by Bruce Feiler
MCA handled the album launch perfectly, forcing Wynonna to speak only about the music with no tearful interviews about her mother. “The strategy,” Susan Levy explained, “was to establish her as an artist, not a tabloid figure.” All promotional material coming out of MCA referred to her as “the lead singer of the Judds,” not the daughter of Naomi. “Wynonna Judd was born in 1964 in Ashland, Kentucky. She moved to California at the age of four…” and so on. The celebrity press would come later. Wynonna made her solo debut in January during the heavily watched American Music Awards (which consistently draw more viewers than the Grammy Awards) with the funky contemporary ballad, “She Is His Only Need,” about a man who loves his woman so much that he regularly goes “over the line,” buying her gifts that he can’t afford on his credit card. The following day the song was overnighted to radio and Wynonna was on her way. Advance orders totaled 600,000, twice as much as the previous Judds’ album. Released that March, Wynonna went platinum in a week, temporarily derailing Garth’s Ropin’ the Wind from the top slot in the country album charts it had held for six months. By year’s end, Wynonna had become the bestselling studio album by a female in country music history, supplanting It’s Your Call by Reba McEntire.
As successful as Wynonna was as an artistic statement—independent, but still respectful of her mother (Naomi cowrote one of the cuts and sang background vocals on another)—it also raised a new crop of questions. First, strictly speaking, the album wasn’t very country—there was no fiddle or pedal steel on any of the cuts. Second, by adopting the one-named approach to celebrity, Wynonna seemed to be likening herself to Cher or Madonna, both larger-than-life pop divas. By her second album, Tell Me Why, these trends were even more pronounced. The lyrics were more confident—“I used to be your do-anything, custom made love slave,” she insisted, “but that was yesterday”—but the music moved even farther toward rock, blues, and soul. There were dozens of moments of Aretha Franklin in Tell Me Why, but only a few reminders of Dolly Parton. The album’s most emblematic cut was “Girls with Guitars.” Written by Mary)’ Chapin Carpenter, already the spokeswoman for gutsy, suburban women, “Girls with Guitars” is an equal rights anthem for girls, who, despite the pressures to become debutantes and cheerleaders, fall in love with rock ‘n’ roll, playing Jimi Hendrix in the cellar with the amp turned up. “Get your money for nothin’ and your guys for free,” Wynonna sings at the end in a wry reply to the Dire Straits line and a playful reminder of Kitty Wells’s answer songs. The difference was that all Kitty Wells’s songs were written by men. Thirty years later, not only was “Girls with Guitars” written by a woman, an Ivy-educated, foreign-language-speaking woman no less, but it celebrated the fact that once fragile honky-tonk angels could now face the world on their own devilish terms.
Wynonna could certainly understand that. In the span of just under two years, she had completely remade her musical life, converting her vagabond upbringing and tortuous adolescence into the grist for a new type of American female singer, one who knew all parts of I-40—its origins in mountain hollows, its escape through the West, and its pursuit of fulfillment in California. In the process, Wynonna joined Mary Chapin Carpenter and Trisha Yearwood, two other contemporary country singers whose mix-and-match styles captured the spirit of the new mobile America. Together, they began to redefine the type of woman country music idolized, away from the exaggerated divas of the past—Barbara Mandrell, Dolly Parton, and Reba McEntire—and toward a younger, more contemporary woman. These women did not fight the women’s liberation movement as their elders—Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, even Naomi—did, but they did have to fight the internal ghosts that those struggles left behind. As they found, in that fight the worst enemy was usually yourself.
Inside Wynonna’s party at Trilogy, the star was still absent. The several hundred guests glided from room to room, exchanging bites of gossip and nibbling on polenta cakes, marinated duck egg rolls, and pieces of tuna sushi. From its eclectic, nouvelle Southern menu to its heaping, silk flower arrangements, Trilogy was a vivid reminder of the Judds. The décor had all the trappings of one of Naomi’s old dresses: pale pink walls, frilly paintings of Greek goddesses in flowing scarves, and everything—everything—perfectly in place. And Wynonna, as usual, was running late. “I was at a party for Bryan White just the other day,” Hazel said, “and he stood at the door and greeted everybody as they came in. Can you imagine Wynonna doing something like that? Puh-lease. She’ll be forty-five minutes late to her own funeral.”
