Honky Tonk Angel

Or

Here Kitty, Kitty

Kitty Wells, the first lady of country music, has died of complications from a stroke at the age of 92. At the age of 33, Wells was ready to retire to her life as a wife and mother because it was 1952, and that was the presumed career path, when she recorded It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels. The song, a rebuttal to Hank Thompson’s Wild Side of Life, where he blamed a bar floozy for breaking up his marriage, was to become her signature hit, spending 15 weeks at No. 1 – the first No. 1 country hit by a woman. NBC Radio and the Grand Ole Opry banned the song as being too suggestive as the brazen gingham-wearing hussy cooed “Too many times married men think they're still single / That has caused many a good girl to go wrong.” The popularity of the song eventually forced the Opry to offer her membership. The song also served as a wake-up to record executives in Nashville who had been unaware to that point that women could even sing, and Wells became the first female artist to record an LP in 1956. Wells would hit the charts 83 more times in her career, totaling 38 Top 10 hits, as she became a model for other female country stars like Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton. A 1976 inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame, in 1991, she joined Hank Williams and Roy Acuff as the only country performers to receive a lifetime achievement award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.