Today’s female country stars stand on the shoulders of giants. Artists like Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Kitty Wells have charted their own path and left behind a blueprint of sorts for their successors to study. One of those women, Goldie Hill, was born on this day (Jan. 11) in 1933. The same year that Kitty Wells was smashing glass ceilings with her chart-topping hit “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” Hill was carving out her own success with the No. 1 song “I Let the Stars Get in My Eyes.”
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Argolda Voncile “Goldie” Hill grew up the youngest of four and only daughter on a cotton farm in Karnes City, Texas, a rural area southeast of San Antonio. At 19 years old, she began singing with older brothers Kenny and Tommy Hill. By this time, her siblings had made a name for themselves in the San Antonio area as “The Texas Hillbillies.”
Billed as “The Golden Hillbilly,” Hill joined her brothers for frequent appearances on the KWKH Louisiana Hayride program. There, Tommy had secured a fiddle-playing position in Webb Piece’s band.
Goldie Hill’s First Hit Was Originally Intended for This Country Star
In June 1952, country singer Kitty Wells released her No. 1 hit “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels,” a direct riposte to “The Wild Side of Life,” Hank Thompson’s song from the same year.
Unsurprisingly, the country music establishment didn’t exactly have warm fuzzy feelings toward it. However, “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels” struck a chord with female country music fans—still a largely untapped resource at that point.
[RELATED: The Feminist Response Kitty Wells Had to Hank Thompson’s No. 1 Hit]
Moving to Nashville that same year, Goldie Hill followed a similar formula with “Why Talk to My Heart,” a response to the Ray Price hit “Talk to Your Heart.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t commercially successful. Undeterred, Hill struck gold with her next single, “I Let the Stars Get in My Eyes.”
Released in December 1952, her brother Tommy Hill co-wrote the track as a rebuttal to Perry Como’s “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes.” Hill penned the song with Slim Willet, author of the Como hit.
Notably, they wrote it with Kitty Wells in mind. However, Goldie Hill recorded it first. The following year, she became only the second woman (after Wells) to reach the top of the country charts.
Hill died of complications from cancer on Feb. 24, 2005, in Nashville. She was 72 years old.
Featured image by Bob Grannis/Getty Images
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