Heartbreak hits

1968: Tammy Wynette found her footing at the height of rock 'n roll | Arsenio Orteza

Tammy Wynette's highest-charting hit in the last dozen years of her life was the KLF's "Justified and Ancient (Stand by the JAMs)," a techno-pop song on which she sang and that represents to this day one of the least likely (and most successful) pop-music collaborations ever. It is, however, as one of country music's greatest female singers that she will be remembered, and 1968 was the year she established her greatness.

"D-I-V-O-R-C-E" and "Stand by Your Man," her fourth and fifth (out of an eventual 20) No. 1 country hits, gave poignant voice to a truth that most rock 'n' roll at the time was aggressively denying: that love cannot be a "free," merely sensual exercise in mutually agreed-upon self-satisfaction from which either participant can blithely walk away.