A History of Feminism in Ten Country Songs
What you see ain't nothin' new
I still believe that women should get paid equal and should be treated with respect. I’m all about that. I don’t get out and have to preach it or march in the streets, I write about it.
Dolly Parton
It’s a sweet spot in the cars’ CD collection, those compilations with titles like Ladies of Country (2007) and Bad Girls of Country (2001). They cover the golden years of popular country music, from Patsy Cline to country rock, they’re full of great songs like ‘Snowbird’ and ‘I Never Promised You A Rose Garden’, and the women, more so than the men of country, are pretty good singers, with art as well as character in their delivery. And, I’ve come to notice that country songs of the transitional decades, the 60’s and 70’s, are liable to give an overview of social change in a way rock songs rarely do. It’s all very well for an old rock song to tell us that some individual was an activist for some aspect of social progress, even that these themes were popular with audiences, but you could easily be mistaken and think that, say, everyone was queer when Bolan, Bowie and Lou Reed were, which wasn’t really the case. But if you hear an idea in a country song it has vox populi credibility; it’s probably an idea that the girl at the checkout and the guy pumping gas both accepted as part of their reality at the time, even if it was new. And nowhere is this clearer than in the series of outspoken women’s country songs that charted the changes in women’s lives across the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s in the U.S.A.
1.
Kitty Wells (“Miss Kitty”, born Ellen Muriel Deason in 1919), became the first female country chart-topper in 1952 with the success of ‘It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels’, an answer song to Hank Thompson’s 1952 hit ‘The Wild Side of Life’ (which also inspired the title of Nelson Algren’s 1956 novel A Walk on the Wild Side and, through that, the Lou Reed’s ‘Walk On The Wild Side’). In ‘The Wild Side of Life’, Alrie Carter and William Warren had written about a character who unwisely gave his heart to a honky tonk angel (“a loose or easy woman who frequents a honky tonk, looking to go home with a man for the night”) with predictable results:
I didn’t know God made honky tonk angels
I might have known you'd never make a wife
You gave up the only one that ever loved you
And went back to the wild side of life.
This called out for a woman’s answer, which was provided by Joseph Denton “Jay” Miller, a pioneer of swamp pop, swamp blues, and hate song; he produced Slim Harpo’s ‘I’m A King Bee’, and, playing both sides of the fence, recorded mixed bands while claiming to be a segregationist and wrote blues songs under the “black” pseudonym “Jay West” while producing and releasing the deeply racist music of Johnny Rebel. The pioneer of hate rock may seem like an unlikely feminist hero but sometimes it’s only an unscrupulous opportunist who can see which way the wind is blowing.
‘It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels’ was banned by some radio stations, but made Kitty Wells the pioneer the other female country stars here would follow. Its analysis of the fallen women problem is a subtle thing (it’s not clear if the singer is now a honky tonk angel herself, but there she is sittin’ listening to a jukebox) reminiscent of Frank Wedekind’s Lulu plays, but also predicts the blame game of second wave feminism (it’s the patriarchy that makes honky tonk angels);
As I sit here tonight, the jukebox's playing
The tune about the wild side of life
As I listen to the words you are saying
It brings mem'ries when I was a trusting wife
It wasn't God who made honky-tonk angels
As you said in the words of your song
Too many times married men think they're still single
That has caused many a good girl to go wrong
It's a shame that all the blame is on us women
It's not true that only you men feel the same
From the start most every heart that's ever broken
Was because there always was a man to blame
2.
Jody Miller, “the little girl with the big voice”, was singing on tables in her dad’s favourite bars before she was eight; a folk singer originally, she had her biggest hit in country style with ‘Queen Of The House’, an answer song to Roger (no relation) Miller’s cross-genre hit ‘King Of The Road’ with lyrics by Mary Taylor, recorded while ‘King Of The Road’ was still in the charts. Jody was a crossover pop star who also had a hit with Land Of The Brave, a 1965 protest song about a boy bullied at school for dressing different from other kids. In ‘Queen of the House’ she’s houseproud (after all, the ‘King of the Road’ didn’t even have a house) and able to get along with a man who gets drunk with the boys at the reasonable rate of once a week.
