Tammy Wynette Wrote 'Stand By Your Man' in Minutes, Then Asked Her Producer Not to Release It

Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man", written with Billy Sherrill, went to No. 1 in 1968 and was argued over for years. In August 1968, with about an hour of a Nashville recording session left, a producer sent the musicians on a break and took a 26-year-old singer upstairs to his office to try to come up with a song. By her own account it took about fifteen minutes. She didn't like it, and asked him not to release it. It went to number one, drew criticism for years, and in January 1992 a phrase from its title turned up in a presidential campaign — and she wrote a letter. Every fact in this film is sourced. Where the sources disagree, we say so on screen. The 1992 events are reported in the words of the people involved; we take no side. CHAPTERS 0:00 Introduction 0:38 Part One: Cotton, Then Hair 1:39 Part Two: The Producer 2:12 Part Three: Upstairs 3:59 Part Four: Number One 5:35 Part Five: The Argument 6:32 Part Six: Sunday Night 8:40 Coda: Fifteen Minutes 10:06 Sources Shop Hidden Track merch: https://the-hidden-track-shop.fourthw... SHOP THE STORY (affiliate links; books marked "we used" are sources for this film) • Tammy Wynette with Joan Dew, Stand By Your Man: An Autobiography (book we used): https://amazon.com/s?k=tammy+wynette+... • Jimmy McDonough, Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen (book we used): https://amazon.com/s?k=jimmy+mcdonoug... • Tammy Wynette, Stand By Your Man album (vinyl): https://amazon.com/s?k=tammy+wynette+... As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. SOURCES • Tammy Wynette with Joan Dew, her autobiography (Simon & Schuster, 1979) • NPR Weekend Edition, "NPR 100" feature by Anita J. Bugg, 28 October 2000 (interviews with Billy Sherrill, Jerry Kennedy and Evelyn Shriver; Wynette's 1994 TNN interview with Ralph Emery); NPR Morning Edition, 5 August 2015 • Library of Congress, National Recording Registry essays by Cary O'Dell and Holly Gleason • Billboard: 28 September, 2 November, 16 November, 30 November, 7 December and 14 December 1968; Hot 100 and Easy Listening charts 4 January – 15 February 1969; 25 January 1969 (Epic advertisement); 31 May 1975 · Official Charts Company (UK) • Associated Press, Nashville, 29 January 1992 (Wynette's letter; George Richey; Hillary Clinton in Grand Junction, Colorado) • Hillary Rodham Clinton, Living History (Simon & Schuster, 2003) · PBS Frontline, "The Clinton Years" (broadcast script) • White House, Office of the Press Secretary, statement by the President, 7 April 1998 • Jimmy McDonough, Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen (2010); Jackie Daly with Tom Carter, Tammy Wynette: A Daughter Recalls Her Mother's Tragic Life and Death (2000); Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann, Finding Her Voice (1993) • Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum — Tammy Wynette; Billy Sherrill · The Tennessean obituary (1998) · Oxford American, Summer 1998 · grammy.com · AFI Catalog WHERE THE SOURCES DISAGREE The sources differ on how long it took (fifteen minutes, a few minutes, or twenty); when it was written; how fast it reached No. 1; Hillary Clinton's exact words in 1992 and what she meant by them; whether the feud ever ended; and a few smaller details. PHOTOGRAPHS (in order of appearance) • Fulton, Itawamba County, Mississippi, 2018 — Brian Stansberry / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 • Itawamba County Courthouse, Fulton, Mississippi, 2018 — Brian Stansberry / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 • Red Bay, Alabama, near her birthplace, 2018 — Brian Stansberry / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 • A Grammy statuette, Country Music Hall of Fame — prayitnophotography / Flickr, CC BY 2.0 • Boston — Richard Schneider / Flickr, CC BY 2.0 • Public domain: Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress; U.S. Geological Survey; Mississippi Department of Archives and History; Tennessee Valley Authority / National Archives; USDA NRCS Texas; LeRoy Woodson, EPA DOCUMERICA / National Archives; Epic Records ad, Billboard; Capitol Records press photo; Epic Records ad, Billboard, 25 January 1969; Hubert Long Agency / Epic Records press photo; Plantation Records press photo; Hickory Records press photo; George Bush Presidential Library and Museum; The White House (official portrait); White House photograph, Reagan Library / National Archives. Thumbnail: Tammy Wynette, 1969 — from an Epic Records advertisement in Billboard, 25 January 1969 (public domain; published without a copyright notice). Voices are synthetic (text-to-speech); no real person's voice is imitated. Scenes marked "AI illustration" and the channel intro are AI-generated; no real person is depicted by AI. No recordings or lyrics are used. Music: "Tennessee Twilight", an original AI-generated instrumental made with Flow Music. #TammyWynette #StandByYourMan #CountryMusic #HiddenTrack #SongStories