Country music hasn’t always been a hospitable place for women. The female artists who managed to rise through the ranks were bound by certain conventions. That is, until Kitty Wells came along with “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” It was a searing rebuttal to Hank Thompson’s No. 1 hit “The Wild Side of Life.” The song hit No. 1 in spite of being banned from BBC radio and the Grand Ole Opry stage. Kitty Wells, who paved the way for so many trailblazing women after her, was born on this day in 1919.
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Born Ellen Muriel Deason in Nashville, music was always a major part of Kitty Wells’ life. Learning guitar from her father, she performed with her sisters as a teenager. After marrying Johnnie Wright at age 18, Wells performed with her husband and his sister, Louise, until Wright met Jack Anglin and formed the country music duo Johnnie & Jack. She toured with the pair, performing background vocals. However, she struggled to break out on her own due to country music promoters’ reticence to take on female artists.
The Controversial Hit That Defined Kitty Wells’ Career
By 1952, Kitty Wells was considering retirement, having grown frustrated by all the barriers that came with being a woman in country music at the time. Approached by music executive Paul Cohen, she agreed to record “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” mostly for the paycheck.
The song directly called out Hank Thompson’s popular 1952 hit “The Wild Side of Life,” for its characterization of “faithless women.”
It’s a shame that all the blame is on us women / It’s not true that only you men feel the same, Wells sang. From the start most every heart that’s ever broken / Was because there always was a man to blame.
Unsurprisingly, the song’s message went over like a ton of bricks with the country music establishment. However, “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” became increasingly harder to ignore as it ascended both the country and pop charts. Eventually, it unseated Thompson’s song from the No. 1 spot.
[RELATED: Remembering Kitty Wells, The True Queen Of Country]
Wells died in 2012 from complications of a stroke at age 92. In a 2022 statement to Rolling Stone, Loretta Lynn called Wells her “hero.”
“One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was there is already a Kitty Wells. There won’t ever be another,” the late Loretta Lynn told Rolling Stone in a 2022 statement. “When I started learning how to sing, I tried to sound just like Kitty.”
Featured image by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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