I sing, up every day at six
Bacon and eggs to fix
Four kids from 1 to 4
Pretty soon there'll be one more
Oh, but Sundays I'm mighty glad
We send the kids to his mom and dad
It's the day that makes me glad I'm Queen of the House
This performance of Queen Of The House is a Scopitone recording, a 16mm video jukebox format that was popular in the early 1960’s.
3.
Ever since ‘God Didn’t Make Honky Tonk Angels’, cheatin’ men had been fair game for country singin’ women. Even a woman who wanted to defend one had to acknowledge that his was the weaker sex, and that that was why he’d strayed, as Tammy Wynette did in ‘Stand By Your Man’ (1968) – “for after all, he’s just a man”. ‘Stand By Your Man’ was roundly mocked by big city feminists at the time, and Hilary Clinton famously said at the height of her husband’s Gennifer Flowers scandal in the early ‘90’s that she “wasn't some little woman 'standing by my man' like Tammy Wynette" – in what way would never become clear, but the statement is typical of the talent for alienating the rural working class that would narrowly cost Clinton the presidency in 2016.
4.
But female discontent wasn’t limited to drunkenness and infidelity – Loretta Lynn sang Shel Silverstein’s ‘One’s On The Way’ in 1971 with the thought that surely six kids, her last two twins, was enough, becoming, as country historian Bill Malone called her, "the spokeswoman for every woman who had gotten married too early, pregnant too often and felt trapped by the tedium and drudgery of her life." The “girls in New York city” in this verse contrast with a line of female celebrities – Liz Taylor, Raquel Welch, Jackie O – in the other verses who’ve been enjoying their freedom in more extravagant jet set ways.
The girls in New York City, they all march for women's lib
And better homes and garden shows the modern way to live
And the pill may change the world tomorrow, but meanwhile, today
Here in Topeka, the flies are a buzzin'
The dog is a barkin' and the floor needs a scrubbin'
One needs a spankin' and one needs a huggin'
Lord, one's on the way
Oh gee, I hope it ain't twins, again.
5.
Those girls in New York City had had good reason to protest, as Billie Jo Spears had discovered in 1969’s ‘Mr. Walker, It's All Over’, which condemns the sexual harassment and poor living and working conditions of a 1960’s NYC career girl’s lot, in this case one who’s lucky enough to be able to return to hometown country life:
In this building there's a crowd of guys with old familiar thoughts upon their minds
That's a lot of hands a’reaching out to grab the things that I consider mine
And the president pursues me even though he's old and hair a’turnin' white
Mr Walker it's all over I don't like the New York secretary's life
Your sweetheart in personnel said I should give her written notice like the rest
So I wrote goodbye with my brightest lipstick right across her big expensive desk
You'd better call the Times and tell 'em put your wanted ad right back in classified
Mr Walker it's all over I don't like the New York secretary's life
There's a Greyhound at the station and a mom at home with open arms for me Garden City's looking better every minute now since I have learned to see
And the boy next door don't know it but come June he's gonna gain himself a wife
Mr Walker it's all over I don't like the New York secretary's life
6.
