Country singer Kitty Wells, the most successful and influential female country singer of the 1950s and early ’60s and one of a handful of women to have significant impact at a time when the music was overwhelmingly dominated by men, died Monday in Madison, Tenn. She was 92.
“The history of country music can’t be written without calling attention to her great achievements,” said John Rumble, senior historian at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. “She really has left an indelible mark on American music history.”
Singer Marty Stuart called her “the undisputed queen of country music. 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 [Nashville], and you won’t find anyone with a more spotless career than Kitty Wells.”
Wells set a template for female singers in country music that started a shift in traditional male-female roles in rural America with “Honky Tonk Angels.” Her recording delivered a strikingly assertive response to Hank Thompson’s 1952 hit “The Wild Side of Life,” in which a man laid all blame on a woman he met in a honky tonk for breaking up his marriage and then leaving him to go “where the wine and liquor flows, where you wait to be anybody’s baby.”
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