07-16-2012, 06:34 PM
LATimes
Kitty Wells, the long-reigning “Queen of Country Music” and the first woman to reach No. 1 on the country chart with her attitude-changing hit “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” died Monday at age 92 of complications from a stroke.
Wells was the most successful female singer of the 1950s, one of a small handful of women to have significant impact in country in an era when the music was overwhelmingly dominated by men.
“She was the undisputed queen of country music,” singer Marty Stuart said Monday. “There’s more to being a queen than just calling yourself a queen -- it’s a title that goes with an entire lifetime of service and influence. You check the careers of anyone in this town [of Nashville], and you won’t find anyone with a more spotless career than Kitty Wells.”
Wells laid a template for female singers in country music that started a shift in traditional male-female roles in rural America with “Honky Tonk Angels,” a strikingly assertive response to Hank Thompson’s massive 1952 hit “The Wild Side of Life,” in which a man laid all blame on his a woman he meets in a honky tonk for breaking up his marriage.