Jeannie Seely, country music trailblazer for women, dies at 85
Her publicist, Don Murry Grubbs, said she died Friday after succumbing to complications from an intestinal infection.
Known as 'Miss Country Soul' for her unique vocal style, Seely was a trailblazer for women in country music, celebrated for her spirited nonconformity and for a string of undeniable hits in the '60s and '70s.
Her second husband, Gene Ward, died in December. In May, Seely revealed that she was in recovery after undergoing multiple back surgeries, two emergency procedures and spending 11 days in the ICU. She also suffered a bout of pneumonia.
'Rehab is pretty tough, but each day is looking brighter and last night, I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. And it was neon, so I knew it was mine!' she said in a statement at the time. 'The unsinkable Seely is working her way back.'
Seely was born in July 1940, in Titusville, Pennsylvania, about two hours north of Pittsburgh and raised in nearby Townville. Her love of country music was instant; her mother sang, and her father played the banjo. When she was a child, she sang on local radio programs and performed on local television. In her early 20s, she moved to Los Angeles to kick-start a career, taking a job Liberty and Imperial Records in Hollywood.
She kept writing and recording. Nashville was next: She sang on Porter Wagoner's show; she got a deal with Monument Records. Her greatest hit would arrive soon afterward: 'Don't Touch Me,' the crossover ballad written by Hank Cochran. The song earned Seely her first and only Grammy Award, for best female country performance.
Cochran and Seely were married in 1969 and divorced in 1979.
Seely broke boundaries in her career — at a time when country music expected a kind of subservience from female artists. Seely was a bit of a rebel, known for wearing a miniskirt on the Grand Ole Opry stage when it was still taboo.
And she had a number of country hits in the '60s and '70s, including three Top 10 hits on what is now known as Billboard's hot country songs chart: 'Don't Touch Me,' 1967's 'I'll Love You More (Than You Need)' and 1973's 'Can I Sleep In Your Arms?', adapted from the folk song 'Can I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight Mister?'
In the years since, Seely continued to release albums, perform, and host, regularly appearing on country music programming. Her songs are considered classics, and have been recorded by everyone from Merle Haggard, Ray Price and Connie Smith to Ernest Tubb, Grandpa Jones, and Little Jimmy Dickens.
And Seely never stopped working in country music. Since 2018, she's hosted the weekly 'Sundays with Seely' on Willie Nelson's Willie's Roadhouse SiriusXM channel. That same year, she was inducted into the Music City Walk of Fame.
She appeared nearly 5,400 times at the Grand Ole Opry, which she joined in 1967. Grubbs said Saturday's Grand Ole Opry show would be dedicated to Seely.
She released her latest song in July 2024, a cover of Dottie West's 'Suffertime,' recorded at the world-renowned RCA Studio B. She performed it on the Opry the year before.
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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. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 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. Advertisement '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. 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'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. Advertisement '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.' Advertisement 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. Advertisement '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.' This article originally appeared in
