They
contend that her “sassy” point of view has a liberating effect on her audience (Women in
Country Music 98). It might be more accurate to consider that though her digs toward the
system are delivered with a lot of character and wit, and that while she clearly condemns
the bad behavior of her man, she does not condemn the system that permits the bad
behavior (Horstman 319). In 1973, Lynn got an honorable mention in a Gallup poll of the
world’s most admired women (Ellison 177). Any contradictions notwithstanding, her
work was resonating with women around the country.
In an interview with Steven Fuller, Lynn says, “I definitely think a man should be
the head of the house. I think a woman should get the same pay if she’s doin’ a man’s job,
but I’m not sayin’ I think it’s good that she’s in that factory. I think they should raise a
man’s pay and take the woman out” (31). In her house, however, she was the
breadwinner.
Lynn has a very clear sense of the issue of reproductive rights and their effect on
the economy and stability of the working class household. When “The Pill” was released
in 1975, it caused quite a stir. Even though the “calico curtain” had long been torn, after
Jeannie Seely wore a mini-skirt on the Grand Ole Opry in 1967, Sammi Smith had
already asked a lover to help her make it through the night in 1970, and 16-year old Tanya
Tucker had asked one to lay with her in a field of stone in 1974, the men who
programmed the radio stations were uncomfortable with a song about a woman who
realizes that she can control her own reproduction. Despite the fact that Lynn was a bona
fide superstar who appeared on television and magazine covers everywhere, radio stations
did not want to play “The Pill.”
20
You wined me and dined me when I was your girl.
Promised if I’d be your wife, you’d show me the world.
But all I’ve seen of this old world is a bed and a doctor bill.
I’m tearing down your brooder house, ‘cause now I’ve got the pill.
All these years I stayed at home while you had all your fun.
And every year that’s gone by, another baby’s come.
There’s gonna be some changes made right here on nursery hill.
You’ve set this chicken your last time, cause now I’ve got the pill.
This old maternity dress I’ve got is going in the garbage.

The clothes I’m wearing from now on won’t take up so much yardage.
Mini-skirts, hot pants and a few little fancy frills,
I’m making up for all those years since I’ve got the pill.
I’m tired of all your crowing, how you and your hens play.
While holding a couple in my arms, another’s on the way.
This chicken’s done tore up her nest and I’m ready to make a deal.
And you can’t afford to turn it down, ‘cause you know I’ve got the pill.
This incubator is overused because you kept it filled.

The feeling good comes easy now, since I’ve got the pill.
It’s getting dark, it’s roosting time. Tonight’s too good to be real.
But Daddy, don’t you worry none ‘cause Mama’s got the pill.
Lynn said that radio programmers were “scared to death” of the song. She said, “It’s like
a challenge to the man’s way of thinking. They’ll play a song about making love in a
field, because they think that’s sexy…” Despite their reluctance, Lynn’s fans, whom she
contends are women, forced the stations to play it, and it reached #5 on the country chart
(Whitburn 219). Lynn talks about reproductive rights:
I’m glad I had six kids, because I can’t imagine my life without
‘em. But I think a woman needs control over her own life, and
the pill is what helps her do it…. I don’t think I could have an
abortion. It would be wrong for me. But I’m thinking of all the
poor girls who get pregnant when they don’t want to be, and
how they should have a choice instead of leaving it up to some
politician or doctor who don’t have to raise the baby. I believe
they should be able to have an abortion” (Bufwack 311).
21
In Fire With Fire Naomi Wolf points out some of the shortcomings of the second wave
when she says that feminists felt pressure to espouse philosophies that didn’t necessarily
fit into their real life feelings. She specifically addresses this idea in her discussion of her
own feelings about abortion, and the feminist doctrine with regard to the subject. She says
that if feminism doesn’t give women room to discuss abortion in terms they are
comfortable with, it will lose its right to claim that it is a reflection of real women’s
experience. The lack of a line-item veto left many women feeling like they couldn’t
support the whole platform (59). Lynn’s assertion that abortion is not right for her would
be something that Wolf might kiddingly tell her not to divulge to “the fem police,” but for
the former to say she is pro-choice positions her in an interesting place in relation to
country music.
TAMMY WYNETTE
When Lynn was asked about the sentiment behind Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By
Your Man,” she said, “I think you ought to stand by your man if he’s standin’ by you. If
he’s not standin’ by you, why move over!” (Offen 44.) As stated earlier, “Stand By Your
Man” has earned the scorn of many feminists over the past few decades, but it is a
contested text with multivalent readings, informed by both the singer (and in this case co-
writer) and listener. Bufwack contends that stylistic prejudice is the only way to account
for the fact that “Stand By Your Man’ elicited more of an outcry than Janis Joplin’s
“Piece of My Heart,” another popular song around the same time (171). On one level, the
song seems to say that if a man makes a mistake, his woman should stand by him.
However, when Tammy sings, “After all, he’s just a man,” she seems to be pointing away
22
from the idea that a woman needs to be submissive, and toward one of two other
possibilities: that women are morally superior to men, or that loyalty is paramount.
Bufwack and Oermann contend that Wynette is a masochist, aware of women’s superior
intellectual grasp, but resigned to accept their inferior status (Women in Country Music
98). Wynette said of the song, “If he’s worth being with at all, he’s worth seeing through
the bad times.” She said this in 1977, so it can’t be considered revisionist history (Dew
38). She also points out a working class reality in another interview when she says that
back home in Mississippi, women stood by their men because they had no choice. They
had no education (Guralnick 37). Back home, a man was an economic necessity.
Other female country music stars discussed “Stand By Your Man” in the
Women’s Issue of Country Music Magazine in 1974. Jessi Colter said that though a
woman sang the song, loyalty was a two-way street, and could just as easily have been
sung by a man. Jeannie C. Riley said that she hated the “If you love him, you’ll forgive
him” line. Lynn Anderson felt that it was a love song, reflecting the strongest feelings a
woman can have (Offen 44). The critics weren’t quite as kind or diplomatic. Dorothy
Horstman wrote that Wynette set back the gains made by Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn by
being a doormat. She says Wynette was “cynically” and “callously” packaged (Malone
Country 321).
Far more potentially “submissive” Wynette hits than “Stand By Your Man”
include “The Ways To Love a Man” (1969), in which the woman states the importance of
knowing all of the ways to love a man in order to keep him; “He Loves Me All the Way”
(1970) in which the woman is content with the love she gets from her man when he
comes home after being out all night; “Woman to Woman” (1974) in which one woman
23
advises another that because there is a better-looking temptress out in the world inclined
to steal her man, so it’s in her best interest to work hard to keep their men happy; “My
Man” (1972) in which she sings, “My man understands that he holds me in the palm of
his hand, and I like it;" and “You Make Me Want to Be a Mother,” the theme of which
can be deduced from the title. There’s also “Good Lovin’” (1971) in which Wynette sings
“it takes a whole lotta woman to keep it together today," implying that she needs to
compete with a lot of forces in the modern world to keep a man’s attention. In 1970, a
Billboard advertisement heralded the arrival of a new Wynette single that urged wronged
women not to leave their men: "With apologies to the women's liberation movement, we
present Tammy's next number one single...'Run Woman, Run'."
However, as Douglas Kellner points out, cultural texts are not inherently “liberal”
or “conservative.” Many of them attempt to cover both ends of that spectrum and all in
between, in order to maximize audience (93). Others represent specific positions, but are
often undercut by the text. If what has been revealed as Wynette’s “private” life is
considered part of the text, another conflicted message emerges.
Wynette grew up in a small Mississippi farmhouse with no running water or
electricity. Her father died before she was a year old, and her grandparents raised her
while her mother went off to work. As a girl, she worked in the family business, cotton
farming, for several years. She married at 17, and left her first husband, fed up with his
abuse and their poverty, while she was pregnant with her third child. She managed to get
her beauticians license and worked at a beauty parlor in Birmingham, Alabama while she
tried to work on her singing. She and her three toddlers moved to Nashville with no
24
prospects, and she knocked on doors for a long time before meeting Billy Sherrill, who
would become her mentor and producer.
In all she was married five times and divorced four, and in her biography she
details the tumultuous courtships and marriages, as well as her experience raising five
children. Her most notorious marriage was to country star George Jones, who she married
in 1968 and divorced in 1975 (Wynette). In 1989, Jones said of Wynette, “I don’t think
she tried to help me understand her. I think she took the quick way out” (Ellison 140).
Though his perspective is arguably clouded, his well-documented misdeeds were
apparently enough to make her not want to stand by her man.
Wynette encountered sexual discrimination when she first moved to Nashville.
Agents declined to work with her for fear that her family obligations would interfere. Said
Wynette in an interview on an unspecified date, “We had our own liberation movement
going, but I don’t think any of us were aware of it…. All I wanted was the right to work
in my chosen field with as much respect as the men who did the same job” (Bufwack
337). However, in another interview in 1979 she said that being a woman never really
worked against her, except in the very early days when agents told her that they didn’t
have much luck with female artists (Guralnick 39). In 1974 she said, “I won’t go out and
work for women’s liberation, because I AM free, but I will teach my children in my home
that they’re equal to any man, because that’s how I feel” (Offen Darlin’ 44). She seems to
have a sense of the changing climate with regard to gender roles. She said, “I’m glad my
daughters are growing up in times when girls are taught not to be so dependent on men”
(Dew 58). Linden-Ward and Green point to what they see as the real legacy of the sixties:
25
the internalization of feminism by women who weren’t active in a movement (443).
Wynette’s hopes for her daughters seem to point in that direction.
In “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad” (1967), a song that’s arguably more Loretta
than Tammy, Wynette’s character displays a biting wit and a keen sense of irony when
she lets her man know that she’s on to him.
I've never seen the inside of a barroom,

