STUBBS: She had this proper and unpretentious style that, I think, really helped sort of get over some of the barriers that county music had at the time.īARCO: Writer Michael McCall is an historian for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. But you don't have to live the lifestyle portrayed in the music. STUBBS: She said I love the music and she said you can love the music too. He also points out she was a devout Christian. And it was her honesty and her sincerity and her believability, and the way she sang those songs that really put them across.īARCO: Stubbs played fiddle in Wells' band and says she'd spend hours signing autographs. All of a sudden, she spoke to a whole psyche, a whole generation of women who probably didn't know that there were not represented on the airways.īARCO: Wells proved to record labels that a female country singer could make hits, and make them with tearjerkers about infidelity, about being a divorced mother, about broken relationships.ĮDDIE STUBBS: Kitty talked about things like that, what it was like to be the abused one left at home.īARCO: Eddie Stubbs is one of the voices of the Grand Ole Opry, and host on an old time country music radio show on Nashville's WSM. HARRIS: There were a lot of women around the country who said, boy, I can relate to that. JOHNNIE WRIGHT: When that came out, they wouldn't let her sing it on the Grand Ole Opry.īARCO: They relented when her fans made it a hit.ĮMMY LOU HARRIS: That was the one of the first songs in which, you know, a woman said, Excuse me, you know, there's another side to this story.īARCO: Singer Emmy Lou Harris told NPR in 2008 that Wells and her song struck a chord. Of course, people that know me, they know I never was like that. WELLS: When I sing a song, I don't consider it, you know, as being part of me or part of my life or anything. Wells turned that around.īARCO: Wells and her husband said the character in the song wasn't her. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IT WASN'T GOD WHO MADE HONKY TONK ANGELS")īARCO: "It Wasn't God who made Honky Tonk Angels" was Well's response to Hank Thompson's hit "The Wild Side of Life." His song blames a woman he picks up in a bar for breaking up his marriage. Then she recorded the song that would make her the first female country star. ![]() By the time she was 33, Wells was ready to retire from music to devote herself to raising their three children. ![]() Her husband gave her stage name after an old song. They like those sad songs, songs that make them cry.īARCO: Kitty Wells talked to NPR in 1995. KITTY WELLS: I don't know people write those types of songs, that's what they like to hear when, you know, people listening. Then she eloped with musician Johnnie Wright, with whom she would continue to perform the rest of her life. Muriel Ellen Deason quit high school to work in a Nashville shirt factory and began singing and playing guitar for local dances and radio stations, with her cousin and sisters. ![]() MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: She was born in the city that became the capitol of country music. NPR's Mandalit del Barco reports that Kitty Wells herself was very different from her songs. And Kitty Wells died yesterday at her home in Tennessee, at the age of 92. More than 60 years ago, Wells broke the male dominance of the country charts and paved the way for all those other singers who followed. Before there was Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette or Loretta Lynn, there was Kitty Wells. And now, let's talk about some music that seems never to go out of style.
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