Country music is rich with stories about enterprising women who demanded to be heard in a male-dominated industry. And Kitty Wells wrote the blueprint for all of them. In 1952, she became the first female country singer to ever top the U.S. charts with “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.”
Born Ellen Muriel Deason in Nashville on this day (August 30) in 1919, Wells brought a much-needed female perspective to country music on hit songs like “Paying for that Back Street Affair” and “Cheatin’s a Sin”. Her influence has reverberated throughout the industry in the decades since, showing up in the sharp social commentary of artists like Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette.
Additionally, Wells was the first woman in country music to sell a million records; headline a major tour; and host a syndicated variety show on television. A member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, she died from complications of a stroke at age 92 on July 16, 2012.
A Woman in a Man’s World
Born in the country music capital of the world, Kitty Wells had a lifelong connection to the genre. Her father and uncle were country musicians, and her mother was a gospel singer. She learned to play guitar from her father, Charles, as a child.
Dropping out of school in the midst of the Great Depression, Wells ironed shirts at the Washington Manufacturing Company for nine dollars an hour. In her spare time, she performed on local radio as the Deason Sisters with her two sisters and their cousin.
At 18, Wells married aspiring country singer Johnnie Wright. He would later achieve fame as one half of the country music duo Johnnie & Jack.
The other half, Jack Anglin, married Wright’s sister, Louise, and the foursome began performing together. During this time, Wells adapted her stage name from the Pickard Family’s “Sweet Kitty Wells”.
Reportedly, Roy Acuff — the “King of Country Music” — advised Wright not to make his wife the show’s headliner.
Why? He didn’t believe that women could sell country music records.
How Kitty Wells “Spoke to a Whole Psyche” of Women
After signing with RCA Victor in 1949, Kitty Wells struggled to find her footing. Acuff wasn’t wrong in that country music promoters weren’t exactly queuing up to promote women. Thus, the label dropped her after just one year.
Everything changed in 1952, when Decca Records executive Paul Cohen asked Wells to record “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”.
Songwriter J. D. “Jay” Miller had penned the track as a clapback to Hank Thompson’s current chart-topping hit “The Wild Side of Life”. I didn’t know God made honky tonk angels / I might have known you’d never make a wife.
Wells needed the money, so she agreed. She wasn’t trying to capture the national zeitgeist — “I just thought it was another song,” the singer told the Nashville Scene in 1999.
However, Wells had unwittingly summed up the post-war tensions simmering in the U.S. during the 1950s. With divorce rates rising and social mores shifting, Thompson’s song reflected a tendency to blame women leaving the home for society’s “moral decay.”
However, “Honky Tonk Angels” introduced a brand-new perspective. It’s a shame that all the blame is on us women / It’s not true that only you men feel the same / From the start most every heart that’s ever broken / Was because there always was a man to blame.
“All of the sudden, she spoke to a whole psyche,” said country singer Emmylou Harris in 2008. “A whole generation of women who probably didn’t know that they were not represented on the airways.”
Initially, both NBC and the Grand Ole Opry refused to play “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”. That hardly stopped its rise to number one on the Billboard country chart, where it stayed for six weeks.
Leaving Behind a Long Legacy
As the top female country star of her generation, Kitty Wells amassed 35 Billboard top 10 singles. She continued touring with her husband and their three children until her retirement in 2000.
In 1991, Wells became the first female country singer — and only the third country artist overall — to receive a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
The other two? Hank Williams and Roy Acuff — the very same person who once said Kitty Wells couldn’t sell records.
Featured image by David Redfern/Redferns
The post Born 107 Years Ago Today in Nashville, the Original “Queen of Country” Who Shattered Every Glass Ceiling on Music Row appeared first on American Songwriter.
Go To Source | Author: Erinn Callahan