Wells’ answer record created a sensation in its own right with the country chart’s first-ever No.1 for a female artist.It was surely one of the more remarkable chart debuts of the pre-rock’n’roll era, and it was potentially “just” a novelty answer record. On July 19, 1952, a few weeks before her 33rd birthday, a local Nashvillean called Muriel Ellen Deason, known on disc as Kitty Wells, entered the Billboard country chart with a response to Hank Thompson’s smash hit of the day, “The Wild Side Of Life.” She created a sensation in her own right with the chart’s first-ever...