When she did arrive, the ceremony was short. Wynonna accepted the accolades of the crowd and the warm wishes from her hosts. The publishing company handed out certificates to the writers. The label handed out plaques to the promotion staff. And everyone posed for pictures. Throughout, Naomi scurried around the back of the room, fidgeting with chairs, picking up crumbs, and generally acting as if nothing was quite right. When she spotted Hazel, she pulled her friend aside. “Hazel,” she said, “how old was Dolly when she lost all her weight?” Considering the surroundings, Hazel was shocked. “Naomi, when was the last time you looked in the mirror?” she said. “Don’t you realize what’s wrong with Wynonna? Having a beautiful mama is the hardest thing in the world. Wynonna is pretty, but she ain’t no China doll. And that’s hard on her. I grew up at the knee of a beautiful mama. I know. All her life people have told Wynonna that she’s not as beautiful as you are. I was thirty-three years old when the first man told me I was beautiful. That was Bill Monroe. And I wept. I suggest you just back off.” Naomi, stunned, went about her business. When the ceremony was complete and the television cameras hurried forward for a few words, Naomi was waiting to intercept them. That evening it was her face that appeared on the news.
From the day Wynonna went out on her own, the question of whether she could escape her mother had dominated her life. Even as Wynonna was creating some of the strongest, most independent music ever made by a woman in Nashville, in her mind she was still the unworthy girl her mother had tormented as a child. When Wynonna did get around to talking to the press late in 1992, the stories she told were heartbreaking. About her fragility (The Washington Post): “My strength was always as Naomi Judd’s child. My identity was not Wynonna, child of God; it was Wynonna, child of Naomi Judd.” About her insecurity (People): “I go between one minute feeling like I can conquer the world, and the next minute wanting to call my mom and have her come get me.” About her guilt (People): “When I get to feeling sorry for myself or down from too much pressure, I stop and think how she must feel. When I’m up there singing and look over at her sitting at the monitor board looking up at me, I think how hard it must be for her to let go, not only as a mother but as a professional partner.”
As she told James Hunter in Us: “Going through this year without her has been really hard. My mother has always been the focus of what the Judds did. While she would be the cheerleader onstage, I would hide behind the drums, acting goofy. Now I don’t have Mom anymore to cut up my meat. It’s scary when you go, ‘Oh, my God, I have to use my mind.’” As the magazine dryly noted, “This isn’t the sort of realization that usually dawns on a successful twenty-eight-year-old woman.” Naturally, the rest of the world sensed her weakness. “I had this lady walk up to me in a store,” Wynonna said. “She said, ‘How’s your mom?’ She went through this whole thing: ‘Tell her I said hello, that I’m so worried for her.’ Then she looked right at me—I kid you not—and said, ‘Can you make it without her?’ I thought, ‘Oh, God, is this the beginning of how it’s going to be?’”
The answer, of course, was yes. Even in retirement, Naomi dominated Wynonna’s life. As Ken Stilts, who managed Wynonna as a solo act, said: “As strong as Wynonna was and as talented, she was equally weak because she never had to think for herself. Naomi always did that. Naomi practiced total mind control over Wynonna. When she was not in her daughter’s presence, she would joke about how she could control Wynonna, how she was so much smarter than Wynonna.” During one
of her first nights on the road by herself, Wynonna decided to try sleeping in her mother’s old bedroom on the bus, which was larger than hers. When she walked into the sleeper, she found that Naomi had left a few of her belongings, namely the tiara and scepter she had worn as part of her persona as “Queen of Everything” (the nickname had come from Wynonna). “I didn’t know what it meant,” Wynonna said, “whether she was turning over her crown to me or whether she was leaving it there to remind me who was queen.” Her decision: “I went on and slept there for a while, but woke up and went back to my room.”
