I Lived to Tell It All Read online

  “He’s asleep,” Nancy said angrily.

  “Well, wake him up,” the woman snapped.

  “Hell no, I ain’t waking him up,” Nancy said. “What do you want? I’m his wife.”

  “You don’t look like Tammy Wynette,” the drunk said.

  Nancy knocked her off of the porch and called the police.

  Billy Wilhite was my road manager when I met Tammy. I asked Tom Carter to ask him and some of the former Jones Boys to refresh my memory regarding Tammy’s and my courtship and marriage. Two decades, a river of booze, a bushel of cocaine, and open-heart surgery have done a great deal to eliminate my memory. The following is a reconstruction that is the product of several persons’ many memories.

  Tammy was married to songwriter Don Chapel when I met her. She was touring and promoting her first hit record, “Apartment # 9,” while Don was the front man, or opening act, for her show.

  Tammy and I were booked by the same agency, Lavender-Blake, so occasionally our paths crossed on the road. If I happened to play a package show with her, she often did her set, then came to my bus to visit.

  At first the visits were innocent.

  With repeated visits I came to respect Tammy. She was a country girl who had picked cotton, okra, and beans and had come up hard like me. A lot of folks don’t know she was married to her first of five husbands before she ever finished high school. She dropped out and later earned her general education diploma. That’s hard when you’ve got a husband and baby. She even carried water from a spring to wash diapers by hand.

  She left her first husband to come to Nashville to try her hand in the music business. Her husband didn’t think she had a chance and laughed at her out loud. She arrived in a junk car carrying three babies and a tricycle on the top. After I got to know her, she told me that one of her great motivations to pursue a career in music was having heard me sing duets with Melba Montgomery.

  “I know I can do as well as she can,” Tammy said. “I know I can.”

  I came to find out that Tammy had listened to me for years, knew all of my songs, and that her mother enjoyed me. I was drawn to Tammy right from the start.

  I hung around Don and Tammy, and nobody seemed to mind. Other times I’d leave my show in a car with Billy while my band took the bus. Billy would drive me to my next engagement. If Tammy was headed for the same place, or perhaps someplace near, she sometimes rode in the car with Billy and me. Other times, I went to one of her shows as an unannounced guest, as I did on a benefit show she performed in Red Bay, Alabama. I liked her and was just trying to be nice.

  She and I had worked together the night before the Red Bay show, and I asked her where she’d be the next day. She told me, and I asked Billy to drive me there. I surprised her by showing up, then surprised her more by walking onstage to wave at the audience.

  After a show, Tammy would sometimes ride with Billy and me while Don followed in another vehicle with their band. Somebody might wonder why a man would let his wife ride away into the night with two men, one of whom had a reputation for drinking and carousing. I don’t know how to answer that question.

  But Tammy was not only Don’s spouse, she was the star act in their show. In a way you might say she was his bread and butter or meal ticket. After all, nobody was buying tickets to their show to see him. They were coming to see her. And Don might not have wanted to get cross with me since I had recorded some of the songs he’d written, good songs, including “When the Grass Grows over Me.” That tune peaked at number two for two weeks on the Billboard country chart, where it was listed for seventeen weeks.

  Billy, Tammy, and I got a motel room in Woodbridge, Virginia. Tammy and I slept in one bed and Billy in the other. Nothing happened, but I don’t think Tammy’s old man would have been too amused if he’d known she was between the sheets with me.

  In Clayton, Delaware, Tammy did her show, took her part of the money, then took off again with Billy and me. If I wasn’t booked to perform on a show with Tammy, she would often introduce me and I’d step from the wings and wave. Then our traveling trio would depart again, leaving Don and Tammy’s band to follow.

  If I had been him, I wouldn’t have let her run around with me.

  About this same time Tammy and I first sang publicly together and quite by accident. Tammy had recorded a hit with David Houston called “My Elusive Dreams.” I did a package tour with David and Tammy. She usually opened our show, David was the middle act, and I closed.

