Kitty Wells - It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels

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Kitty Wells is perhaps the second major female country star (after Patsy Montana).  She was so big that she's only the eight woman to receive a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.  The music sounds very dated now - both musically and lyrically - but captures the manners and mores of the early 1950s when this topped the charts.

Her life also sounds dated: daughter of a railroad brakeman, married at 18, her husband died a month short of their 74th (!) anniversary.  She died last summer only a few miles from where she was born.

Her commercial success was due in no small part to identifying with (and being identified with) the role that a woman was expected to take in America at that time.  It's perhaps not surprising that her popularity waned as the attitudes about "Woman's Lib" waxed.



It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels (Songwriter: J. D. "Jay" Miller)

As I sit here tonight the jukebox playin'
The tune about the wild side of life
As I listen to the words you are sayin'
It brings memories when I was a trusting wife

It wasn't God who made Honky Tonk angels
As you said in the words of your song
Too many times married men think they're still single
That has caused many a good girl to go wrong

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

It wasn't God who made Honky Tonk angels
As you said in the words of your song
Too many times married men think they're still single
That has caused many a good girl to go wrong