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An Icon: Kitty Wells
Early country music was a male preserve, and even female singers sang songs
that described the world through men’s eyes. And then everything changed, thanks
to a strong young woman with pluck and a lot of singing talent.
She is born Muriel Ellen Deason in 1919 in Nashville. Her father, an amateur
country singer and guitarist, plays local dances. Kitty learns the guitar from him,
and begins to sing. She leaves school at 15, and joins her sisters in an act named,
of course, The Deason Sisters. In 1937 she marries country music legend Johnny
Wright, with whom she will enjoy a successful career. In 1943 she adopts her stage
name of Kitty Wells.
Though attractive enough, Kitty is hardly a glamour girl. Her talent will
overcome her lack of vocal artifice, for she sings with every fibre of her being. It
is wartime, and soldiers love her songs, but she becomes known mainly through
jukeboxes and in Honky Tonks, those poorly-lit places of ill repute in which country
fans get to hear her songs, some from her own pen.
She records the first Country Gospel song to find its way onto a major label,
Gathering Flowers for the Master’s Bouquet, on RCA Victor. That might mark the
finale of her career, but for an astonishing event.
The number one country star of the time, Hank Thompson, has a hit song by
Carter and Warren titled The Wild Side of Life:
I didn’t know God made honky tonk angels
I might have known you’d never make a wife
Provoked, Kitty writes a reply, which she records in 1952: It Wasn’t God Who
Made Honky Tonk Angels.
It’s a shame that all the blame is on us women
It’s not true that only you men feel the same
From the start most every heart that’s ever broken
Was because there always was a man to blame.
To Kitty’s surprise the song is a runway hit, climbing to first place on the
country charts and even making the Top 30 hit parade. It is the first country song
to let a woman’s voice be heard. For the next 14 consecutive years, Kitty Wells will
be named number one country female artist. There is no more talk of retirement.
Decca offers her a lifetime contract, the first for a female country singer. She records
35 Top 20 country hits, and two dozen of them make the Top 10, including Paying
for That Back Street Affair, Hey Joe, and I’ll Always Be Your Fraulein. She sings across
North America and around the world, solo and in duets with such country stars
as Red Foley and Webb Pierce. She also sings with her husband and her children.
Their final concert is on New Year’s Eve 2000, in Nashville. She is 81.
Kitty Wells breached the all-male domain of country music, paving the way for
a multitude of women who would bring their own spirituality, their hearts, their
emotions, and their way of speaking to the world of country music.
knowledge if she is to succeed in life. For
her, life seems already all planned out.
How does one explain it? How is it
that, in a home with no books other than
catalogs, and no music other than that
heard in the rare time when the radio’s
battery is fresh, such a young girl spends
her leisure time writing texts and setting
them to music? Truly, classical music has
no monopoly on child prodigies. By the
age of seven she has things to say, and she
58 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine
says them in lyrics for which she composes
tunes on the crudest of guitars.
Ideas flow from listening to ordinary
people speak.
By the age of 10 she is singing in
Knoxville on the Cas Walker radio and
TV show. She is only two years older
when she first appears on the stage of
Nashville’s fabled Grand Ole Opry. “You
can’t be on the Opry because you ain’t
in the union,” she is told.
“What’s a union?” she asks candidly.
Anyone else would have slunk off in
disappointment. But Dolly is already
what she will always be: tenacious, conscious
of her own talent, sure of herself,
and never one to back away from a
challenge. She insists…she wants to sing
one song, just one. The director of the
Opry won’t hear of it. Dolly buttonholes
Jimmy C. Newman just before he steps
on stage. Newman talks to Johnny Cash,
and the way is cleared for Dolly.
It’s not her voice that grabs the
attention. Her timbre is on the light
side, though with a natural vibrato that
lends itself to all sorts of inflections and
a broad range of emotions. What amazes
the spectators is that here is a child not
yet in her teens playing her own songs.
Now there’s something you don’t see
every day!
She is an instant hit, with calls for
several encores. By the time she leaves
the stage she is offered a contract: $20
a week to be a regular on the Opry (the
amount will of course rise in the years
ahead). She accepts it as a summer job,
for she is already mature enough to know
she needs to complete her studies.
Nashville
In 1964 she is 18 years old. Ready for
a new life she moves from her home town
to Nashville. The very first day she is at
the laundromat where she meets Carl
Dean, who will become her first and
only husband. When Dean proposes,
Dolly poses one condition: that he will
never interfere with her career. In 1966
they are married, and Carl keeps his
promise.
Carl is as opposite to his young wife
as he can be. She is outgoing, while he is
reserved. She loves the spotlight, while
he prefers to be far from the madding
crowd. She is (necessarily) nomadic,
while he is sedentary, preferring to
take care of the farm work on their
vast domain. They are, in short, two
opposites who live much of their lives
apart. The arrangement seems to suit
them, for they are happy in their very
different occupations, and delighted to
find each other again.
Her first hit single recording will be
an autobiographical song titled Coat of