Like most institutions, country music was solidly a boys’ club in the 1940s and early ’50s. While the occasional female country singer did manage to break through—Sara Carter, Patsy Montana, Molly O’Day—their success typically required sharing the spotlight with a singing husband or all-male backing band. Kitty Wells changed that with just one song—”It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”, the first single by a female singer to reach number one in the history of the Billboard country charts.
Wells wouldn’t stop there, blazing a trail for all legendary country women with number-one hits like “Heartbreak U.S.A.” and “Day into Night”. On this day (July 16) in 2012, country music lost its original queen when Kitty Wells died from complications of a stroke in Madison, Tennessee. She was 92 years old.
“Kitty Wells was my hero,” Loretta Lynn said in a statement after Wells’ death. “If I had never heard Kitty Wells sing, I don’t think I would have been a singer myself.”
Her Early Life
Born Ellen Muriel Deason on August 30, 1919, in Nashville, Kitty Wells learned guitar from her father, Charles Deason. As a teenager, she began performing with her sisters on local radio.
At 18, Deason married Johnnie Wright, performing with him and his sister, Louise. After Wright met Jack Anglim and formed the country music duo Johnnie & Jack, she continued touring with them as the conventional “girl singer”—largely the only role available to women in country music at the time. That’s when she adopted the stage name “Kitty Wells,” taken from the folk ballad “Sweet Kitty Wells” by the Pickard Family.
Hoping to break into country music, Wells released a couple solo hits with RCA Victor that went nowhere. At the time, most country music promoters didn’t deem female singers profitable, and the label subsequently dropped Wells in 1950.
Kitty Wells Was on the Verge of Giving up
Frustrated with her lack of career prospects, Kitty Wells had already made the decision to leave music behind when Decca Records executive Paul Cohen approached her with a song.
That song was “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”, written by J.D. Miller as a rebuttal to Hank Thompson’s 1952 hit “The Wild Side of Life”.
Wells wasn’t particularly interested in the song— later admitting, “I wasn’t expecting to make a hit”— but the flat $125 union rate was too good to pass up. So she stepped into Nashville’s Castle Studios and recorded “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”, along with three other tracks produced by Owen Bradley.
The song inspired outrage from radio stations and the Grand Ole Opry, many of whom banned “It Wasn’t God…” outright. However, the public’s reaction could not have been more opposite, and the song spent six weeks atop Billboard’s country charts.
It also cracked the Top 40, becoming one of the first million-selling singles by a solo female country artist.
A Career of “Firsts”
That’s just one of countless country music “firsts” that Kitty Wells achieved. Among other milestones, she was the first woman to headline both a major tour and a syndicated television variety show.
Voted country music’s top female vocalist for 14 straight years, Wells enjoyed six decades of success. Today, 14 years after her death, the Nashville native’s legacy still lingers.
“There’s more to being a queen than just calling yourself a queen — it’s a title that goes with an entire lifetime of service and influence,” country singer Marty Stuart said. “You check the careers of anyone in [Nashville], and you won’t find anyone with a more spotless career than Kitty Wells.”
Featured image by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
The post 14 Years Ago Today, Country Music Said Goodbye to the Revolutionary Songstress Who Paved the Way for Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, and Dolly Parton appeared first on American Songwriter.
Author: Erinn Callahan
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