Daddy enjoyed the music of Kitty Wells
When you lose a parent you grasp for fragments of them in your mind because it's so important. After all, when we pass our physical existence ceases and our earthly existence is primarily in the minds of others.My daddy was a fan of country and western music. I once thought he had no feeling for music at all until a fateful day I made a child's mistake ... and joined a record club.
Yes, for a mere penny I joined the RCA Record Club in Aragona Village, Virginia Beach, Virginia and they sent a bunch of albums for free — so I thought.
The corresponding obligation to purchase a number of additional albums was of course lost on my child's understanding of contractural agreements, but dad kept the subscription and fulfilled it with a number of country and western titles which he listened to with obvious enjoyment.
He had brought back a Telefunken stereo from the Mediterranean and I swear it was the highest fidelity music I had ever heard ... and to this day the sound quality remains high in my mind for quality.
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One of those performers was Kitty Wells. This period was in her 'heyday' so to speak and the winsome young country girl singing honky tonk stuck in my mind for years because this was music that my father could relate to ... music that he obviously enjoyed.
Ellen Muriel Deason was known professionally as Kitty Wells and she was one of many performers which caught my daddy's fancy in my youth.
She was a pioneer who gained icon status among the country and western crowd and had a number of hits such as the ladies admonition It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.
She was topping charts before I even knew what a chart was.
So, I take note of Kitty Wells. She passed on this day in 2012 at age 92 as the results of a stroke.
I noticed that her early photographs always revealed an easy smile. In those taken later she was conspicuously not smiling. I sometimes wondered why.
Hers was a long noteworthy run by a lady who sold albums to people like my dear old daddy ...
For that she holds a special place in my heart. The fact that she rose to the top of her game and was the mistress of all she surveyed for a time is neither here nor there.