Billie Jo also gave us, in 1968, the first recording of ‘Harper Valley PTA’, a hit for Jeannie C. Riley in 1969 in a simpler arrangement. The PTA’s attempt to slut-shame Mrs Johnson does not end well for them:
I wanna tell you all a story 'bout
A Harper Valley widowed wife
Who had a teenage daughter
Who attended Harper Valley Junior High
Well, her daughter came home one afternoon
And didn't even stop to play
And she said, "mom, I got a note here from the Harper Valley PTA"
Well, the note said, "Mrs. Johnson
You're wearin' your dresses way too high
It's reported you've been drinking
And a-running 'round with men and goin' wild
And we don't believe you oughta be a-bringin' up
Your little girl this way"
And it was signed by the Secretary
Harper Valley PTA
Well, it happened that the PTA was gonna meet
That very afternoon
And they were sure surprised
When Mrs. Johnson wore her miniskirt into the room
And as she walked up to the blackboard
I can still recall the words she had to say
She said, "I'd like to address this meeting of the Harper Valley PTA
Well, there's Bobby Taylor sittin' there
And seven times he's asked me for a date
And Mrs. Taylor sure seems to use a lotta ice1
Whenever he's away
And Mr. Baker can you tell us why
Your secretary had to leave this town?
And shouldn't widow Jones be told to keep
Her window shades all pulled completely down
After that it just keeps getting worse for them. The punchline is that it’s Mrs Johnson’s teenage daughter singing the song, and she knows the whole story.
7.
In 1975 Loretta Lynn’s prayers were answered when the contraceptive pill reached Topeka. ‘The Pill’, a song she co-wrote with Lorene Allen, Don McHan, and T. D. Bayless, was the most controversial in the career of a country singer with a reputation for conservatism and church-going, but also her biggest hit. She isn’t going to be your brooder hen no more, and, neatly predicting the theories of Judith Butler, she’ll mark her freedom from the burdens of her sex by enjoying the performance of her gender:
This old maternity dress I've got
Is goin' in the garbage
The clothes I'm wearin' from now on
Won't take up so much yardage
Miniskirts, hot pants and a few little fancy frills
Yeah I'm makin' up for all those years
Since I've got the pill
8.
1975 is also the year third wave feminism starts to appear, if it hasn’t already, in Barbi Benton’s ‘Brass Buckles’. Really? “Well, as a feminist, virtually anything a woman does is empowering”, as Lisa Simpson told Marge in 2011’s ‘The Blue and the Gray’ episode. Benton became a four-time Playboy cover girl, and Hugh Heffner’s most influential girlfriend, before recording this pean to her wildness in 1975:
She outgrew brass buckles on her shoes
At twelve she was filling out her jeans
With a mind young and wild and a body that the devil styled
She could make a man do anything
She was old enough to try anything that crossed her mind
She liked anything that caught her eye
Like big diamond rings and shiny limousines
The devil never gave her a chance to be a child
Atlanta underground can get a young girl down
But she just had to make her dreams come true
Now on every movie screen you could see this country queen
She’s the centerfold of Playboy magazine2
(My mind is blown by finding out that Invercargill’s finest, Suzanne Prentice, also recorded this song!)
9.
As if that weren’t free enough, in 1976 Crystal Gayle, in ‘River Road’, feels free to run away from even a “pretty good man” who “tries to understand”; she’s the Queen of the Road, as free as Elvis was in ‘Gentle On My Mind’ to live her own dreams out of a suitcase, as free as anyone . You’ve come a long way, baby.
Mama said, "Listen child
You're too old to run wild
You're too big to be fishin' with the boys these days"
So I grabbed some clothes and ran
Stole five dollars from a sugar can
A 12-year-old jail breaker runnin' away
And here I go once again, with my suitcase in my hand
And I'm running away down River Road
And I swear, once again, that I'm never coming home
I'm chasing my dreams down River Road
Well, I married a pretty good man
And he tries to understand
But he knows I've got leavin' on my mind these days
When I get that urge to roam
I'm just like a kid again
The same old jail breaker runnin' away.
10.
