Today's Edition
(The New York Times News)
Jeannie Seely, who in the 1960s helped transform the image of women in country music from demure, gingham-clad helpmeet to self-possessed free spirit, died Friday in Hermitage, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville. She was 85.
Her death, in a hospital, was announced by the Country Music Association. The cause was an intestinal infection, said Don Murry Grubbs, Seely’s publicist.
A mainstay of the Grand Ole Opry for more than five decades, Seely had more than a dozen Top 40 country hits between 1966 and 1974 and was known as "Miss Country Soul” for the torchlike quality of her vocals.
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.
The song won 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.
"Don’t open the door to heaven if I can’t come in/Don’t touch me if you don’t love me,” 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.