Or listened to the jukebox all night long,
But I see these are the things that bring you pleasure,
So I'm gonna make some changes in our home.
I've heard it said if you can't beat 'em join 'em
So if that's the way you've wanted me to be
I'll change if it takes that to make you happy
From now on you're gonna see a different me
Because your good girl's a gonna go bad
I'm gonna be the swinginest swinger you've ever had
If you like 'em painted up, powdered up then you oughta be glad
Cause your good girl's gonna go bad.
One does not get the sense that the woman is planning on bending to the man’s will in
this instance; she’s sarcastically stating her displeasure at the situation she finds herself
in. However, this sassy song was a hit early in her career, in 1967, and Billy Sherrill
seems to have abandoned this kind of song in favor of others. Wynette said,
Well, Billy won’t let me cut very many cheating-type

songs, because he says that isn’t what the public expects of
me. And it really isn’t. Sometimes I hear songs that are
different, that are totally away from what I’m used to doing
that I would very much like to do. And then again I think
of the different reviews and the things people write about
the top songs I do, and I’m almost FORCED to stay where I
am (Guralnick 38).
Sherrill figured out early that what Wynette’s audience wanted wasn’t sassy or liberated
or aggressive. Her audience was ostensibly happiest and most inclined to open their
purses when she was demure, or when she was stating her unhappiness in simple terms,
26
by putting words into the mouths of babes in songs like “I Don’t Want to Play House”
(1967), “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” (1968) and “Kids Say the Darndest Things” (1973).
This mediated image of Wynette, perpetrated by Billy Sherrill, the record buying
public and Wynette herself, was the figure that was projected on the America cultural
landscape. In the liner notes to the Tears of Fire CD collection, Dolly Carlisle writes,
“She is a woman just as strong, just as committed to her beliefs as the feminists who have
criticized her over the years. Indeed, Tammy actually walked the making-it-on-your-own
act that many of them only talked about…. Her voice cried out for the silent majority,
befuddled and confused by this sudden upheaval” (6). Kellner talks about the encoding
and decoding of cultural artifacts, saying that an active audience will produce their own
meaning (30). This conflicted voice resonated with conflicted working-class women who
listened to it, providing a forum for examining their places in their relationships, their
jobs and their world. In 1972, Wynette sang
I’ll just keep on falling in love til I get it right

Right now I’m like a wounded bird, hungry for the sky
But if I try my wings and try long enough
I’m bound to learn to fly.
So I’ll just keep on falling in love til I get it right
My door to love has opened out more times than in

And I’m either fool or wise enough to open it again
Cause I’ll never know what’s beyond the mountain
Til I reach the other side.
So I’ll just keep on falling in love til I get it right.
If practice makes perfect

Then I’m near bout as perfect as I’ll ever be in my life.
So I’ll just keep on falling in love til I get it right.
27
Wynette had a private life fraught with turmoil (at least as it was mediated by cultural
artifacts), but her fans loved her because she had the ability to vocalize their heartbreak
and confusion. As evidenced above, she also had a talent for finding optimism in
heartbreak, which undoubtedly spoke to many.
DOLLY PARTON
Where Lynn and Wynette, in both their on and off-stage personas, give voice to
some of the confusion and frustration in the re-ordering of gender roles and male-female
relationships, Dolly Parton uses exaggerated femininity, tons of business savvy, a gift for
songwriting and a crystal clear soprano to create a package so outrageous and attractive
that it’s subversive without being threatening. She embodies excessive womanliness in
such a way that it becomes social parody (Wilson 104). The comic value of her persona
renders it non-threatening to the hegemonic order. She uses music and humor to
communicate some of the complexities of the life of the modern working class woman,
and in doing so, provides a degree of empowerment to her female working class listeners.
In an interview with Dave Hickey she said, “All the liberated women I know are out
supporting shiftless men. GO-GETTERS, you remember that song of mine? He’s a go-
getter. When his wife gets off from work, he’ll go get her” (25). In another interview she
said, “I had my own opinion long before women’s liberation. I figure what’s good for the
goose is good for the gander” (Offen Darlin’ 44). She doesn’t publicly oppose the goals
of feminism, and has always allied herself with other strong, self-sufficient women
(Wilson 113). Parton says, “I never sold myself out. I never went to bed with anybody
unless I wanted to, never for business reasons…. I’ve always been proud that I had my
28
own success, that I’ve never had to depend on a man for it” (Bufwack 369). Parton’s
persona is that of a woman who survives and thrives through her own formidable
resources.
Parton was the fourth of 12 children born in a mountain cabin in Tennessee. She
was the first of her family to graduate high school, and she moved to Nashville the day
after graduation. Many of her songs, like “The Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad),”
“Coat of Many Colors,” and “My Tennessee Mountain Home” deal nostalgically with her
poor childhood, and situate her as a working-class heroine. Some of her songs also deal
with womanhood, addressing issues of socialization and discrimination in modern
society. In “Daddy Come and Get Me,” she takes on the role of a woman asking her
father to help her, because her philandering husband had her committed to an institution.
“Dumb Blonde,” her first hit single in 1967 declared, “Just because I'm blonde, don't
think I'm dumb, cause this dumb blonde ain't nobody's fool.” In 1968, the title track of her
first solo album, “Just Because I’m a Woman,” also became a hit, despite some
controversy.
I can see you're disappointed by the way you look at me

