The Grand Tour (14 page)

Drunk and outraged, he stood up, flipped the table over, and hotly responded, “Because I love her and she's in love with me, aren't ya, Tammy?” After a pregnant pause, a stunned Tammy found herself replying, “Yes, I am.” George told her to collect Jackie, Gwen, and Tina before leaving. Well aware Don would call the police, he dropped Tammy and the girls at the Nashville Hilton. When authorities showed up at Brandywine Drive, he could honestly say Tammy and her daughters were not there. Tammy and Don planned a Mexican divorce.

In her autobiography,
Stand By Your Man,
Tammy recounted her first night with George in detail, the two in the massive four-poster bed in his lavish Spanish-themed bedroom. A bottle of whiskey sat on a table at his bedside as he watched his favorite movie, the tragic 1962 boxing drama
Requiem for a Heavyweight,
starring Anthony Quinn, Jackie Gleason, Mickey Rooney, and
Julie Harris. Written by future
Twilight Zone
creator Rod Serling, it told the tale of over-the-hill, honest Native American prizefighter Mountain Rivera (Quinn), afflicted with concussion-related dementia, facing blindness and ready to hang it up after losing his most recent bout in the seventh round. Maish Rennick, Rivera's unscrupulous manager, played by Gleason, had insisted Rivera would go down earlier in the bout, betting against his own fighter. Ma Greeny, a female bookie known for ruthless debt collection, expects Rennick to cover her losses of around $3,000.

Desperate to raise the cash, Rennick tries to keep Rivera working in a new guise: as a cartoonish wrestler in an Indian headdress. Army (Rooney), Rivera's first-aid man and the only one on Rivera's team truly concerned with his well-being, finds it all repellent. Seeking work through an unemployment agency, he's aided by social worker Grace Miller (Harris), who pitches the gentle boxer for a job as a children's camp counselor. After Rennick gets him drunk and Rivera embarrasses himself in front of the camp's owners, the job offer vanishes. Before his first scheduled wrestling bout, Rivera discovers Rennick had bet against him at that last boxing match. Furious, he's ready to walk until the bookie and her crew arrive to inflict extreme bodily harm on Rennick. Feeling perversely obligated, Rivera bitterly dons the headdress and returns to the ring as “Big Chief” Mountain Rivera to save his manager. A tearful, enraged Army stands by, barely able to watch his friend's self-humiliation.

Requiem
touched an emotional chord in George, not unlike the way his own ballads affected fans. Tammy remembered, admiringly, that he had tears in his eyes as he drank and watched the film. What connection did he feel with
Requiem
that brought forth such a deep and emotional response? Was it merely a sad film that appealed to his simple, sentimental side and lifelong empathy for
the underdog? Or did he identify with Rivera and the way his talents had been used and exploited beyond his control? The fighter was expected to perform on command, as George was, starting with those coerced performances for George Washington Jones in the Thicket. George, when drunk, may well have identified with the idea of rebelling, given his growing frustration with Pappy and Musicor and suspicions about Pappy's side deals. Did he see Pappy as his own Maish Rennick?

George and Tammy flew to Mexico in a day so she could divorce Chapel quickly. When they returned on August 22, Tammy, again stretching the truth, impulsively announced she and George had married. Once the lawyers jumped in, things took some surprising turns. Tammy, consulting with her attorney, discovered Tennessee didn't recognize Mexican divorces. Chapel filed against her for desertion and adultery, plus an alienation-of-affection suit against George. The intrigue continued when Bill Starns, visiting Alabama, talked informally to an attorney who advised him that Alabama law barred remarriage for a full year following a divorce unless a judge gave specific approval. Marrying Don ten months after divorcing Euple Byrd meant the marriage to Chapel was invalid and easily annulled. Tammy gave him a limo, a home she owned, and a bus. Devastated by the breakup, Chapel fulfilled bookings with daughter Donna singing in Tammy's place.