My favourite song on Ladies of Country is Lynn Anderson’s 1982 version of ‘I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool’. This song topped the country charts in 1981, sung by Barbara Mandrell in a fake-live arrangement with an initially uncredited George Jones on the chorus (he’s mentioned in the lyric). ‘I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool’ was a response to the sudden mainstream popularity of country and western styles following the 1980 John Travolta film Urban Cowboy - a cri de cœur, reminding us that folks down home were living those things while big city types were still sneering at them. Revivalism can be seen as evidence of a culture in decline, and the song, by Dennis Morgan and Rhonda Kye Fleming, reads defensively:
I remember wearin' straight-leg Levis
Flannel shirts even when they weren't in style
I remember singin' with Roy Rogers
At the movies when the West was really wild
And I was listenin' to the Opry
When all of my friends
Were diggin' Rock 'n Roll and Rhythm and Blues
I was country when country wasn't cool
I remember circlin' the drive-in
Pullin' up and turnin' down George Jones
I remember when no one was lookin'
I was puttin' peanuts in my Coke3
I took a lot of kiddin'
'Cause I never did fit in
Now look at everybody
Tryin' to be what I was then
I was country when country wasn't cool, ooh
I was country when country wasn't cool
I was country from my hat down to my boots
I still act, and look the same
What you see ain't nothin' new
I was country when country wasn't cool
They call us country bumpkins
For stickin' to our roots
I'm just glad we're in a country
Where we're all free to choose
I was country (I was country) when country wasn't cool
I’m not really sure why I relate to this song so much it tears me up. The patriotism of that last verse can even seem a bit reactionary, the sound of country folk circling the wagons against ever-accelerating social change - 1981 was the year Ronald Reagan became president. Which seems like the natural place to stop; as country music becomes more politically self-aware, and splits into every listener’s choice of pointedly authenticated or glossily synthetic sub-genres like the rest of the culture, its vox populi value has waned. But the bad girls and the ladies of the classic age of popular country music, who, the track listings tell us, were often the same women with the exact same songs, sing on.
On the strength of Kitty Well’s story I bought a copy of her 1973 album Yours Truly in an op shop in Helensville yesterday. It’s excellent, the kind of straight-from-the-heart country singing I can wallow in, with a rockin’ version of Rose Lee Maphis’s ‘Love Is The Look You’re Looking For’.4
Algorithmic sisterhood - Helen Reddy, ‘Summer of ‘71’
Early pre-electric refrigerators used ice which was supplied daily by an iceman; the stay-at-home wife’s infidelity with the iceman was as common a trope in the USA as infidelity with the milkman was in the UK. By the time ‘Harper Valley PTA’ was written, home ice deliveries were largely obsolete, but the reference was still understood.
Barbi Benton featured in several Playboy photoessays, but was never the centerfold model. She came from New York City and studied at UCLA before finding work at Playboy as an extra on the Playboy After Dark cable TV show; there’s a fair bit of country mythmaking in the ‘Brass Buckles’ lyric, by Bobby Borcher and Mack Vickery, a close friend of and songwriter for Jerry Lee Lewis. In 1970 Vickery, also known as Atlanta James, released the first live album recorded in a women’s prison.
The combination of peanuts and Coca Cola, also known as a “farmer’s Coke”, is believed to have originated in the American South during the 1920s, as a snack for blue-collar workers that did not require them to wash their hands. Wikipedia tells me that peanuts and coke became an internet trend in 2018. It is one I have yet to try.
The sleevenotes for Yours Truly are written by Ray Walker of the Jordanaires, Wells’ backing vocalists, and the backing singers on Tammy Wynette’s ‘Stand By Your Man’ and most of Elvis Presley’s early hits.
With impeccable punctuation Walker tells us that “all successful artists have fans, but, few enjoy the height of respect, the depth of devotion, and the pure quality of loyalty that Miss Kitty receives from admirers. The zenith of her success is excelled only by the faith she has in her divine maker, and her humble, quiet dedication to the people she serves.
Kitty Wells is also a successful wife and mother, enjoying an almost unbelievable closeness with her entire family (as you well know from hearing their family album). So, you see, she has touched nearly every worthwhile facet of life, making it possible for her to share herself, effectively, with you.”