After so many decades of enjoying the music of women like Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Tammy Wynette, it is almost hard to realize that there were virtually no female country music stars until Kitty Wells released "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" in 1952. Born Ellen Muriel Deason, Wells paved the way for Patsy Cline, whose first hit was "Walkin' after Midnight" in 1957.
Wells wasn't the first woman with a country hit. Patsy Montana released "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" in 1934 as lead vocalist with the Prairie Ramblers. But Wells as the first woman to achieve sustained stardom, and the first female country vocalist to release a solo LP, in 1956, with Kitty Wells' Country Hit Parade.
"It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," an answer song to Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life," was considered boldly risque at the time, with its suggestion that a woman might get even with a cheating man. She went even more risque (for the '50s) with "I Don't Claim to Be an Angel," in which they lyrics asked her sweetheart to "forget about my past." Many, perhaps most, of her later songs were typecast in the jilted lover, heartbreak, three-chords-and-the-truth genre, more than occasionally toward the illicit side.
Honky Tonk Angels, featuring k.d. lang with legends Kitty Wells, Loretta Lynn, and Brenda Lee:
A nice selection of the pioneering "Honky Tonk" Angel back when country music was called Country & Western. Thanks for this.
Posted by: Johnnie Wright | June 01, 2025 at 02:47 PM