George and Tammy still toured separately, George making surprise appearances at her shows when he could. But conflicts surfaced amid their contentment. Although part of it stemmed from George's mood swings when he drank, a musical sticking point also surfaced. George, who'd loved Tammy's early hits, heard a dub of her as-yet-unreleased recording of “Stand By Your Man” and let her know he didn't care for it. It wasn't the message of marital fidelity that bothered him. Given his biases in favor of
fiddle-and-steel honky-tonk, he found the Sherrill treatment too slick. A furious Tammy began having misgivings about the song until Billy calmed her down. The public had the final say.
Billboard
showed the single reaching No. 1 November 23. It stayed there three weeks and became her signature song.

They shared another milestone when George rejoined the Opry on January 6, 1969, the same night Tammy, Mel Tillis, and Dolly Parton became the show's newest members. With their solo engagements completed, the couple could begin touring together. The first joint appearance came at the Playroom, an Atlanta club, in mid-February. Things got off to a good start until Tammy got another sample of George at his impulsive worst. After briefly going back to Nashville for a bit of studio work, she returned to Atlanta to find George angry and drunk. At their next performance, he walked off after only one song and, driven by his desire to escape far away, flew to Las Vegas with the club's owner. Furious at the irresponsibility, she had to carry the show and wondered if there'd ever be a wedding. George returned a few days later, still surly. The next day, bright and upbeat, he told her to prepare for their wedding. The ceremony took place February 16 at the courthouse in Ringgold, Georgia, the same place where she'd married Chapel.

George had given Shirley nearly everything in the divorce, but he had held on to a Lakeland, Florida, getaway home the couple had owned. How much they ever used it isn't clear. George was renting it to friends in early 1969. The changes in his and Tammy's lives and a desire for a respite from Nashville's intrigues (not to mention overzealous fans and anxious songwriters) led them to move to Lakeland in March 1969. In spite of occasional blow-ups, they settled into a happy domesticity, hanging out with their neighbors, the Hyders. Cliff, a former navy man who suffered from
ALS—Lou Gehrig's disease—and his wife, Maxine, grew close to George and Tammy. George's compassion led him to work at getting Cliff, despondent over his debilitating affliction, into the world, be it on a fishing boat, dining out, or playing board games at home. Contented, even entranced, by their new environment, the couple decided to join the local business community. George purchased fifteen nearby acres for a trailer park, in part because Tammy wanted to move some of her family, including her mother, to the area. “Tammy's Courts” was the name of the facility. Billy Wilhite moved there to manage the place.

Musicor released “I'll Share My World with You” as a single in late March, smart timing since it appeared to be tied to the recent wedding, foreshadowing Sherrill's later strategy of tying the couple's solo and duet singles to whatever transpired in their marriage. The same applied to George's
I'll Share My World with You
LP, released in June. George and Tammy were on the cover. Today, country singers routinely do cameos, known as “vocal events,” by appearing on records by other singers signed to different labels. That wasn't the case in 1969, when the practice was rare and largely forbidden by record companies. With Tammy contracted to Epic and George still tied up with Musicor, she couldn't openly record with her new husband, but that restriction didn't apply to an album-cover photo that served to remind fans of the connection. They could also sing together on television. A joint appearance on the syndicated
Wilburn Brothers Show
soon after their marriage demonstrated their musical compatibility as they tore into an aggressive, joyous “Milwaukee Here I Come” that left the Brenda Carter duet in the dust. The couple enjoyed themselves onstage so much that George began thinking beyond Pappy and Musicor, anxious to find a way he could partner with Tammy on records as well.

Closer to home, George had to deal with something more personal: a problem involving nude candid photos Chapel took of Tammy when they were married and swapped with other men. In this case, the truth is all but impossible to determine. In her 1979 autobiography
Stand By Your Man,
Tammy insisted a fan at a concert showed her a nude shot of herself, clearly taken when she and Chapel were married. George claimed Billy Wilhite bought and destroyed the negatives. Chapel told Jimmy McDonough, Tammy's biographer, the pictures were Polaroid instant photos with no negatives.

