Jeannie Seely, who pushed boundaries and broke hearts at the Grand Ole Opry, dies at 85

Boston Globe

a day ago

Her most popular recording, 'Don't Touch Me,' reached No. 2 on the Billboard country chart and crossed over to the mainstream Hot 100 in 1966. A sensual ballad whose lyrics stress emotional commitment over sexual gratification, the song has been covered by numerous artists, including folk singer Carolyn Hester, reggae artist Nicky Thomas, and soul music pioneer Etta James.
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The song won Ms. Seely the Grammy Award for best female country vocal performance in 1967. The record's less-is-more arrangement — slip-note piano, sympathetic background singers and sighing steel guitar — was vintage Nashville Sound on the cusp of 'countrypolitan,' its pop-inflected successor.
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'Don't open the door to heaven if I can't come in/Don't touch me if you don't love me,' Ms. Seely admonishes her lover, her voice abounding with unfulfilled desire.
'To have you, then lose you, wouldn't be smart on my part,' she sings in the final stanza. She tortures the word 'part' for two measures until her voice breaks and, with it, it seems, her heart.
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Written by Hank Cochran, who would become Ms. Seely's husband, 'Don't Touch Me' anticipated Sammi Smith's breathtakingly intimate version of Kris Kristofferson's 'Help Me Make It Through the Night,' which was released four years later. 'Don't Touch Me,' critic Robert Christgau wrote, 'took country women's sexuality from the honky-tonk into the bedroom.'
Ms. Seely blazed a trail for women in country music for the candor of her songs, and for wearing miniskirts and go-go boots on the Opry stage, bucking the gingham-and-calico dress code embraced by some of her more matronly predecessors like Kitty Wells and Dottie West. In the 1980s, she also became the first woman to host her own segment on the typically conservative and patriarchal Opry.
'I was the main woman that kept kicking on that door to get to host the Opry segments,' Ms. Seely told the Nashville Scene newspaper in 2005. 'I used to say to my former manager Hal Durham, 'Tell me again why is it women can't host on the Opry?' He'd rock on his toes and jingle his change and say, 'It's tradition, Jeannie.' And I'd say, 'Oh, that's right. It's tradition. It just
smells
like discrimination.'"
Ms. Seely worked with top-tier Nashville session players who were attuned to the soulful sounds in Memphis, Tenn., and Muscle Shoals, Ala., to build a career around recordings that plumbed themes of infidelity, heartbreak and female emancipation.
The titles of some of her singles spoke volumes: 'All Right (I'll Sign the Papers)' (1971), about the ravages of divorce; 'Welcome Home to Nothing' (1968), about a marriage gone cold; and 'Take Me to Bed' (1978). Her unflinching vocals told the rest of the story.
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'Can I Sleep in Your Arms,' an intimacy-starved rewrite of the Depression-era lament, 'Can I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight, Mister,' was a Top 10 country hit in 1973. (Two years later, Willie Nelson recorded the song for his groundbreaking concept album, 'Red Headed Stranger.')
Marilyn Jeanne Seeley was born July 6, 1940, in Titusville, Pa., and grew up in nearby Townville. (She later changed the spelling of her surname.) She was the youngest of four children of Leo and Irene Seely. Her father, a farmer and steel mill worker, played banjo and called square dances on weekends. Her mother sang in the kitchen while baking bread on Saturdays.
Ms. Seely first performed on the radio station WMGW in Meadville, Pa., at age 11. 'I can still remember standing on a stack of wooden soda cases because I wasn't tall enough to reach the unadjustable microphones,' she recalled on her website.
After graduating from high school, where she was a cheerleader and honor student, she took a job with the Titusville Trust Co. Three years later, she moved to California and went to work at a bank in Beverly Hills.
A job as a secretary at Imperial Records in Hollywood opened doors in the music business, and she found early success as a songwriter with 'Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand).'
Written with a young Randy Newman and two other collaborators, the song reached the Hot 100 in a version by New Orleans soul singer Irma Thomas in 1964. More than a half-century later, after having been recorded by Boyz II Men and others, it was used in episodes of the science-fiction TV series 'Black Mirror.'
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In 1965, Ms. Seely signed a contract with Challenge Records, the West Coast label owned by country singer Gene Autry. The association yielded regional hits but no national exposure.
At the urging of Cochran, whom she married in 1969 (the couple later divorced), Seely moved to Nashville, where she signed with Fred Foster's Monument Records and had her breakthrough hit, 'Don't Touch Me.'
She made her Opry debut in the summer of 1966 and briefly starred as the female singer on 'The Porter Wagoner Show,' a nationally syndicated TV program, while also performing regularly with Ernest Tubb.
Ms. Seely's biggest country hit as a songwriter came with 'Leavin' and Sayin' Goodbye,' a chart-topping single for singer Faron Young in 1972. Merle Haggard and Ray Price also recorded her originals.
In 1977, after a decade of hits, including a handful of Top 20 country duets with crooner Jack Greene, she sustained serious injuries in an automobile accident that almost ended her career. Apart from appearing on the Opry and having a small part in the 1980 movie 'Honeysuckle Rose,' which starred Nelson, she all but retired from performing. (Her other movie appearance was in 2002 in 'Changing Hearts,' starring Faye Dunaway.)
In the 2000s, Ms. Seely increasingly turned her attention to bluegrass, recording an award-winning duet with Ralph Stanley. She also emerged as an elder stateswoman of the Opry, which remained her chief passion into the 2020s.
Her second husband, Gene Ward, whom she married in 2010, preceded her in death. She did not have any immediate survivors.
In 2005, with country singers Kathy Mattea and Pam Tillis, Ms. Seely starred in a Nashville production of Eve Ensler's 'The Vagina Monologues.' It was second nature to her, she told Nashville Scene, to appear in such a politically charged play.
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'I think of myself as a feminist,' she explained. 'My idea of 'feminist' is to make sure that women have the same choices that men have always had, and that we are respected for our roles — whatever they are — as much as any man is respected for his.'
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