ABSTRACT
To be sure, there were other women in country music before Kitty Wells came on the scene. There were Sara and Maybelle Carter, the staid core of the Original Carter Family, who introduced dozens of classic songs, but who seldom sang songs with a woman’s point of view. There were banjo-picking girls like Lily May Ledford and Molly O’Day and cowgirls like Patsy Montana. There were novelty singers like the Dezurik Sisters, whose trick yodeling and harmonizing gave them the name “the Cackle Sisters” and landed them a radio spot for Purina Feeds. But history took a dramatically new turn one May afternoon in 1952 when a young housewife and mother named Kitty Wells stepped before the Decca microphones in Nashville and recorded a song called “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” Country music-and the role women played in it-would never be the same. As Tom T. Hall later explained, “Kitty was the first lady to come out and tell her side of the story about honkytonking and cheating and those kinds of things . . . the harsh realities of life. I was fascinated by her music.”