  The schedule called for Tammy to come back onstage during David’s set and sing their hit duet. One night David asked her if he could go on first because he had to leave early. Then he asked if she would come out and sing their duet without first doing her solo set.

  Tammy refused.

  I think she, David, David’s manager, and the promoter got into a beef about the scheduling. I thought Tammy was right. She shouldn’t have had to walk onstage and do a song with David, take a break, then be introduced as a soloist. That violates show-business etiquette.

  David’s manager wound up insulting Tammy, and I didn’t like that. She refused to sing with David, so I sang with her. In other words, I took David’s part on the song for the rest of the tour. That made him mad, but Tammy got to perform her half of their hit duet, and I was glad.

  Tammy and her group needed a bus, so I sold her mine before I had another to replace it. I wound up having to lease one. I put myself into economic sacrifice so Tammy could ease hers. The irony is that neither one of us rode the bus I sold her or the one I leased for me when we could avoid it. We instead traveled in that car with Billy.

  Tammy and I spent our traveling time singing, laughing, and the like. We weren’t doing anything wrong—except for falling in love.

  Billy said recently that he remembers my repeatedly asking him if he thought she really liked me, and was he absolutely sure that she did. I was like a schoolboy.

  Still, her husband said nothing, at least not to me. And if he said anything to her, she didn’t say it to me either.

  The silence came to an abrupt halt.

  I went by Tammy’s house one afternoon when her husband and children were at home. I had had a few drinks and was probably about half drunk.

  I went inside and sat down with Don while Tammy stood in the kitchen fixing supper. The next thing I knew she and Don were in an argument, and I was just sitting there quietly drinking. (I found out later that Don was jealous of me and knew I was sweet on his wife.) Their voices raised, and Don called Tammy a “son of a bitch.”

  That was uncalled for. I felt rage fly all over me.

  I jumped from my chair, put my hands under the dinner table, and flipped it over. Dishes, utensils, and glasses flew in all directions. Don’s and Tammy’s eyes got about as big as the flying dinner plates.

  A man should never get between a husband and his wife, especially if the man has been drinking and especially if the husband has been too.

  “Don’t talk to her that way!” I told Don. “She’s not a son of a bitch!”

  “What the hell are you interfering for?” Don said to me. “She’s my wife. What the hell business is it of yours?”

  I still can’t believe what I said next.

  “Because I’m in love with her!” I blurted out.

  Suddenly, the silence was louder than the breaking of dishes.

  “And I’ll tell you something else,” I continued. “She’s in love with me, aren’t you, Tammy?”

  I’ve never put anyone so much on the spot from that day to this. Tammy Wynette was at home with her husband and their children at the dinner hour and I had barged in, torn up the place, and declared our love without having discussed it with her. In other words, the first time I told Tammy I loved her I told her husband too.

  “Why yes,” Tammy at last gasped. “I do love you, George.”

  That’s all I needed to hear. What followed was the first step on a six-year walk that took us down the aisle, through virtually every state in the union, ov
erseas, and ultimately into a divorce court of our own.

  “Well, you don’t have to take this shit from him,” I told Tammy, who was still pretty astounded. “Get the kids, and I’ll take you out of here.”

  She did, and I did.

  For years people have whispered that I took Tammy Wynette from behind Don Chapel’s back. That’s a lie.

  I did it in front of his eyes.

  Tammy packed enough clothes for her kids and herself for a day or two, and we all took off for a motel.

  I left Tammy and her three kids there and went to my own house. I probably thought that Don would call the law on me, and I probably didn’t care. I’d had plenty of brushes before.

  I don’t remember if I was asleep or pacing the floor with excitement when the knock came. I opened the door to face a few cops. They said they had heard I had kidnapped Tammy Wynette, and I told them there wasn’t a bit of truth to that—she had come with me by choice. I said she had gone out.

