Tammy Wynette visited Red Bay High School last week to tour the facility her March 17 concert will benefit, and to meet with area officials and press.
The concert is a homecoming for Wynette, who was born in Itawamba County, Miss, but considers Red Bay to be her home.
“The money taken in will be used for whatever is needed most at the school,” Wynette said after touring the school with Red Bay teachers.
A sellout concert would provide the school with $15,000 to $18,000, since all of the benefit concerts proceeds will be donated.
I did a concert to benefit the school once before,” Wynette said, recalling that the ticket sales went to provide an air conditioning unit in the school’s cafeteria.
The singer, whose concert will help initiate the Alabama Reunion celebration, expects to perform some of her classic hit songs, along with tracks from her soon-to-be released album, “Next to You.”
Wynette also reflected during the news conference on how much her life has changed since she was a child, singing for her family. “I didn’t know anybody would pay to hear it back then,” Wynette joked.
She said that the experience she had breaking into the music business has made her sympathetic to young people trying to make it in singing.
“There’s so much competition now,” Wynette said, recalling that there were almost no other female country singers when she began trying to sing professionally.
In addition to her fame as a recording artist, Wynette writes many of her own songs. She sees songwriting as sometimes being a way to deal with problems in life.
“Sure, it’s an escape in a way,” Wynette said. “You can put your feelings down on paper and sing about them.”
Problems are not the only feelings that she puts down on paper, of course. Wynette said that one of the songs on her new album is based on her preparations for her daughter Georgette’s upcoming wedding.
Her family helps in many more ways than just providing her inspiration for her songs, however, Wynette said that two of her daughters, Georgette and Tina, were singers themselves, though not pursuing it as a career. And one of her granddaughters has appeared with her in a music video.
Wynette will be joined in her benefit concert by the country groups Mountain Breeze and Dixie Breeze.
The concert will be held in the Red Bay High School gymnasium and tickets are on sale now. General admission is $10 and reserve seats cost $12.50. The $15 reserve seat tickets have been sold out.
Remaining tickets are available from the following individuals and at the following locations: Peggy Cox, the Bank of Red Bay, Carter Brewer and Jane Williams at Red Bay Hospital, Scotty Kennedy, Scotty Kennedy Photography, Joyce Harland, Citizens Bank in Red Bay, Citizens Bank in Russellville, and Ronald Thorn, State Farm Insurance in Red Bay.