And I'm sorry that I'm not the woman you thought I'd be
Yes, I've made my mistakes, but listen and understand
My mistakes are no worse than yours just because I'm a woman
So when you look at me don't feel sorry for yourself

Just think of all the shame you might have brought somebody else
Just let me tell you this then we'll both know where we stand
Now a man will take a good girl and he'll ruin her reputation
But when he wants to marry well, that's a different situation
He'll just walk off and leave her to do the best she can
While he looks for an angel to wear his wedding band
29
Now I know that I'm no angel if that's what you thought you'd found
I was just the victim of a man that let me down
Yes, I've made my mistakes but listen and understand
No, my mistakes are no worse than yours just because I'm a woman
(Parton).
According to Alanna Nash, Parton’s biographer, her progressive thinking, as evidenced in
songs like this, is allegedly one of the reasons Parton was not named the Country Music
Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year until 1975 (130).
In keeping with country music’s proclivity toward focusing on the life of the
individual, in 1974 Parton said, I really don’t know what to say when people ask me
about women’s liberation. My life is a special kind of life. I mean it’s MY life so I don’t
know what it has to do with the way other women live. I’m just trying to put legs on my
dreams” (Hickey 25). At the same time, she acknowledges the way in which her audience
lives vicariously through the Dolly persona. She says, “People don’t come to see the
shows to see you be you. They come to see you be them and what they want to be”
(Bufwack and Oermann liner notes). Following this line of reasoning, what Dolly’s
female fans wanted to be was a warm, glamorous, self-sufficient woman.
Parton’s “popular feminism,” as Pamela Wilson refers to it, speaks to segments of
the working class who can’t relate to “liberal feminist rhetoric.” Wilson says,
As a popular feminist and an advocate of the rural working

class, Parton employs a counter-hegemonic rhetoric that
seems sentimental, emotional, and non-threatening to those
in the power bloc, who often perceive it as comical and
ineffectual. Yet her subversive strategies are powerful. Far
from serving as a vehicle for the dominant ideology,
Parton's star image provides a rich, multidimensional
configuration of signifiers that exploit the contradictory
meanings inherent to that image. ‘Dolly’ may well make
30
Parton's fans aware of their own social positioning and
thereby encourage alternative readings and practices (115).
In Moving the Mountain, Flora Davis addresses the problem of exclusion in the largely
white, middle-class women’s movement. She is discussing the issue of race, and she says
that as white feminists began to think about this disparity, they found initially that it
would be a difficult problem to rectify. She says that part of the problem was a lack of
understanding about the importance of ethnic identification. Though African-American
women were interested in equality, they did not want to be integrated into a white,
middle-class movement (356-57). This idea, applied to issues of class, or perhaps even
regional identity, bears examination. Rural working-class women, strongly identifying
themselves as such, had problems with the color and tone of the public movement. In
identifying with an artist like Parton, they were expressing an awareness of their social
positioning, and perhaps thinking about ways in which they might use their power to
change their lives.
Much of Parton’s power is drawn from her ownership of her own sexuality, at
least as it relates to the Dolly persona. (Her mediated personal life is rife with rumor and
questions about her sexuality.) Though she has said in interviews that she does not see
herself as being a sex symbol, her exaggerated femininity – the cascading blonde hair,
ample make-up, and particularly the large breasts she accentuates by wearing tight, ornate
clothing, contradict her statements. She designed her appearance in such a way that she
can simultaneously exploit male fantasies while maintaining her dignity and being in
complete control (Wilson 104). She is also very forthcoming about the fact that “Dolly” is
an act in such a way that her disingenuousness is entirely genuine. This paradox
31
eliminates any threat a female listener might perceive from a hypersexual performer who
trades in engaging male fantasies. They admire her self-determination and relate to her
down-home demeanor.
Parton’s projection about authenticity is more overt than Lynn’s and Wynette’s,
but theirs is no less central to their appeal. Parton openly admits that “Dolly” is a
construct, and the admission itself is an integral part of her persona. Lynn and Wynette
are less forthcoming in their image creation, positioning themselves as real women with
real problems similar to those of the women in their audiences. Looking at the
autobiographies of Lynn, Wynette and Parton, Pamela Fox writes about the mediated
quality of these books, and the way in which they become part of the “text” of the artists’
persona (233) The ability to court the fans’ identification, by positioning themselves as
real women from humble beginnings with real problems is all part of the performance,
and every bit as significant as the songs. In his book about the fabrication of authenticity
in country music, Richard Peterson defines the concept as a socially agreed upon idea in
which the past is mediated and embellished as opposed to remembered. This
disremembered past is then molded, disseminated and commodified by the music
business. The degree to which the audience consumes this commodification helps to
determine the character of future works (Peterson 5). This doesn’t mean that the art and
the artist are reflecting or influencing the audience. In fact, it means they’re doing both.
Media culture induces both conformity and empowerment (Kellner 3). By supporting
these artist economically, and letting them know the impact that their songs and their
public performances had (including in-character non-music performances like interviews,
32
etc.), women who made country music popular gave voice to their favorite artists as much
as these artists gave voice to their fans’ hopes, fears and concerns.
RILEY, GENTRY, ANDERSON – CROSSOVER GIRLS
Lynn, Wynette and Parton were certainly not the only women charting in music at
the time, and there were a few that crossed over to the pop charts as well, signaling a shift
from a somewhat narrow demographic for country music to a wider audience. Starting in
1968 with “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” a number one hit that crossed over to hit number one
on the pop charts as well, Jeannie C. Riley had a string of over a dozen hits during the
relevant period. Through the eyes of her teenage daughter, the song tells the story of Mrs.
Johnson, a mini-skirted Mom (implied to be single) who rails against the hypocrisy of the
townsfolk who have the nerve to pass judgment on her. It has a sassy guitar line to go
along with the sassy lyrics, and the album cover shows the lovely Riley, with long,
flowing red hair, dressed in a dark, sexy mini-skirt and go-go boots, standing defiantly
with her hands on her hips. A smaller picture on the left-hand side of the album shows
her in another, more feminine mini, with her arm around her daughter, ostensibly
discussing the damning letter the townsfolk gave her to give to her Mom.
The song was written by Tom T. Hall and chosen for Riley by producer Shelby
Singleton, who wanted her to do the song because he felt that it captured the “angry mood
of the country” in the summer of 1968. Riley, a poor girl from Texas trapped in a bad
marriage and so unsure of herself that she had been bullied into bad recording and
management deals, didn’t want to record it, but allowed herself to be intimidated (Riley
16). She beautifully illustrated a political versus personal dichotomy when she said:
33
Harper Valley PTA was a fascinating blend of explosive
parts. The nation was angry. I was angry. Not at the same
things, for I really didn’t care that much about the national
situation nor about small town hypocrisy. I was just angry
at the people around me. Angry at myself for being the kind
of woman I was, pushed around by everyone. Angry at
being lied to. Angry for believing the lies. And I was ready
to sock it to the entire world… (Riley 70-71).
Channeling her personal feelings, she infused the song with so much venom that it was
entirely believable as an indictment of society, and people bought it. However, she had
never felt any affinity for the song and its more universal themes. Even after it became a
huge hit, she wanted to distance herself from it.
That's been the hardest thing for me to cope with. The