  I don’t think they were satisfied with the explanation from a man with a cigarette in one hand, a drink in the other, and a reputation in the middle. I don’t remember if they had a warrant, but I remember they came into my house. They searched the place for a missing celebrity and her children. I could have told them she wasn’t missing. I knew exactly where she was.

  The police left, and I called Tammy at the motel.

  By daylight I had called my secretary at the time, Shirley Phillips. I told her to book Tammy and me on a flight for Mexico, where we would get her a quick divorce. Then I decided I’d better tell Tammy.

  I think Tammy and I took one of her kids to the hospital later that same day. I think it was for an eye disorder. But that night I took them all to my house.

  The kids slept in one room, and Tammy and I slept together. Now I don’t think it’s anybody’s business whether or not we made love, and I never would have told. But Tammy chose to tell in her book that we did, so I’ll own up to it. I can’t remember that much about it. She said it was the first time, so I’ll take her word for it.

  I think there is something to be said for the fact that I went all over the country with a man’s wife and never touched her until I had the decency to run off with her.

  Years later, in her book, Tammy said she loved our first night of lovemaking except for the fact that I had an open bottle of whiskey on the nightstand. Now what would anyone have expected at that time on a table next to George Jones’s bed—lace doilies?

  We got up the next day, and I confirmed our flight to Mexico. I’d arranged for somebody to deliver a new Lincoln Continental to my house. It sat in my driveway when Tammy and I walked outdoors.

  I handed her the keys. I had no engagement ring for her, so I pulled a giant diamond ring off of my own hand and put it on hers. She had the car keys in one hand, the ring on the other, me on the string, and Don in a rage. Friends, it was romance straight out of Shakespeare.

  I had given Tammy Wynette one of the most expensive American cars made and a giant ring after having been with her for less than twenty-four hours. Little did I know that I’d still be giving, and giving, and giving several years after a divorce that was still six years away. That thought never crossed my mind on that romance-filled morning. I might have been hungover from booze, but I was definitely drunk with love.

  We flew to Mexico City, and Tammy was divorced from Don Chapel before sundown. We thought.

  We were higher than the clouds on the return flight to Nashville. I was thirty-seven years old. Nothing is more exciting than young love at any age.

  Tammy and I returned to a city that was waiting on us. The fact that two people had run away had been leaked to a few hundred thousand.

  TAMMY WYNETTE LEAVES HUSBAND FOR GEORGE JONES, screamed a headline in the Nashville Banner. I was later told that the Banner was affiliated with the Associated Press and that the story of Tammy’s and my escapade appeared in newspapers all over the country.

  I hated seeing my private life splashed all over the press, but I’d seen it many other times. Besides, it didn’t matter because Tammy was divorced by the time the story hit the streets.

  “Oh no I’m not,” Tammy cried.

  She had called her lawyer to tell him about getting the divorce. He told her that wasn’t legal in Tennessee. Tennessee, he went on, was one state whose courts didn’t recognize Mexican divorces.

  If I had known that, we could have spent another night dodging the law at my Nashville house. I had gone to Mexico as the first step toward getting a wife, and all I got was a plane ride and a few tacos.

  “See if I’ll ever turn over a man’s dining room table for his wife again,” I teased Tammy. “And the next time I run away with a man’s wife she can walk.”

  If I’d had a crystal ball I’d have quit right there. I should have taken Tammy home, apologized to Don, and given him a gift certificate to a furniture mart for a dining room table. And I could have told Tammy there was no charge for the forty-eight-hour use of the Lincoln and diamond.

  But not me. I was in love. I really thought I was.

  I was served the legal papers naming me a defendant in an alienation of affection suit. I didn’t know what that was. I thought “alienation” meant “alien,” which I thought was somebody from another country. Did they think I was from another country because Tammy and I had shacked up one night in Mexico?

  I soon found out differently.

  Tammy got her share of legal papers too. Don sued for divorce, naturally, and he sued on the most serious grounds of all—adultery. I didn’t think that was fair. Tammy wasn’t wearing his ring the first time she and I made love. I had taken it off her personally.