In Lakeland, her own family now living nearby, Tammy happily welcomed members of George's family from Vidor. Bryan and Jeffrey came in, as did Clara, then contending with cardiac issues. Tammy, who loved Clara, did all she could to make everyone comfortable, yet Clara was stunned by the lavish lifestyle George and her new daughter-in-law enjoyed, aeons from what she knew in the Thicket, Vidor, or anywhere else. Her steadfast religious beliefs made her averse to gambling, but she still enjoyed attending the local dog races when she visited. George and Tammy once took their mothers to a Polynesian restaurant in Tampa that George loved. The teetotaling Clara sipped champagne and in her usual direct manner, commented, “Glenn, that stuff tastes just like vinegar!” She was amazed that he left a $40 tip on the $150 dinner tab. She remained the one woman who could calm George when no one else could.

During that time, George's binges were fewer and his contentment, except for a few lapses, seemed higher than in the past. Along with touring, the couple made guest appearances on
Hee-Haw,
the new CBS prime-time country music/comedy show based on
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
. Their tour bus roamed the country, emblazoned with the billing
MR. & MRS. COUNTRY MUSIC
. They
cowrote songs like “Never Grow Cold,” a tune George recorded for Musicor on which Tammy sang prominent harmony. Pappy's desire to avoid problems with Epic Records may explain why he buried the song on an album.

Back in Nashville for the 1969 CMA Awards, Tammy was again nominated for Best Female Vocalist. When George returned to his old haunts, he started drinking again and, she claimed, knocked her against a wall. She attended the ceremony with makeup covering the bruise and won the award. As her star rose, George hadn't had a No. 1 single since “Walk Through This World with Me” two years earlier. Jerry Chesnut's ballad “A Good Year for the Roses” was the standout song at his February 1970 Musicor session. Behind spare, understated production, George gave the song a searing rendition, his passionate vocal making it among his most enduring efforts at Musicor. Released later that year, it fell just short of topping the country charts in early 1971. His continuing successes with the label didn't diminish his desire to record with Tammy and to finally free himself from Pappy.

George was delighted when Tammy discovered she was pregnant in early 1970, especially since she'd suffered a miscarriage the previous year. Around that time, he made his own discovery in Lakeland: a dilapidated seventy-year-old white-columned home. It was built in 1902 by H.B. Carter, who made his fortune in lumber, on the lake that occupies the center of Lakeland. Another owner moved the home several miles south to a five-acre lot. The couple purchased it for $100,000. Vast amounts of additional cash would be required to fully restore it. With his usual zeal, George set to the task, revealing an uncanny eye for color coordination and interior decorating, an unusual skill for a honky-tonk singer from the Thicket. Tammy marveled at his talents in this area, though one finishing touch wasn't so original: the estate's guitar-
shaped swimming pool, not unlike the one Webb Pierce installed at his Nashville home years earlier.

Asked by
Country Music
magazine to interview George in 1980, five years after their divorce, Tammy questioned him about that skill. While he never explained how he developed it, he said if he had to make his living doing something else, decorating was “something that would probably be one of my favorite choices, to try to get into.” He added, “When I used to decorate our houses a lot, back then [my taste] was Spanish . . . I have different tastes for a lot of different furniture now.”

George actually had a plan to pay for all this spending involving another investment: buying more than thirty acres of land adjacent to his new home to build yet another outdoor music park. The Old Plantation Country Music Park would put the short-lived Rhythm Ranch to shame. His extravagance in overdrive, he imported exotic plants and palm trees and spared no expense for stars and the public. Unlike the shithole dressing rooms he and his fellow performers often encountered on the road, Old Plantation's would be classy and well appointed. There'd be bleacher seating for the public, with a roof later added to protect everyone against Florida's quick-changing weather. George supervised the workers and again did some of the labor himself. He also had to deal with local government, particularly zoning officials who insisted he follow regulations. Nearby residents feared the park would prove intrusive and cause them ample problems.

As Tammy neared her due date, George went on another bender that took him to Texas, but he was back and ready when their daughter was born on October 5, 1970. George drove Tammy to the hospital, doing everything he could to keep her calm. Ecstatic, he called his family, exclaiming, “Hot a-mighty!” When the couple's daughter was born, Tammy feared George would be
disappointed it wasn't a boy. He wasn't, and the happy parents named her Tamala Georgette Jones. Two weeks later, they moved into the restored home as construction continued on the park, set to open that spring.