public has this image of me rooted in their minds by my
early records and they so often think of the real me as the
people I am in my songs. I've never had a sarcastic or sassy
personality….I just went along with the image that my
record label created with ‘Harper Valley’ (Monaghan
newsletter).
She looked and sounded like Madison Avenue’s new liberated woman that Faludi
refers to, pointing to their intentional confusion between self-determination and self-
gratification, but she was really just an unhappy woman who did as she was told, and
whose career was helmed by a man who forbid her to wear a full-length dress. Riley
chose a long dress for the 1968 Country Music Awards ceremony, but Singleton had it cut
into a mini, in keeping with the image he had created for her (Bufwack and Oermann
Finding 325).
She had some other hits, including “The Girl Most Likely” (1968), in which the
singer is the girl from the poor family that everyone thought would get knocked up,
though it turns out that it’s the rich doctor’s daughter that end up pregnant. “The Rib”
34
(1969) is ridiculous song about women’s’ place in relation to men, that rejects a bunch of
other bones and settles on the idea that the woman is the rib. In “Good Enough to Be
Your Wife,” (1971) the singer tells her beloved that she won’t live with him unless they
marry. None of these recordings approached the success of “Harper Valley.” In 1972,
Riley became born again and her recording career faltered. She was still performing
though, and in the early 70’s, part of her stage show became changing into a mini-skirt to
do the “Harper Valley” portion of the act (Offen Riley 64).
Riley is a good example of an artist who somehow managed to take a situation
that was artificially constructed by the Nashville music industry – the song she didn’t
believe in, the clothes she wouldn’t have worn if she’d had the choice – and make it seem
genuine. She took possession of the song in a way that no one else arguably could have,
despite her reservations about it. In this instance it is impossible to separate the singer
from the song. It was such a giant hit that its themes must have spoken to many women
struggling with the hypocrisy of the double standard. This illustrates the industry’s ability
to identify a cultural need, and then target it in a way that is profitable. The
commodification of the theme however, makes it no less powerful when it truly connects
with the listener, and inspires her to apply its ideas to her situation.
In 1967, Bobbie Gentry had a #17 hit on the country chart that crossed over and
became a #1 hit on the pop chart. “Ode to Billie Joe” was a song ostensibly about a
suicide, but Gentry claimed in interviews that it was about indifference, and the lack of
understanding between a mother and a daughter of two different generations. She claimed
that this song, like many of her others, was an examination of human nature. (Capitol
press release). Gentry’s next solo hit was the aforementioned “Fancy” in 1969, a
35
frightening narrative about a young woman pushed into prostitution by a dying mother
who believes that this is the only economic option for her daughter.
I remember it all very well, looking back,

It was the summer I turned 18
We lived in a run-down one-room shack
On the outskirts of New Orleans
We didn’t have money for food or rent
To say the least we were hard pressed
Then Mama spent every last penny we had
To buy me a dancing dress.
Mama washed and combed and curled my hair
And she painted my eyes and lips
And then I stepped into a satin dancing dress
It was split up the side clean up to my hips
It was red, velvet trim, and it fit me good.
And staring back from the looking glass was a woman
Where a half-growed kid had stood
Here’s your one chance Fancy. Don’t let me down.

Mama dabbed a little bit of perfume on me

And she kissed my cheek
And I saw the tears well up in her troubled eyes
When she started to speak.
She looked at our pitiful shack
And then she looked at me and took a ragged breath
“Your Pa’s run off, and I’m real sick,
And the baby’s gonna starve to death.”
She handed me a heart-shaped locket that said
To thine own self be true.
And I shivered as I watch a roach crawl across
The toe of my high heel shoe
It sounded like somebody else that was taking,
Asking Mama what do I do?
Just be nice to the gentlemen Fancy,
And they’ll be nice to you.

Lord, forgive me for what I do,
But if you want out, well it’s up to you.
Now get on out girl, you better start moving uptown
36
Well that was the last time I saw my Ma,
The night I left that rickety shack
Cause the welfare people came and took the baby,
Mama died, and I ain’t been back.
But the wheels of fate had started to turn
And for me there was no way out
It wasn’t very long til I knew exactly
What my Mama’d been talking about
I did what I had to do, but I made myself a solemn vow
That I was gonna be a lady someday,
Though I didn’t know when or how
I couldn’t see spending the rest of my life
With my head hung down in shame.
I might have been born just plain white trash,
But Fancy was my name.

It wasn’t long after a benevolent man

Took me in off the street
And one week later I was pouring his tea
In a five-room hotel suite.
I charmed a king, a congressman,
And an occasional aristocrat
Then I got me a Georgia mansion
And an elegant New York townhouse flat
And I ain’t done bad.
In this world, there’s a lot of self-righteous hypocrites

That would call me bad
And criticize my Mama for turning me out
No matter how little we had
And though I ain’t had to worry about nothing
For nigh on fifteen years
I can still hear the desperation
In my poor Mama’s voice ringing in my ears.

Lord, forgive me for what I do,
But if you want out, well it’s up to you.
Now don’t let me down,
Your Mama’s gonna help you move uptown
37
And I guess she did.
Like “Ode to Billie Joe,” this song crossed over to the pop charts. In a world where
marriages are dissolving in unprecedented numbers, and single mothers are quickly being
submerged below the poverty line, the need to provide for children can lead to desperate
acts. It is also interesting to note the combination of shame, pride and resignation that
Fancy feels about what has happened to her.
Gentry is a compelling figure because though she had hit songs, she never really
seemed to fulfill her promise. She became extremely popular in England, but never really
achieved the same success in the United States. The biographical material released by
Capitol Records makes mention of the fact that she studied philosophy at UCLA, but
makes more of the fact that she was born in the Mississippi Delta and raised by her
sharecropper grandparents. It also mentions the fact that she is an accomplished musician,
though it doesn’t mention that she studied composition and theory at the Los Angeles
Conservatory of Music. In fact, when the bio lists banjo as one of the many instruments
she plays, the word is punctuated with an exclamation point, relegating this particular
talent to the land of the strange and bizarre (Capitol press release).
Most of her record company bio material is devoted to lurid descriptions of her
physical appearance.
Saying that Bobbie Gentry is a 'beauty' is like dismissing a

