Kitty Wells

Born in Nashville as Muriel Deason, Kitty Wells ranks among the scarce country performers native to that city, and a run of chart successes stretching from the 1950s into the early 1970s brought her the widely recognized title Queen of Country Music. Her first radio appearance came on Nashville’s WSIX, where she encountered Johnnie Wright of the duo Johnnie & Jack; she soon joined their touring revue, and Wright supplied the stage name drawn from the traditional folk ballad “I’m A-Goin’ to Marry Kitty Wells.” Early sides for RCA yielded no commercial traction, yet a move to Decca produced the 1952 release “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” written as a direct reply to Hank Thompson’s “The Wild Side of Life.” The song’s pointed lyrics, which placed responsibility for female infidelity on unfaithful men, cleared a path for later artists Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette while confirming Wells as the first major female star in country music. She continued to cut answer records and rework older material, yet also introduced strong original songs, among them several of Harlan Howard’s initial successes.

Wells first sang during childhood, acquiring guitar skills from her father, and as a teenager she performed with her sisters under the name the Deason Sisters on a local radio outlet beginning in 1936. The next year she married Johnnie Wright, and the couple soon appeared with his sister Louise Wright as Johnnie Wright & the Harmony Girls. In 1939 Louise’s husband Jack Anglin entered the lineup; the ensemble was renamed the Tennessee Hillbillies and later became the Tennessee Mountain Boys. Anglin’s induction into the Army in 1942 left Wright and Wells working as a duo, at which point she began using the Kitty Wells stage name. Upon Anglin’s return the pair formed the Johnnie & Jack act, with Wells traveling alongside them and supplying occasional harmony vocals. The duo held a regular Grand Ole Opry slot in 1946 and 1947, though Wells seldom joined them onstage; in 1948 the group moved to the Louisiana Hayride, where she did perform.

The Louisiana Hayride exposure secured Johnnie & Jack a contract with RCA Records in 1949. That same year Wells cut several gospel numbers for the label, backed instrumentally by the duo, but the sides failed to register. She then withdrew from recording for several years. In 1952 Decca executive Paul Cohen invited her to record “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”; the track climbed to number one during the summer and remained there for six weeks. Later that year she became a member of the Grand Ole Opry. The follow-up, “Paying for That Back Street Affair,” answered Webb Pierce’s “Back Street Affair” and reached number six in the spring of 1953, solidifying her position among the format’s leading acts. Throughout the remainder of the 1950s she placed twenty-three singles inside the Top Ten. Her momentum eased somewhat in the early 1960s, yet Top Ten entries continued at a steady pace; by the late 1960s and into the 1970s the major hits subsided, though a series of smaller chart records kept her visible and she maintained strong concert draw.

Induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame arrived in 1976, an honor reflecting her role in opening opportunities for subsequent female country artists such as Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, and Loretta Lynn. Activity declined during the 1980s; in addition to operating a museum outside Nashville she toured with her husband Johnnie and made frequent Grand Ole Opry appearances. A Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to her in 1991. In July 2012 Wells died at her home in Madison, Tennessee, from complications following a stroke at the age of ninety-two.