It's no surprise Essential Tammy Wynette doesn't include "With Child," my favorite song by Tammy Wynette (born Wynette Pugh), the finest singer in the history of country music. The tune – you could find it on I974's Another Lonely Song, were it available, which it isn't – chronicles the kind of ordinary tragedy and heartbreak that were Wynette's stock in trade; she sings about writing a letter to the absentee father of her unborn child, offering thoughts like "These booties you should see / They fit him to a tee / Hope you're glad to know that I'm with child." Not that I'm complaining about the omission; Wynette's worked with a lot of great writers over the years, and this hardly qualifies as a major work, unless – like me – you're fascinated by the rust spots that linger long after the chains that once enslaved women in Appalachia's coal camps and hollers were to have been put in storage. The stain is all over "With Child," and Wynette – who could jerk tears with a Tidee Bowl jingle – gives the lyrics her own unrivaled ache-and-break treatment and slams the song home.

While that musical soap opera is – to put it mildly – on the overblown side, it's just a half step away from the almost tongue-in-cheek weepers that made Wynette famous, and you can find a lot of them here. The list is topped by "D-I-V-O-R-C-E," arguably Wynette's best tune; it features a magnificent pedal steel guitar and lyrics like "Our little boy is five years old / And quite a little man / So we spell out the hurtin' words / That we don't want him to understand ..."). No Wynette compilation would be complete without the fabulous "Stand by Your Man," whose lyrics are hilariously absurd and yet, sung by Wynette, still manage a powerful poignancy. Equally memorable are cuts like "I Don't Want to Play House," "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad," "Woman to Woman," and the wonderful "Til I Can Make It on My Own."