leopard as being a member of the cat family.’ Not classic
beauty, but the infinite, subtle variations possible within
womanhood. There's the lithe dancer's body, well arranged
on a five-foot six-and-one-half inch frame, capable of high-
fashion model smoothness or a sensuous slink. The face, all
high cheekbones and cat eyes, transforms in an instant from
smoldering promises to impishness. A tousled mane of
38
reddish-brown hair. A feather boa and bare feet. Low slung
Levis and lace-up boots (Capitol 1971).
The cover of the “Fancy” LP features a voluptuous drawing of Gentry in red, evocative
of a cartoonish New Orleans bordello.
In 1970, 27-year old Gentry married 58-year old casino mogul William Harrah,
and they separated after three and a half months (AP, Tennessean). In 1979, she divorced
singer Jim Stafford after eleven months of marriage (Herguth). In between her marriages
in 1974, she bought herself out of her Capitol contract, frustrated by personnel turnover
and artistic interference. She said, “I produce my own records… -but a woman doesn’t
stand a chance in a recording studio. A staff producer’s name was nearly always put on
the records. I wanted some freedom and some control with my own songs and recording”
(Anderson). The tumultuous marriages and dissatisfaction with the system may point to
the reason why a woman as talented as Gentry did not have a long and successful career.
It would seem that she might have been perceived as difficult.
Lynn Anderson may have been confusing self-gratification with self-
determination in 1974, or she may have been asserting the idea that the two are
intertwined, when she said that she thought maybe women’s lib was responsible for
women “enforcing their opinions, buying records.” The daughter of Liz Anderson, a very
successful country songwriter, responsible for several of Merle Haggard’s early hits, Lynn
Anderson first gained national exposure as a regular on The Lawrence Welk Show
beginning in 1967 (Bufwack and Oermann Finding 390-391).
Though she had recording successes beginning in 1968, she became a superstar
with the success on the country and pop charts of “Rose Garden,” a Joe South song
39
inspired by a popular novel about mental illness in females. She had a very glamorous
image, often photographed in designer clothing, and starring in her own television
specials (Bufwack and Oermann Finding 390-391). She is described in an undated
Columbia records bio: “The tiny blonde, elegant in a slinky maroon pants outfit tucked
into silver studded boots and topped by a matching suede English riding hat, slid behind
the wheel of her equally elegant Mercedes.” The second paragraph details her throwing
BBQ ribs into the back seat for her dog (undated Columbia bio). In a 1974 interview, she
talks about the fact that she thinks that her audience, who she believes to be primarily
housewives, are looking for truth and realism in music, and would be able to pick up on
any insincerity she might project. She goes on to say: "Let's face it - there's a minority of
people involved in intellectual talk. More people are involved in the price of oatmeal.
People tune out if they don't understand" (National Star). She seems to position herself in
opposition to what she perceives to be the women’s lib movement. She says that the man
should be the breadwinner, and “a woman needs to consider this before striving to place
herself in a position which will often leave her alone in more ways than one." Despite
this, she says that the reason that she doesn’t stay home and raise her family is because
God gave her a talent that she is obliged to use (Shestack 10). In a 1974 interview, she
confesses to Carol Offen that it’s not easy to be in a position of superiority over men in
the world of business, and she often falls back on the hapless woman routine to make it
palatable to them and her (Offen Darlin’ 42). She doesn’t specify whether her God-given
talent is singing or the business acumen that affords her a mansion, pool and servants.
Most of Anderson’s hits have her telling her man he shouldn’t cheat on her (“No
Another Time,” “That’s a No No,” “Keep Me in Mind”) or singing about how happy she
40
is in her relationship (“You’re My Man,” “Sing About Love,” “Smile For Me,” “What a
Man My Man Is”). Most of her hits were also written by her husband, Glenn Sutton. She
seems to eschew the feminist slogan, coined in 1970, “a woman needs a man like a fish
needs a bicycle” when she sings about bad love being better than no love in her 1970 hit,
“No Love At All” (Irina Dunn http://phrases.shu.ac.uk/meanings/414150.html.)
It would seem that the world outside of Nashville had discovered the money-
making power of country girl singers, and Anderson was one of the women (along with
the likes of Barbara Mandrell, Crystal Gale, Anne Murray, Donna Fargo, Olivia Newton-
John) who signified the beginnings of what Bufwack and Oermann refer to as
“Hollywood, Tennessee” (Bufwack and Oermann, Finding 388). Many of the country hits
by these women crossed over to the pop charts as well, and gained much wider exposure
to American audiences through radio and television.
OTHER GIRL SINGERS
Jeannie Seely, who is known as the woman who crashed the calico curtain by
wearing a mini-skirt on the notoriously conservative Grand Ole Opry in 1966, had a
number two hit that same year. “Don’t Touch Me if You Don’t Love Me” seems to
acknowledge a woman’s need to think about the double standard. “To have you, then lose
you, wouldn’t be smart on my part.” She also seems to be acknowledging her own
weakness, by asking the man not to toy with her. Though it is unclear whether this was
public knowledge outside of Music Row, and odds are it wasn’t, Seely and then-husband
Hank Cochran had an open marriage (Oermann, Willie & Jeannie). Among her dozen or
so hit songs in this period was a 1973 number 3 hit, “Can I Sleep in Your Arms,” a song
41
in which, after a breakup, a woman asks “Can I sleep in you arms tonight, mister? It's so
cold lying here all alone.” Extra-marital sex was a popular theme in country music by
women at the time.
Wanda Jackson made a name for herself as a rockabilly artist in the 50’s and 60’s,
but recorded country songs as well. In 1967, she charted with “A Girl Don’t Have to
Drink to Have Fun,” in which she admonishes a man for trying to slip her a mickey, and
again in 1969 with “My Big Iron Skillet,” in which she threatens to whack her husband
over the head with her kitchen implement if he does not behave.
Dottie West had a string of hits that addressed themes of love, loss, nostalgia and
cheating, and she was an interesting character off stage as well. She was known for
supporting up-and-coming talent, men and women alike, and is said to be responsible for
having discovered Larry Gatlin and Steve Wariner. She addressed the issue of
independence: “It’s hard for a man to accept an independent woman. I am not really into
women’s lib, but at the same time, I know I am very independent.” After her marriage
broke up because her husband cheated, she remarried in 1972, changing the words in her
vows from “til death do us part” to “as long as love shall last.” Her new husband was 12
years her junior, and she worried that her fans would be angry. On the contrary, she said
they were very supportive and her career blossomed (Bufwack and Oermann, Finding
262). In an interview with Carol Offen, asked about being a housewife, West said, “It’d
almost be like a prison, I would think, just to spend your life at home” (Offen 44).
Billie Jo Spears, who in 1969 had professed her disgust with “the New York
secretary’s life” before storming home to the country in “Mr. Walker It’s All Over,” sang
about teen pregnancy in “Marty Gray” the following year.
42
Big Jimmy Baker and Marty Gray met at a teenage party
Jimmy took Marty to school the next day. Both of them were tardy
Sitting in the parking lot talking over things. They’re waiting for the
morning bell to ring
Two little love birds loose on the wing, Jimmy Baker and Marty
Kids in love now what can you do

But listen to the cooing
Pretty little blonde haired Marty Gray
Does your mama know what you’re doing?
Bet your mama don’t know what you’re doing
Big Jimmy Baker’s on the football team. Marty’s wearing his sweater
Listen to ‘em talking in the locker room. Man, he’s a real go getter
Telling Marty bout the facts of life. He says there’ll be no other
Someday she’s gonna be his wife. He learned that line from his brother
Down at the drive in Friday night, didn’t come to see the movie
Parked in the back and away from the light, Jimmy said isn’t this groovy
Under the seat a bottle and a bag, made to effect the senses
Poured out a drink for Marty Gray and broke down her defenses
Big Jimmy Baker and Marty Gray, no longer going together

