Cocaine and Rhinestones: A History of George Jones and Tammy Wynette

by Tyler Mahan Coe, Wayne White (Illustrator)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

"Stand By Your Man" was more than a song — it was a cultural phenomenon. This illustrated book is a terrific gift for fans of Tammy and George and country music history.

From the creator of the acclaimed country music history podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones, comes the epic American saga of country music’s legendary royal couple—George Jones and Tammy Wynette.

By the early 1960s nearly everybody paying attention to country music agreed that George Jones was the greatest country singer of all time. After taking honky-tonk rockers like “White Lightning” all the way up the country charts, he revealed himself to be an unmatched virtuoso on “She Thinks I Still Care,” thus cementing his status as a living legend. That’s where the trouble started. Only at this new level of fame did Jones realize he suffered from extreme stage fright. His method of dealing with that involved great quantities of alcohol, which his audience soon discovered as Jones more often than not showed up to concerts falling-down drunk or failed to show up at all. But the fans always forgave him because he just kept singing so damn good. Then he got married to Tammy Wynette right around the time she became one of the most famous women alive with the release of “Stand by Your Man.”

Tammy Wynette grew up believing George Jones was the greatest country singer of all time. After deciding to become a country singer herself, she went to Nashville, got a record deal, then met and married her hero. With the pop crossover success of “Stand by Your Man” (and the international political drama surrounding the song’s lyrics) came a gigantic audience, who were sold a fairy tale image of a couple soon being called The King and Queen of Country Music. Many fans still believe that fairy tale today. The behind-the-scenes truth is very different from the images shown on album covers.

Illustrated throughout by singular artist Wayne White, Cocaine & Rhinestones is an unprecedented look at the lives of two indelible country icons, reframing their careers within country music as well as modern history itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668015186
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	09/03/2024
Pages:	512
Sales rank:	20,603
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Tyler Mahan Coe is the host, writer, and producer of the podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones: The History of Country Music. Within a year of debut the program’s first season rose from country fan favorite to international phenomenon, becoming the #1 music podcast on Apple’s charts in the US and UK simultaneously. The show remains an independent, one-man operation. A former touring guitarist, Tyler lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Wayne White is an artist, art director, illustrator, and puppeteer. Born and raised in Chattanooga, Wayne has used his memories of the South to create inspired works for film, television, and the fine art world. He has worked as an illustrator for The New York Times, Raw Magazine, and the Village Voice, and in 1986 became a designer for the hit television show Pee-wee’s Playhouse, where his work won three Emmys. He also worked in the music video industry, winning Billboard and MTV Music Video Awards as an art director for seminal music videos including The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight” and Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time.” His life and career are the subjects of the book Maybe Now I’ll Get the Respect I So Richly Deserve and the documentary Beauty Is Embarrassing. Wayne is married to cartoonist and writer Mimi Pond. They live in Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

07/08/2024

Debut author Coe draws on his eponymous podcast for a digressive and bloated account of the rise and fall of one of country music’s most legendary couples. George Jones found early success in Nashville with such hits as 1958’s “White Lightnin’,” while Tammy Wynette got her start in Memphis honky-tonks before moving to Nashville in the 1960s and teaming up with producer Billy Sherill for songs like “Apartment #9” and “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” When Wynette signed with Jones’s booking agency in 1967, the two began touring together and became romantically involved, giving Jones’s fans hope that the “King of Broken Hearts”—so-called for his 1965 album of the same name—might find a “fairy-tale ending.” But after the couple married in 1969, Jones’s addiction to drugs and alcohol and volatile psychological states caused their relationship to splinter. The years that followed their 1975 divorce saw both of their careers decline. Coe aims to put Wynette and Jones’s story in the context of larger shifts within country music, such as the development of a pop-inflected “Nashville Sound,” but tangents on moonshine, bullfighting, and other far-flung topics fail to enrich the narrative. Readers will be frustrated. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Coe brings the perspective of an industry insider and a scholarly attention to detail to the genre that molded him. . . . Fans of country music can now saddle up with Cocaine and Rhinestones for a ride through the shadowy past of shady recording-biz hawks, pinball addicts, and honky-tonk performers who were willing to risk everything for fame."

