So long Sweet Kitty

[Rt235]

First female country music star Kitty Wells dead at 92.

We kinda grew up to her music as my grand dad loved to hear her sing! I think he might have been sweet on her!! Now poppa, leave her alone, she just arrived in heaven, be a gentleman, "ya hear?"

Singer Kitty Wells, whose hits such as "Making Believe" and "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" made her the first female superstar of country music, died Monday. She was 92.
The singer's family said she died peacefully at home after complications from a stroke.

Her solo recording career lasted from 1952 to the late 1970s and she made concert tours from the late 1930s until 2000. That year, she announced she was quitting the road, although she performed occasionally in Nashville and elsewhere afterward.

Her "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" in 1952 was the first No. 1 hit by a woman soloist on the country music charts and dashed the notion that women couldn't be headliners. Billboard magazine had been charting country singles for about eight years at that time.

She recorded approximately 50 albums, had 25 Top 10 country hits and went around the world several times. From 1953 to 1968, various polls listed Wells as the No. 1 female country singer. Tammy Wynette finally dethroned her.

In 1976, she was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame and 10 years later received the Pioneer Award from the Academy of Country Music. In 1991 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences -- the group that presents the Grammy Awards.

Her 1955 hit "Making Believe" was on the movie soundtrack of "Mississippi Burning" that was released 33 years later. Among her other hits were "The Things I Might Have Been," "Release Me," "Amigo's Guitar," "Heartbreak USA," "Left to Right" and a version of "I Can't Stop Loving You."

Miss Kitty trivia: Her real name was Ellen Muriel Deason.

Thanks for all the roadwork you did to send country music to where it is today!! You were "some kind of woman", as my daddy used to say.

 

[vraiblonde]

I didn't even realize she was still alive. Love me some Kitty Wells.

RIP, Honky Tonk Angel.

 

[mitzi]

I didn't realize she was still alive either. I thought she had passed away quite a few years ago.