The fire of love burned out they say. Marty’s feeling under the weather
Town turns out to have a big day, football hero’s going away
But Marty’s got the price to pay. And Jimmy’s gonna let her. (Woodward)
It’s a cautionary tale that makes no bones about the fact that boys are dogs. She revisits an
element of that theme in her 1971 hit “It Could a Been Me,” in which the singer has a
crush on a new boy, who goes out with her best friend instead. The best friend gets
pregnant, and the boy runs off. Her biggest hit, the sensual “Blanket on the Ground”
(1975) has the singer imploring her husband to try to recapture the excitement of their
youthful courtship, offering to get a blanket from the bedroom and set it on the ground on
the spot where they used to romance one another.
Susan Raye was a protégé of West Coast country star Buck Owens, so she
probably wasn’t very influenced by the workings of Music Row, but she had some hits
43
that dealt with women’s issues. She was also a regular on the hit television show Hee
Haw for nine years. In “One Night Stand” (1970) she says she doesn’t do them. “L.A.
International Airport” (1971) chronicles a woman leaving her man, and though she is
upset about her situation, the fact that leaving on a jet plan is an option, suggests that this
woman lives a different life than the woman in Lynn’s “The Pill.” Raye wasn’t as much
of a country girl as Lynn. She also wasn’t as much of a survivor. In “Stop the World”
(1974) she wants to commit suicide over a failed relationship. One of Raye’s biggest hits
was a silly, happy song about having a baby called “Pitty Pitty Patter” (1971). Her 1972
Capitol press kit was a heart shaped locket made of paper, and her 1971 bio exclaims “If
you like a pretty girl who sings pretty songs more than prettily, you’re going to love
Susan Raye…” (bio).
In 1970, Sammi Smith, known for her affiliation with “outlaws” Waylon Jennings
and Willie Nelson, had a huge crossover hit with the sexually charged Kris Kristofferson
song “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” The songs themes of loneliness and desire
made it controversial. Said Smith, “I never did see anything scandalous about that song. I
never knew it was until I read the remarks from some of the other girl singers in
publications. For me it was just a very tender song. I honestly don’t see anything
distasteful about the song, now or then...” (Bufwack & Oermann Finding 446). In 1971,
she had a hit with a Shel Silverstein song called “For the Kids,” in which she tells her
husband they need to divorce for the good of the children. In 1972, she hit again with
Kristofferson with another song about extra-marital sex called “I’ve Got to Have You.”
She sings “I don’t know if it’s love, but it’s enough.”
44
The power of radio listeners was evident in 1972 (as it was in 1975 with Lynn’s
“The Pill”) with Barbara Fairchild’s “Teddy Bear,” a song in which the narrator is so
despondent over a lost love that she wishes she were a teddy bear, “with a wooden heart
and a sawdust mind.” It was not the song the record company expected radio stations to
play, but the listeners liked and it reached number 1 on the country charts, and crossed
over to the pop charts as well. Fairchild continued to have some hits with child-themed
songs. “Kid Stuff” (1973) equates growing apart in a relationship to growing up. “Baby
Doll” (1974) has her yearning to be a baby again, as opposed to a teddy bear. “Little Girl
Feeling” (1974) mourns the loss of her ability to feel like a little girl since her relationship
ended. Fairchild seems to represent some kind of retreat from the chaos of the gender re-
ordering of the day.
Thirteen-year-old Tanya Tucker burst on to the scene in 1972 with her first hit,
“Delta Dawn.” In 1973, she had her first number one, “What’s Your Mama’s Name,” a
song in which the singer is a child being confronted by her long-lost father, who had no
idea he had a daughter until recently. “Blood Red and Going Down,” (1973) is a
murderous tale about a mother’s infidelity told through the eyes of her ten-year-old
daughter. “Would You Lay With Me in a Field of Stone” was a hit in 1974, when Tucker
was just 16 years old. In the song, she asks a lover whether he will stand by her forever if
she gives herself to him. Her image, even at that tender age, was sexually charged.
Barbara Mandrell, who would go on to become on of the biggest country stars of
the 80’s, had her breakthrough hit in 1973, the same year that Roe v. Wade made abortion
constitutional. “Midnight Oil” was the story of a woman who is cheating on her husband
and feeling guilty about it but not being able to stop. Melba Montgomery had her only
45
number one hit with a song called “No Charge,” which seems to attempt to establish the
value of a mother’s work. In the song, her young son does some chores and asks to be
paid for them. The mother begins to list all of the jobs that are included in the task of
motherhood. She lists her work as a seamstress, accountant, teacher, nurse, etc., and
announces that for each service, there is no charge. She makes it clear that she’s a
working woman, though she does not get paid. She may also be defending herself against
those in the women’s movement who would look down on her as a housewife.
While all of this was going on, there were seismic social shifts occurring in the
United States related to several issues, but the second wave of the women’s movement
was in full swing. In 1967, NOW was officially incorporated, and May article in the Los
Angeles Times was entitled, "Working Wives Crying-All the Way to the Bank." 1968 saw
the first-ever national women’s liberation conference in Chicago and the Catholic Church
reaffirmed its objection to artificial birth control. In 1970 Time reported that less than half
of U.S. women were full-time homemakers and at a Democratic conference, Dr. Edgar
Berman declared that women were incapable of holding decision-making positions
because they were subject to “raging hormonal imbalances.” In 1971, the ERA passed the
House of Representatives, and President Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Care
Act, describing it as "the most radical piece of legislation to emerge from the 92nd
Congress" sure to "commit the vast moral authority of the national government to the side
of communal approaches to child-rearing" and "would lead to the Sovietization of
American children." In 1972, Ms. Magazine debuted, the ERA passed the Senate, and
Phyllis Schafly attacked the ERA for the first time in her newsletter. Roe v. Wade
legalized abortion in 1973 and a conservative Catholic lay organization called for the
46
excommunication of a Supreme Court justice for his role in its passage. In 1975, support
for the ERA began to unravel, and though NOW stepped up the pressure, the amendment
is not ratified (Feminist Chronicle website).
In the late 60’s and early 70’s, country music in general was starting to be
identified as right-wing. In “Don’t Get Above Your Raisin,’ Bill Malone identifies this
period as the first time in which country music takes on what he calls a “conservative
tenor” (239). As Paul Hemphill says, “During the 1968 Presidential campaign, Music
Row was practically a battlefield command post for George Wallace (162). Though this
was undoubtedly true, as evidenced in the lyrics of many popular country songs, as well
as the public support of country stars for conservative candidates and causes, it is
important to recognize that the resulting generalizations led to distorted outside public
perceptions about the music and its fan. Articles about country music and its political
leanings were alternately dismissive and accusing. In 1972, a CBS News commentator
insulted the intelligence of the Nixon administration by saying it was “headed by a man
whose taste in music runs to country-and-western and Lawrence Welk.” One writer called
country music an expression of southern bigotry, and in Harper’s, Florence King went so
far as to say that country music was the cause of working-class alienation. She said that
the relentless depression and disillusionment found in the music bred discouragement
among the working class, who listened to it constantly (Malone Raisin’ 244). Though it
happened on a much more limited scale, this media distortion is not unlike the negative
coverage suffered by the women’s movement.
47
Malone says that the country music artists were not defenders of the Vietnam
War. Their protests were against the protesters. They positioned themselves in opposition
to the pot-smoking, LSD-ingesting, draft card-burning hippies of “Okie from Muskogee.”
(Raisin’ 240-241). Women in country music weren’t defenders of the inequities they
suffered as women. They couldn’t identify with the bra-burning, man-hating,
