Christmas with Tammy

AMG Review of Christmas with Tammy

William Ruhlmann
All Music Guide

Tammy Wynette was at her commercial peak in 1970 when she released her Christmas disc. A typical Nashville album of the time (containing only ten tracks and running a mere 26 minutes), it featured country treatments of the usual sacred seasonal favorites -- "O Little Town of Bethlehem," "Away in a Manger" -- and secular evergreens like "Blue Christmas" and "White Christmas." "Merry Christmas (We Must Be Having One)" and "One Happy Christmas" were new songs in Wynette's standard country style. Wynette and producer Billy Sherrill were playing it safe, which is not a bad thing in a Christmas album, but that meant that the album's appeal would be to fans who just wanted to hear Wynette sing these familiar songs. As an LP, the album went out of print in the 1980s; it was reissued on CD in 1998 shortly after Wynette's death.