1960s and 70s: More stars on the rise.

Born in Tremont and trained at beauty school in Tupelo, Tammy Wynette loaded her two small children into the car and headed for Nashville in 1966. Her first big hit, “Apartment #9,” came out that same year, and by 1969 she had become the first female country artist to earn a gold record, selling more than a million copies of her Greatest Hits.

Another female artist from the Hills found her star rising in the sixties, when she herself was also in her sixties. Primitive painter Theora Hamblett, who hadn’t had an art lesson until she fifty five years old, rendered scenes from her childhood in bright bold strokes that caught the imagination of collectors and critics from all over the nation.

Although the sixties and seventies were also book-ended by the deaths of two giants—Faulkner in 1962, Elvis in 1977—their legacies refused to be dimmed by the passage of time. And in the meantime, two more phenomena would arise from the Mississippi Hills, one who would make worldwide best sellers, the other who would create them.