  I hated the fact that my behavior, motivated by romance, was creating problems for Tammy. I had tried to come into her life to improve it. So far, she had undergone a year’s worth of trauma during her first two days with George Jones. And I had wound up being publicly recognized as the boyfriend of a woman who was married but didn’t want to be.

  Then my manager at the time, Bill Starnes, came to the rescue.

  He found a lawyer who knew Alabama’s marriage laws thoroughly. As it turned out, Tammy’s marriage to Don had been illegal. She had married her first husband in Alabama. A person who married in Alabama had to wait one year after his or her divorce before he or she could marry somebody else, unless a judge gave them permission to marry earlier. Tammy hadn’t waited long enough, and she hadn’t gotten permission from a judge before she married Don. So her marriage to Don was illegal.

  She didn’t need to get a divorce from a man she had illegally married. That gave the green light for us to get married.

  I know all of this sounds like a television soap opera, but so does most of my life.

  To put an end to the confusion, Tammy got the idea to tell folks we had secretly gotten married, even though we hadn’t. Now wasn’t that dumb? News of our “wedding” came out in the press, and people were sending gifts and congratulations. They arrived for Mr. and Mrs. George Jones, and I didn’t know who they were for. I have a pretty common name.

  Well, the plot thickened.

  It seems that Don had made a hobby out of taking candid pictures of Tammy while she was nude. He then sent them to other men around the country, but didn’t tell Tammy. She was performing a show one night when a stranger showed her a naked picture of herself. That really made her angry.

  I don’t remember how I found out about the pictures. But when Tom Carter was doing research for this book, Billy Wilhite told him that Don tried to use the pictures to prevent me from marrying Tammy. Billy said that Don had told him I wouldn’t want to marry Tammy after I saw the pictures. I didn’t know Billy had been told that. I also didn’t know that I indirectly wound up buying the negatives, which were later destroyed.

  Billy secretly paid for the negatives with my money and burned the pictures.

  It’s all so silly. It’s all such old news.

  Before we were actually married, Tammy was a
lready tired of the press attention that went with being my companion. It seems as though the press was after us all of the time. And the rumors were hot all over Nashville that we might record together, so we were overwhelmed with songwriters wanting us to do their material. It got to where writers I’d never even met would come by the house unannounced. And each time I went to the mailbox there were more song tapes inside than letters. It seemed as though every songwriter in town wanted a cut on what he thought was going to be a George Jones/Tammy Wynette album.

  I told Tammy she could get out of the limelight by moving with me to Florida. I had owned a house in Lakeland for some time. It sat on a freshwater lake and wasn’t that far from some fine restaurants and some wonderful deep-sea fishing. I told Tammy I’d take her down there and show her the place. She was glad to go.

  I had leased the place to my friend Joe Asher and his wife, so Tammy and I stayed at a motel. I had told Joe that I. might be asking his wife and him to move out so that Tammy and I could live there. He understood.

  The night before Tammy and I were supposed to view the property, Joe surprised me by dropping by our motel. Now I thought old Joe had been pretty understanding, willing to move out of my house so I could move in. So naturally I said yes when he suggested that we have a drink. Then another. Then another.

  I got drunk, and Tammy got mad.

  We wound up having a hell of a fight, which we carried out of the room and onto the balcony. Tammy ran down the stairs, and I was right behind her. I was wearing high-heeled boots, which were fashionable at the time, and my heel got caught on about the third step from the bottom.

  I fell, broke my hand, wound up in the emergency room, and returned to Nashville with my arm in a cast. I don’t remember what excuse I gave folks, assuming I was still bothering to give excuses by then. A lot of folks didn’t even ask questions if they saw me with a black eye or one of my limbs in a cast. They had seen that before.

  Tammy, to my way of thinking, wanted to spend too much time with me during our courtship and marriage. If I went to the store, she wanted to go along. If I had to go to the studio to overdub a song, she wanted to be by my side.