H-A-P-P-Y B-D-A-Y T-A-M-M-Y

Happy Birthday a day early to the late Miss Tammy Wynette, born May 5 in the year... well, a lady never reveals her age.

Tammy is most famous for her 1968 hits "Stand by Your Man" and "D-I-V-O-R-C-E," one of the cleverest, most poignant country songs of all time. "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" never goes into the causes of the breakup in question (the smart money would guess it has somethin' to do with drinkin' or cheatin'), only the couple's efforts to sheild it from their four year-old son, who is quite a little man:

Our little boy is four years old and quite a little man
So we spell out the words we don't want him to understand
Like T-O-Y or maybe S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E
But the words we're hiding from him now
Tear the heart right out of me-

Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today
Me and little J-O-E will be goin' away
I love you both and it will be pure H-E double L for me
Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E

Watch him smile, he thinks it Christmas
Or his 5th Birthay
And he thinks C-U-S-O-T-D-Y spells fun or play
I spell out all the hurtin' words
And turn my head when I speak
'Cause I can't spell a way this hurt
That's drippin' down my cheek-

Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today
Me and little J-O-E will be goin' away
I love you both and it will be pure H-E double-L for me
Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E

Here's Tammy doing "D-I-V-O-R-C-E," something she would experience in the 1970s with the dissolution of her marriage to fellow country legend George Jones.


But rather than focus on divorce, let us end on wedding, namely "The Wedding," a rather campy George-Tammy duet from '68.


And here's "Stand by Your Man"