masculinized feminists presented by the media.
In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci writes about the difference between what he
calls the “popular element” and the “intellectual element.” He says the popular element
“feels” but does not always know or understand. The intellectual element “knows” but
does not always understand and in particular does not always “feel.” He goes on to
identify “a real need” when he calls for “popular feelings to be known and studied in the
way in which they present themselves objectively and for them not to be considered
something negligible and inert within the movement of history” (418-19). He is critical of
the intellectuals for remaining separated from the masses, and for not truly understanding
their plight.
While it would be easy to leave it at that, and assume that country music
womanhood is made up of pure instinct, it would also be irresponsible. One only needs to
examine the career of a woman like Dolly Parton to know that she "thinks" every bit as
much as she "feels." Bufwack and Oermann go so far as to describe these women as what
Gramsci would call “organic intellectuals.” They say that the artists’ critical evaluation of
the working-class experience, and present relationships, coupled with their projection of
self-approving images, characterize them as women who “articulate aspirations for
liberation and change.” They point out that all of this must be qualified with the
48
commodifying influences of music that is marketed to the public (Women in Country
Music, 91). However, even at that, it is difficult to think of Dolly Parton, and many other
women discussed herein, in terms of being “organic.” On one hand, the performers could
be precisely the kind of intellectuals that Gramsci calls for – those who both “think” and
“feel.” On the other hand, this idea, applied to the view of some feminists toward some
women in country music brings up several questions, which, in some cases, point toward
misreading of some of the popular country songs of the day. Either way, by looking at the
ways in which their songs, views, packaging and marketing resonated with a female
working-class audience, it becomes apparent that the personal-is-political struggle was
being played out – lauded, criticized, examined, accepted and rejected - in this music.
49
WORKS CITED
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Author Unknown. Sound Format Trade Talk, March 25, 1967.
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Bufwack, Mary A.”Girls With Guitars – and Fringe and Sequins and Rhinestones, Silk,
Lace and Leather.” Reading Country Music:Steel Guitars, Opry Stars and Honky
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SONGS CITED
Allen, Joe. “The Midnight Oil.” Perf. Barbara Mandrell. Columbia, 1973.
Allen, Lorene, Larry Lee Butler, Ruth Butler. “With His Hand in Mine.” Perf. Jean
Shepard. Capitol 1971.
Bayless, T.D., Loretta Lynn and Don McHann. “The Pill.” Perf. Lynn. MCA, 1975.
Belew, Carl and W. S. Stevenson. “Stop the World (And Let Me Off).” Perf. Susan Raye.
Capitol, 1974
Bowling, Roger. “Blanket on the Ground.” Perf. Billie Jo Spears. Capitol, 1975.
Braddock, Robert Valentine and Claude Putman, Jr. “Divorce.” Perf. Tammy Wynette.
Epic 1968.
Christopher, Johnny and Wayne Carson Thompson. “No Love At All.” Perf. Lynn
Anderson. Chart, 1970.
Cochran, Hank. “Can I Sleep in Your Arms.” Perf. Jeannie Seely. MCA, 1973.
Cochran, Hank. “Don’t Touch Me if You Don’t Love Me.” Perf. Jeannie Seely.
Monument, 1966.
Coe, David Alan. “Would You Lay With Me in a Field of Stone.” Perf. Tanya Tucker.
Columbia, 1974.
Collins, Larry and Alex Harvey. “Delta Dawn.” Perf. Tanya Tucker. Columbia, 1972.
Cornelius, Helen and Jerry Crutchfield. “Little Girl Feeling.” Perf. Barbara Fairchild.
Columbia, 1974.
Creswell, Brian and Wilda Mae. “My Big Iron Skillet.” Perf. Wanda Jackson. Capitol,
1969.
53
Crutchfield, Jerry D. and Don Earl. “Baby Doll.” Perf. Barbara Fairchild. Columbia
1974.
Crutchfield, Jerry D. and Don Earl. “Kids Stuff.” Perf. Barbara Fairchild. Columbia
1973.
Crysler, Gene. “Mr. Walker It’s All Over.” Perf. Billie Jo Spears. Capitol 1969.
Davies, Ronny Wayne. “It Coulda Been Me.” Perf. Billie Joe Spears. Capitol, 1971.
Delaughter, Hollis Rudolph, Larry Henley. “Til I Get it Right.” Perf. Tammy Wynette.
Epic, 1972.
Earl, Don and Nick Nixon. “The Teddy Bear Song.” Perf. Barbara Fairchild. Columbia,
1972.
Foster, Gerry G. and Wilburn S. Rice. “Backside of Dallas.” Perf. Jeannie C. Riley.
Plantation 1969.
Foster, Gerry G. and Wilburn S. Rice. “Give Him Love.” Perf. Patti Page. Mercury 1971.
Frazier, Dallas and Earl Montgomery. “What’s Your Mama’s Name.” Perf. Tanya
Tucker. Columbia, 1973.
Gentry, Bobbie. “Fancy.” Perf. Gentry. Capitol 1969.
Gentry, Bobbie. “Ode to Billie Joe.” Perf. Gentry. Capitol 1967.
Gibb, Barry, Maurice and Robin. “Smile For Me.” Perf. Lynn Anderson. Columbia,
1974.
Goodman, Don and Troy Seals. “Girl in New Orleans.” Perf. Sammi Smith. Mega 1972.
Hall, Tom T. “Harper Valley P.T.A.” Perf. Jeannie C. Riley. Plantation 1968.
Higgins, Sharon R. “Woman of the World.” Perf. Loretta Lynn. Decca, 1969.
Hope, Dorothy Jo and Dolly Parton, “Daddy Come and Get Me.” Perf. Parton. RCA
1970.
Howard, Harlan, “Heaven Help the Working Gil.” Perf. Norma Jean. RCA 1967.
Kristofferson, Kris. “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” Perf. Sammi Smith. Mega,
1970.
54
Kristofferson, Kris. “I’ve Got to Have You.” Perf. Sammi Smith. Mega, 1972.
Lane, Jerry Max and Slim Williamson. “No Another Time.” Perf. Lynn Anderson.
Chart, 1968.
Lewis, Margaret and Myra Smith. “The Girl Most Likey.” Perf. Jeannie C. Riley.
Plantation, 1968)
Lynn, Loretta. “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” Perf. Lynn. Decca, 1970.
Lynn, Loretta. “Fist City.” Perf. Lynn Decca, 1968.
Lynn, Loretta. “Rated X.” Perf. Lynn. Decca 1972.
Lynn, Loretta. “Your Squaw is on the Warpath.” Perf. Lynn. Decca, 1968.
Lynn, Loretta. “You’ve Just Stepped In (From Stepping Out on Me).” Perf. Lynn. Deca,
1968.
Morris, Bob. “Pitty, Pitty, Patter.” Perf. Susan Raye. Capitol, 1971.
Murphy, Ralph James. “Good Enough to Be Your Wife.” Perf. Jeannie C. Riley.
Plantation, 1971.
Owens, Buck. “One Night Stand.” Perf. Susan Raye. Capitol, 1970.
Parton, Dolly. “Coat of Many Colors.” Perf. Parton. RCA, 1971.
Parton, Dolly. “In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad).” Perf. Parton. RCA,
1968.
Parton, Dolly. “Just Because I’m a Woman.” Perf. Parton. RCA, 1968.
Parton, Dolly. “My Tennessee Mountain Home.” Perf. Parton. RCA, 1973.
Peters, Ben. “That’s a No No.” Perf. Lynn Anderson. Chart, 1969.
Putman, Claude. “Blood Red and Going Down.” Perf. Tanya Tucker. Columbia 1973.
Putman, Claude. “Dumb Blonde.” Perf. Dolly Parton. RCA, 1967.
Ransom, Robert V., Jr. “The Rib.” Perf. Jeannie C. Riley. Plantation, 1969.
Richardson, George Baker and Glenn Sutton. “Keep Me in Mind.” Perf. Lynn Anderson.
Columbia, 1973.
55
Richey, George, Glenn Sutton and Norris Wilson. “A Woman Lives for Love.” Perf.
Wanda Jackson. Capitol 1970.
Rodgers, Jimmie and George Vaughan. “Muleskinner Blues.” Perf. Dolly Parton. RCA
1970.
Scott, Leanne. “L.A. International Airport.” Perf. Susan Raye. Capitol, 1971.
Sherrill, Billy. “Good Lovin’ (Makes It Right).” Perf. Tammy Wynette. Epic 1971.
Sherrill, Billy. “Woman to Woman.” Perf. Tammy Wynette. Epic 1974.
Sherrill, Billy. “You Make Me Want to Be a Mother.” Perf. Wynette. Epic 1975.
Sherrill, Billy, Glenn Sutton. “I Don’t Wanna Play House.” Perf. Wynette. Epic 1967.
Sherrill, Billy, Glenn Sutton. “Kids Say the Darndest Things.” Perf. Wynette. Epic 1973.
Sherrill, Billy, Glenn Sutton. “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad.” Perf. Wynette. Epic
1967.
Sherrill, Billy, Glenn Sutton and Tammy Wynette. “The Ways to Love a Man.” Perf.
Wynette. Epic 1969.
Sherrill, Billy, Carmol Taylor and Norris Wilson. “He Loves Me All the Way.” Perf
Wynette. Epic 1970.
Sherrill, Billy, and Norris Wilson. “I’ll See Him Through.” Perf Wynette. Epic 1970.
Sherrill, Billy, Carmol Taylor and Norris Wilson. “My Man.” Perf. Wynette. Epic 1972.
Sherrill, Billy and Tammy Wynette. “Stand By Your Man.” Perf. Wynette. Epic, 1968.
Silverstein, Shel. “For the Kids.” Perf. Sammi Smith. Mega, 1971.
Silverstein, Shel. “Hey Loretta.” Perf. Loretta Lynn. Decca, 1973.
Silverstein, Shel. “One’s One the Way” a.k.a. “Here in Topeka.” Perf. Loretta Lynn.
Decca, 1971.
Sutton, Glenn. “Sing About Love.” Perf. Lynn Anderson. Columbia, 1973.
Sutton, Glenn. “What a Man My Man Is.” Perf. Lynn Anderson. Columbia, 1974.
56
Sutton, Glenn. “You’re My Man.” Perf. Lynn Anderson. Columbia, 1971.
Woodward, Walter. “Marty Gray.” Perf. Billie Jo Spears. Capitol, 1970.
Special thanks to the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville for the use of their
archives.
57