Garden & Gun - Jim Beaugez

"Superb. . . . A work of cultural anthropology with an uncommon sweep. The book isn’t just about Jones and Wynette; it’s the story of the worlds they came from, and the world they made."

Washington Post - Allison Stewart

"Have you been waiting for the one book that details the towering achievements and cringe-making catastrophes of the couple known as the King and Queen of Country Music? Were you also hoping for entire chapters on pinball machines, bullfighting, drag shows and the evolution of cowboy boots—as well as the poetry of William Blake and the exploits of Buffalo Bill? Look no further than Tyler Mahan Coe’s Cocaine and Rhinestones. . . . A beautiful, barmy book."

The Wall Street Journal - David Kirby

[Tyler] is both a storyteller and a tenacious reporter, and he cuts through myth and hype in order to find truth and beauty and danger and other things that are at the heart of this music. He doesn’t glad-hand or favor trade. He’s after the real deal and won’t stop until he lands on it, until he conveys it to all of us in ways that haven’t been approached in the past. His show’s enormous success is proof that country music’s characters and history have relevance today.

Kyle Young

08/01/2024

Coe is the creator of the country music history podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones, and this book often reads like his show, filled with musings. It's less a dual biography of George Jones and Tammy Wynette than it is a subjective discourse on country music. Incongruous chapters discuss the genre in terms of moonshine, bullfighting, soap operas, pinball, with medieval jousting and head-scratching stretches thrown in. However, when the narrative finally focuses on Jones and Wynette (after more than 100 pages), the book takes off (also thanks to White's illustrations), offering a revealing account of Wynette's life and giving Jones the recognition he reportedly thought he deserved. The book shows how Jones experienced extreme stage fright and a substance-use disorder, sometimes resulting in concerts where he was unable to perform; meanwhile, Wynette grew up believing that Jones was the greatest country singer of all time. When they married, they were dubbed the King and Queen of Country Music, but sadly, it was no fairy tale. VERDICT This volume includes fascinating stories about Wynette and Jones, but fans might wish for more of those and fewer digressions in the first part of the book. For comprehensive country music collections.—Rosellen "Rosy" Brewer

Library Journal

★ 2024-06-15
Coe turns his acclaimed podcast series into an entertaining history of the deep roots of American popular music and show business.

The ostensible subjects of this book, which is based on the second season of the podcast that shares its name, are indeed George Jones and Tammy Wynette, the briefly married occasional collaborators who dominated country music from the 1960s to the 1980s. Jones is still considered the “Greatest Country Singer Ever” by fans and fellow musicians, while Wynette is best remembered for her “anti-feminist” anthem “Stand by Your Man.” The pair shared formative relationships with one of Nashville’s great producers, Billy Sherrill, who, in addition to nurturing their sound on vinyl, helped construct their public personas via a carefully curated catalog of songs hinting at an abiding love between them. In fact, Jones and Wynette were each uniquely troubled human beings who, at the height of their respective careers, struggled with addiction, mental illness, bad relationships, and bizarre behavior bordering on criminality. Coe’s podcast became a hit for taking an unusually meandering, even scholarly approach to its subject matter, which this book replicates. The narrative takes sudden, surprising deep dives into tangentially related areas—e.g., a history of pinball machines and jukeboxes, the recipe for moonshine, bullfighting’s metamorphosis from quasi-religious festival to proletarian sport and fashion inspiration, and much more—leaving readers to sort out the relevance. “It’s not necessary to cover such wide-ranging territory through abrupt twists and turns,” writes Coe, “while largely leaving the reader to connect the dots for themselves….But that is what I’ve chosen to do because it’s a lot more fun. There’s a difference between handing someone a twenty dollar bill and handing them a treasure map.” White’s illustrations are an added treat.

A gifted storyteller with vast cultural knowledge, Coe has given readers not just a map, but a true treasure.

Kirkus Reviews