Kitty Wells photo courtesy of countrymusichalloffame.com.
Aug. 15, 2008 — Plenty of music industry insiders showed up at the Country Music Hall of Fame Thursday night to pay homage to the Queen. Kitty Wells was on hand for a private party honoring one of the genre’s pioneering women as the museum prepared Friday’s official opening of a new exhibit, Kitty Wells: Queen Of Country Music.
Kitty spent much of the night seated in a raised living room setting, as guests made their way to the platform to offer congratulations and to remind her how much she had meant to Nashville. Fellow Hall of Fame member Earl Scruggs sat at her side for much of the evening, and the event attracted several other Hall of Famers as well, including Charlie Louvin, mega-guitarist Harold Bradley and former MCA executive Jim Foglesong. Also spotted were guitarist-producer Randy Scruggs, singer and McHale’s Navy actor Bobby Wright, publisher Bill Denny and WSM personality Eddie Stubbs, who formerly played in Kitty’s band, which she shared with husband Johnny Wright.
Kitty’s first bona fide hit, the 1952 release "It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," became the first No. 1 country single in Billboard magazine recorded by a female, and it took a defiant stance against male domination more than 15 years before the women’s movement took hold. The song, recently added by the Library of Congress to the National Recording Registry, was meant as an answer to Hank Thompson’s "The Wild Side Of Life," and — as the exhibit notes — it struck a nerve at a time when women first felt a lust for real change. Not that Kitty was cognizant of its cultural relevance.
"When I recorded it, it never entered my mind," she told The Nashville Scene. "When 'It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels' first came out, of course, all the radio stations were playing it, and I sang it on the [Grand Ole] Opry, and then they would stop me. They just wouldn't let me. I didn't know what was in it they didn't like. They didn't let me sing it for a while, and then it got so popular, and they let me start singing it."
Kitty sang it regularly for another 48 years until she and Johnny retired from the road in December 2000. Kitty Wells: Queen Of Country Music will remain open through June 14, 2009.
RSS Feeds