Nashville, TN -- The Country Music Hall of Fame(r) and Museum will pay tribute to the genre's first female superstar, Kitty Wells, with the cameo exhibition Kitty Wells: Queen of Country Music. The exhibit will open in the Museum's East Gallery on August 15, 2008, and will run through June 2009.
"Kitty Wells is, quite simply, a trailblazer," said Museum Director Kyle Young. "Her many hits were sung from a woman's point of view, something that was new to country music at that time. She was marketed as a solo performer in an industry where women previously had performed as members of family groups. And her success in selling records and concert tickets led record companies to open their doors to women artists. Many of contemporary country music's biggest stars are women, but Kitty Wells is the prototype."
Born Muriel Deason, the Nashville native grew up surrounded by music: Her father and uncle were country musicians, her mother a gospel singer. In 1934, during the height of the Great Depression, 15-year-old Wells dropped out of school to take a job ironing shirts at the Washington Manufacturing Company. She also formed a group – the Deason Sisters – with her cousin Bessie Choate, and they began performing regularly on the radio.
Three years later, Wells married singer Johnnie Wright, and the two of them, along with Wright's sister Louise, performed as Johnnie Wright and the Harmony Girls. In 1939, Wright and Jack Anglin formed the duo Johnnie & Jack, and Wells performed with them as the "girl singer" on radio shows throughout the South. It was during this time that Wright began to refer to his wife as "Kitty Wells," a name taken from a popular old-time country song.
Johnnie & Jack took a hiatus during World War II, but reunited postwar and, accompanied by Wells, moved to Shreveport to join influential country radio show the Louisiana Hayride. During this time, RCA Records signed both Johnnie & Jack and Wells to the label, but the eight sides cut by Wells were poorly promoted and distributed, and no hits materialized. Johnnie & Jack, however, scored a breakthrough in 1951 with their Latin-flavored tune "Poison Love," and the Grand Ole Opry lured them back to Nashville.
By this time, Wells had three children and was ready to halt her career. Instead, a chance meeting between Wright and Decca Records executive Paul Cohen in 1952 jumpstarted it. Wells had previously sent a demo to Cohen, but had not received a reply. When Cohen attended a Johnnie & Jack performance on Ernest Tubb's Midnite Jamboree, Wright asked Cohen if he would be interested in signing Kitty. Cohen said yes, and mentioned that he had a song in mind for her: "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels."
Wells wasn't enamored of the tune, an answer song to Hank Thompson's hit "The Wild Side of Life," but decided to take a chance on it. The epochal single, with its premise that deceitful men are responsible for fallen women, gave voice to the feelings of countless women in postwar America and soared to the top of the country charts, where it remained for six weeks. The record sold more than 800,000 copies.
The song's runaway success earned Wells an invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry cast, and during the 1950s she became the Opry's first female singing star. More importantly, her unbridled success opened the doors of Nashville's recording studios to dozens of female artists. Wells' sales triumph decimated the heretofore prevailing notion that women could not sell records, and she paved the way for subsequent superstars such as Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and many others.
Wells' follow-up hits, all produced by Owen Bradley and featuring her trademark gospel-touched vocals and tearful restraint, included "Release Me," "Makin' Believe," "A Woman Half My Age" and dozens more. She garnered top female vocalist honors in country trade magazines from 1952-1965, and starred with Wright in their own syndicated television show in 1968. Wells was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1976; in 1991, she was presented with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the first female country artist to be thus honored. Wells and Wright continued to perform throughout the 1990s.
Kitty Wells: Queen of Country Music will be accompanied by an ongoing series of programs throughout the exhibit's duration.
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