The Day My Mama Socked It To The Harper Valley

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The Day My Mama Socked it to the Harper Valley P.T.

becomes all the more interesting in retrospect.

articulated in popular country music.

with listeners. Their visibility demands a redefinition of what is thought of as "the

living the struggle.

“authenticity” in the music as it relates to issues of womanhood, and look at how

considered as much “texts” as are the lyrics to the songs.

co-written by Dottie West, in a wildly successful Coca-Cola commercial which spawned

stations, real estate and a recording studio (63-66).

According to various demographic studies, the country music audience is made up

listening to country music in more public spheres.

as it were - working, divorcing, and raising children by themselves, they frequently

they could and did relate to ordinary people (Bufwack 325).

widely written about, lauded, criticized, examined and misrepresented. It encompassed a

consumer, who seemed to confuse self-gratification with self-determination (Faludi 75).

Lynn’s character sings:

Parton’s take on Jimmie Rodgers’ “Muleskinner Blues (1970)” provides an interesting

It is fascinating to consider that working-class women might have been slightly

ahead of the curve in terms of understanding the individual realities of workplace

enfranchised them economically, it tended to disenfranchise them politically. Once in the

is an abandoned woman who becomes a pill-addicted prostitute. Sammi Smith’s “Girl in

plight of the divorcee, Loretta Lynn sings:

Well if you’ve been a married woman

women’s movement. “Status degradation” caused some homemakers to blame working

frustration of working-class homemakers when she said, “Everybody should be free. If

necessarily just those of the working class.

uncertainty of working-class husbands, seeking to be musical reassurances. In addition,

by, and perhaps even teaching.

(M)any feminists knew all along that the extremist rhetoric

would no doubt agree.

As the women’s movement progressed, radical feminists became its major

conversion, some forms of political activity engender a transformation of self that

looked more toward the long-term objectives of the movement.

THE TRIUMVERATE – LORETTA, DOLLY AND TAMMY

In any discussion of female country music performers, whether it is within the

raised a family by herself. Parton uses exaggerated femininity to simultaneously exploit

popular culture gives voice to some of the resulting confusion.

into the character of a strong, independent woman of the working-class. According to

acting out conflicted feelings on a public stage.

while holding the woman to a different, perhaps higher, standard.

with her and the themes she explores in song.

It’s the life of every housewife stultified by the drudgery of

description contains an undercurrent of hopelessness that Lynn doesn’t really seem to

communicate, and her fans don’t really seem to feel.

“Most of the women like me…They could see I was Loretta

work was resonating with women around the country.

did not want to play “The Pill.”

This old maternity dress I’ve got is going in the garbage.

This incubator is overused because you kept it filled.

(Whitburn 219). Lynn talks about reproductive rights:

present Tammy's next number one single...'Run Woman, Run'."

considered part of the text, another conflicted message emerges.

Wynette grew up in a small Mississippi farmhouse with no running water or

would become her mentor and producer.

Though his perspective is arguably clouded, his well-documented misdeeds were

apparently enough to make her not want to stand by her man.

Wynette encountered sexual discrimination when she first moved to Nashville.

Wynette’s hopes for her daughters seem to point in that direction.

she lets her man know that she’s on to him.

I've never seen the inside of a barroom,

Well, Billy won’t let me cut very many cheating-type

jobs and their world. In 1972, Wynette sang