At the end of her Us interview, there is an ominous story. Wynonna is giving a triumphant concert, vamping with her background singers at Fan Fair 1992, the first without her mother. In a time of almost overbearing insecurity, it is a moment of touching confidence and hopeful independence. That night, though, Wynonna went home and listened to her answering machine. There was a message from her mother. “She said she was sitting at her farm by herself,” Wynonna recalled, “and that Larry called her from the show. She could hear me singing in the background. She burst into tears. She felt removed. She had this sense of ‘I’m not on the bus. Oh, God, I’m here by myself.’” Back at home, Wynonna said, it was quiet, “almost that horrible quiet in a funeral home. It was strange and unnerving.”
Wynonna’s reaction to these feelings was typical. First, she ate. “Food is such an emotional thing,” she said. “When I’m feeling like I really want somebody to hold me like Mom used to do, rubbing my feet or patting me on the leg, I want to eat all the foods my mom gave me when I was a child.” Her weight, she said, was her “protection from the outside world.” Then she sought love with various men—on the road, at home, in the studio. Finally she did something more reassuring, though ultimately more corrosive to her reputation. On May 11, 1994, Wynonna walked into her offices in Franklin and announced that she was expecting her first child. The father was divorced “Nashville businessman” Arch Kelley III, a local yacht salesman with a well-known dating past who looked like Robert Redford with a beak nose. He had met Wynonna six months previously in first class on a flight from L.A. At the press conference, Wynonna made her intentions clear: She would keep the baby and take time off the road. “Of course, I am unwed at the present time,” she said with her dog, Loretta Lynn, by her side. “I’ve made my decision based on what I think is right for me.” In fine Judd tradition of piling crisis on top of trauma, Wynonna cited as one of her reasons for leaving the road that she “never had time to heal” after her mother retired. “I want to do the things I’ve been craving to do as a normal person.”
Though it was perfectly “normal” in 1994 for a celebrity to have a child out of wedlock and though it was certainly “normal” in the context of her family, the public reaction to Wynonna’s announcement was anything but ordinary. “I felt like I was going to be crucified,” she said. “Getting pregnant didn’t quite fit in with the Judds’ saga.” If anything, the experience showed how entertainers had become moral barometers of American life. “I felt so responsible for so many people,” Wynonna said. “The fans with sixteen-year-old daughters who called and wrote letters said how important I was to their daughters. For a lot of unwed mothers, I became sort of a hope seller. For the Baptists, though, I became a disappointment.” This, of course, was always the unspoken burden of country stars—role models for the flyover country—but now that responsibility was coming back to haunt Wynonna. She had lost control of the public narrative of her life: The little girl who had grown up before the world, who had sung so powerfully even though she was shy, who had persevered even after her mother retired, now revealed herself to be an adult not quite in control of herself. The “Princess of Quite a Lot,” as Naomi called her, seemed to be squandering her goodwill. In humiliation, she retreated to her farm.
A year and a half later, when she finally reemerged (predictably, twelve months later than first promised) with a new album, a son, a second pregnancy, and a royal wedding, Wynonna fully expected to lay claim to the role long dangled in front of her as her destiny: the “Queen of Everything.” Only now, it turned out, she faced a different threat—no less daunting than her mother, yet somehow more pernicious. It was the new symbol of Nashville, having just replaced the cowboy hat as the most beguiling—and, to many, reviling—icon of country music in the late 1990s. It was also the thing Wynonna most feared.
It was the belly button.
One month before Wynonna’s party at Trilogy, another event took place at the restaurant that inadvertently served to mark Wynonna’s overthrow as the poster woman of Nashville. Shania Twain, the twenty-nine-year-old Canadian bombshell whose public image was designed by John and Bo Derek and whose second album, The Woman in Me, was produced by her husband Mutt Lange, the South African-born mastermind behind Def Leppard and AC/DC, was being honored for sales of 5 million records. By reaching that plateau, The Woman in Me, a mix of bubble-bath self-caressing songs and funky I-am-woman-hear-me-roar numbers, officially topped Wynonna as the bestselling album by a female in country music. As a result, Shania Twain, a native of Timmons, Ontario, whose mother and stepfather had died in an automobile accident, leaving her to raise her two younger brothers, became the focal point of an entirely new movement: the advent of the country babe.
