Honoring Kitty Wells, Trailblazer
Wells (August 30, 1919–July 16, 2012) was born Ellen Muriel Deason in Nashville. Her 1952 breakthrough hit "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" propelled her to superstardom and shattered the glass ceiling for female country & western performers. With this hit, she became the the first female country singer to top the U.S. country charts. She went on to become the only artist to be awarded top female vocalist awards for fourteen consecutive years; the sixth most successful female vocalist in the history of the Billboard country charts; the third country music artist and the eighth woman to receive the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award; and a 1976 inductee to the Country Music Hall of Fame.
In light of all this acclaim, it may be easy to forget that Wells's stardom was built on a very controversial foundation. "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" was a direct rebuttal to Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life." Thompson's song describes a bride-to-be who abandoned the singer, unable to resist the life of a barfly. The woman he describes is a loose temptress who "waits to be anybody's baby." She's incapable of emotional attachment and "lured" to the wild side of life where the "wine and liquor flow." Country music historian Paul Kingsbury wrote that the song, also released in 1952, appealed to a wide audience who "thought the world was going to hell and that faithless women deserved a good deal of the blame."
When You Let Him in the Room
by J. Todd Hawkins
cento after K. Wells
I.
Surely there’s a place to rest
a tortured mind.
Since sundown
I’ve been walking with these blues:
the blue of your eyes,
a well with no water.
II.
You see her there
at the bar
next to Jukebox Lane
just beyond the moon.
It was you who lied:
“She’s no angel.
Her wings are not real.
Everybody’s somebody’s baby.”
As sure as there’s heaven
beyond the sun:
a woman never forgets
the little things you do.
III.
When your time comes,
I wonder what you’ll do,
the waltz of the angels,
the moonlight, you.
Each Sunday afternoon
do you expect a reward from God?
IV.
As I sit here tonight,
in Heartbreak, U.S.A.--
the jukebox playin’,
four walls to hear me
“It’s a shame that all the blame
is on us women.”
V.
Let the sunshine in.
Face it--
A honky tonk woman’s
as good as a honky tonk man.