Tammy Wynette Birthplace — Itawamba County, Mississippi

Tammy Wynette — Virginia Wynette Pugh — was born on May 5, 1942, in a farmhouse in the Tremont community of Itawamba County, Mississippi, the daughter of a musician father who died when she was eight months old. She grew up picking cotton on her grandparents' farm and began singing in church as a child. She moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where she worked as a hairdresser while trying to break into music, before eventually making it to Nashville and recording 'Apartment No. 9' for Epic Records in 1966. 'Stand By Your Man' followed in 1968 — one of the most successful and controversial singles in country music history.

'Stand By Your Man' became a cultural flashpoint: feminists condemned it; country audiences loved it; Hillary Clinton famously distanced herself from it during the 1992 presidential campaign. Wynette's own life told a more complicated story — she married five times, including a turbulent union with George Jones that produced some of the most powerful country duets ever recorded. Her voice, which could convey heartbreak with devastating precision, made her the first female country artist to sell a million copies of an album.

The Itawamba County birthplace is in rural northeast Mississippi near the Alabama border. A Mississippi Blues Trail marker acknowledges her birth in the area, reflecting the state's broader claim on American music heritage beyond the Delta blues. She died in Nashville in April 1998. Her grave at Woodlawn Memorial Park in Nashville is a country music pilgrimage site.