“Bedtime Story”
Tammy Wynette
Written by Billy Sherrill and Glenn Sutton
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
March 4, 1972
I grew up hearing this song, and I thought it came after a similar one from the same writers, not before.
That other hit – “Kids Say the Darndest Things” – has its tongue planted firmly in cheek, but I do have to say I admire the astonishing commitment to the bit here.
The production sounds like the opening theme to a children’s show. Wynette uses a sing-song voice that suggests reading a story to a child while still sounding very much like Tammy Wynette. (Thank you, Tammy, for not following Dolly’s lead on this one.) It’s well-written enough to suspend disbelief for the duration of its running time.
But God, is it ridiculous. The audacity of it all! Mommy’s going to process the trauma inflicted upon her by her adulterous husband as part of her child’s bedtime routine, upsetting herself until she’s apologizing for her tears. What is wrong with this woman?
Probably just that she can only exist in the mind of two men looking for a hit, because this really does scratch the itch of anyone who came for “I Don’t Wanna Play House,” stayed for “D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” and wants to find any reason they can to still stand by their men.
Sweet dreams, you beautiful queens of denial. This one’s for you.
“Bedtime Story” gets a B+.
Every No. 1 Single of the Seventies
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Easy “A+” for me. Women and mem DO feel this way in moments of weakness and country really was the only genre that admitted it. I love how in the end you don’t really know if he came back to her or it’s just a “story”. She also sings it perfectly for what the song calls for.
I am assuming your comment about Dolly could be “Me and Little Andy”? Dolly’s little girl voice on that song works extremely well, but on some of her other songs it does get tiresome.
I enjoyed this more than I expected to. I concur that this would be needlessly traumatizing for the children enduring this weirdness but I respected how much she was committed to the bit and conveyed a full story through it. Jana Kramer had a thematically similar song called “The Story” a few years ago that seemed a little more message-appropriate to the kids. I enjoyed that too.
This is the point at which I started losing interest in Tammy Wynette. Tammy did not have a great voice and too much of her material was beginning to sound the same. Although they did not have the success that Tammy had during the late 1960s & early 1970s, I found such female singers as Connie Smith, Sammi Smith, Wilma Burgess, Donna Fargo, Jean Shepard, Jan Howard, Rose Maddox and Pat Daisy made more interesting recordings – even Barbara Fairchild and Brenda Byers had a number of really interesting songs
For me, this song has a special memory. I was lucky enough to see Tammy in concert once, and this song was her encore. It’s not my favourite of hers but I’ll always have that memory of the first time I heard it live.