Free Republic

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...

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. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/07/16/female-country-superstar-kitty-wells-dies-at-2/#ixzz20psFD1kA