Country music trailblazer Kitty Wells dies at 92

The country singer Kitty Wells had been recording, touring, and transmission, without much success for over a decade when he accepted the offer in 1952 to record a song, before he intended to direct attention to stay home and raise a family.

Most of them were interested in the salary scale of the Union had to get to $ 125 per session, in which he recorded "It was God who made Honky Tonk Angels," a song that not only returned to his career, but also helped to reverse the stereotypical thinking of the way men and women that were were going to.

"I decided I was not going to work harder," Wells told a reporter in 2001, shortly after completing a six-decade career through which he often referred to as the "queen of country music." "When I started making a shot, it was not long before returning to work."

Wells, who died on Monday in Madison, Tennessee, at age 92 from complications of a stroke, soon became the most successful and influential female singer of the 1950's and early 60's, one of the few women who have a significant impact at a time when music was overwhelmingly dominated by men.

"The history of country music can not be written without attention to its great success," said John Rumble, the historian's main Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, The Times on Monday. "She really has left an indelible mark in the history of American music."

Singer Marty Stuart, Monday called for "the undisputed queen of country music. There is more to be a queen if you were calling a queen is a title that was a life of service and influence.

Control of the races [Nashville], and you will not find anyone with more immaculate career of Kitty Wells. "

Wells served as a model for country music singers that started a change in traditional gender roles in rural America with "Honky Tonk Angels." Its always a recording massive response surprisingly strong 1952 Hank Thompson hit "The Wild Side of Life", in which a man whose all the blame on a woman he met in a honky tonk to break their marriage and then leave it go ", where the wine flows and marketing of alcoholic beverages, where he hopes to be the son of nobody."

Wells, singing a song written by JD Miller, replied: "It was God who made Honky Tonk Angels / As you said in the words of your song / Too many times married men think they are still single / caused Besides a good girl to go wrong. "

This recording was number 1 for six weeks in 1952 and began a series of hits that lasted until 1979.

The resolution of the breast with his voice would echo in the later recordings of Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Shania Twain and the Dixie Chicks and even assertive ripples in the songs of Taylor Swift, Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood.

"Kitty Wells was my hero," Lynn said in a statement Monday. "If I had never heard of Kitty Wells to sing, I do not think I would be singing."

Wells was able to challenge conventional wisdom, in country music during the first half of the century, said that the public does not buy the discs female singers and not pay for tickets to see them play live.

Consequently, women were relegated to supporting roles in Grand Ole Opry broadcasts, the touring car and several recording contracts rarely fell.

After "It was God who made Honky Tonk Angels" has sold over 1 million copies, records managers began to rethink attitudes and began signing artists such as Cline, Connie Smith, Lynn, Wynette , Parton, among others.

Wells was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1976 and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement in 1991, the same year was presented to Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Marian Anderson.

It was only the third country artist and the first woman to achieve recognition as a result of the previous Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient Country Hank Williams and Roy Acuff.

Wells has continued to play an active role in the country of the Grand Ole Opry long after the radio stopped playing his music. He set 81 records in the Billboard charts from 1952 to 1979 in 35 countries to reach the Top 10. He created the vast majority as a solo artist, but also scored hit duets with her husband, singer Johnny Wright, her daughter, Carol Sue, and several singers with Red Foley and Webb Pierce. Wright died last year at 97.