Unlike her more traditional elders, Shania exalted in her Victoria’s Secret looks and “Baywatch” build, appearing on the back of her album in a cowboy hat and a pale blue halter top, thereby directing attention to her stomach and puckering belly button. In no time, that belly button became the talk of Nashville, spawning criticism, attention, and, of course, imitators. Soon women up and down Music Row were unbuttoning their blouses and flaunting their midriffs in lieu of their Manuels. One young woman, twenty-year-old Mindy McReady, even donned a belly button ring. “Women come up and want to talk about my music,” she told me, “but men want to see my belly button. Can you believe it?” Yes, and so could her label, RCA, which celebrated her achieving platinum status with a party at Planet Hollywood at which they presented her with a platinum navel ring. A month later, the adornment was shown in a close-up on “The Tonight Show.”
More than cosmetics, the ascendance of Shania marked a dramatic change in the culture of Music Row. Sex had arrived in mainstream country music, specifically female country music. For generations, sex had been an underground topic, even among men. As Nick Tosches wrote in his book Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll, songs about eroticism, or “smutsongs,” were actually more prevalent in preradio country music. Jimmie Rodgers once sang a song called “Pistol Packin’ Papa” with the line “If you don’t wanna smell my smoke / Don’t monkey with my gun.” Roy Acuff followed with the voyeuristic lyric “I wish I was a diamond ring upon my Lulu’s hand / Every time she’d take her bath, I’d be a lucky man.” Even clean-cut Gene Autry once sang of dirty deeds: “Now you can feel my legs / And you can feel my thighs / But if you feel my legs / You gotta ride me high.” These sentiments all but disappeared in midcentury. As country became a radio phenomenon, sex was mentioned only in the Freudian, closeted sense. Not until Kris Kristofferson wrote his Grammy-winning 1971 hit “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” which was taken to number one by a woman, Sammi Smith, did sexual liberation make it into the open. Still, as Hazel said, “Most people probably didn’t even know it was about sex.”
Instead, women in Nashville mostly clung to traditional roles, embodied by Tammy Wynette’s 1968 classic “Stand by Your Man.” As Billy Sherrill, who wrote the song with Tammy, explained: “After being bar-raged by women’s lib and the E.R.A., I wanted it to be a song for all the women out there who didn’t agree, a song for the truly liberated woman.” Even strong-willed Loretta Lynn, who had such hits as “Don’t Come Home a-Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind)” and “The Pill,” about birth control, was devoutly traditional. In her autobiography, she tells a hilarious story about meeting the “Queen of Liberation” on “The David Frost Show.” “I was back in the d
ressing room and this gal started cussing and arguing something terrible,” she wrote. “I didn’t know this woman from Adam. She was running on about women’s rights. I said, ‘Isn’t it awful what you have to put up with in your own dressing room?’ and she smarted off at me, and we were really going at it.” Later, after Loretta had completed her interview with Frost, the same woman was summoned onstage. “And I said, ‘Oh, my God, it’s her’” Loretta wrote. “It’s that Betty Friedan.” When Friedan started talking, though, Loretta dozed off. “If I’m not interested in what somebody is saying, I let my mind wander,” she said. “I must have closed my eyes for a few seconds because all of a sudden I hear David Frost say to me, ‘What do you think of that, Loretta?’” Loretta virtually jumped out of her chair, thereby giving the audience its biggest thrill of the night and inadvertently offering up Nashville’s response to women’s liberation.
Not until the 1990s did country artists seem to wake up to the open sexuality of the rest of the country. Just as Garth, building on Randy Travis and Dwight Yoakam, had come to embody the new sensitive man, so Shania, building on Wynonna and Mary Chapin Carpenter, had come to define the new power woman. As she sang in her defining anthem: “Any man of mine better be proud of me / Even when I’m ugly he still better love me.” For her—and millions of her fans—the message now was “Stand by Me.” But her success—and those of her bright-eyed followers—also raised a question: Why, after years in which Nashville’s central rule was “Women Won’t Sell,” did women not only start selling, but suddenly start dominating the charts?
