According to Tammy, Billy Sherrill told her that the melody to “Stand By Your Man” was actually borrowed from a public domain work created by classical composer Richard Strauss. “I guess we steal from everybody” she confessed. “There aren’t a whole lot of original melodies left.”Twenty four years after its release, “Stand By Your Man” was thrust into the spotlight once again through an unlikely avenue: politics.
During the 1992 presidential campaign, accusations had surfaced about candidate Bill Clinton’s philandering, and he and wife Hillary appeared on the CBS Newsmagazine program “60 Minutes” to address the controversy. At one point during the interview, Hillary snapped: “I’m not some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette!” Say what? That’s EXACTLY what she was doing, so I could never understand her convoluted logic behind that statement, but as Bruce Williams used to say: “that’s another program.”
In 2003, “Stand By Your Man” was ranked #1 on CMT’s list of the “100 All-Time Greatest Country Songs,” (“He Stopped Loving Her Today” came in second on the list). Tammy Wynette’s original recording of “Stand By Your Man,” created on August 26, 1968, achieved the ultimate acclaim when it was selected by the Library Of Congress for induction into the National Recording Registry in 2010.