“Honky Tonk Angels”

This is a country music post and I do hope you take a little time to take all this in…it’s fun.

(NOTE: This posts has TWO songs in it…the second song is at the bottom after the text…just so you don’t miss anything!!)

Country songs very often tell a story about lost or found love, bars, drinking, good and/or bad men and/or women, etc. To that extent, they can seem a bit “formulaic”. But these two songs go well past just that. They both have become seminal songs of the annuls of country music.

The two songs complement each other. The second song was written as a direct reply or response to the first. That is the part that makes this post fun.

First, in 1952 a country singer named Hank Thompson wrote and recorded a song titled “The Wild Side of Life“, his first #1 hit song. (Thompson went on the have a hugely successful career as a country singer-songwriter.) I’ll let you listen to the sad tale, but in essence the story goes that this guy’s wife left him and became a “floosy” hanging around honky tonky bars picking up men. He said she had taken up “the wild side of life” and become, Thompson’s words, a “Honky Tonk Angel“.

Later in the same year, country legend Kitty Wells recorded a song that J. D. “Jay” Miller wrote in response to “The Wild Side of Life“…”It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”. Again, without spoiling the fun of hearing a woman’s side of the story, Kitty defends the actions of some women who have left a failed marriage and go seeking some solace and companionship in bars to fill their emptiness and loneliness. The song maintains that “Honky Tonk Angels” are not God’s creation, but the result of “married men who think they’re still single and have caused many a good girl to go wrong.” Touché! The song opens with a direct reference to Thompson’s song saying, “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 memories of when I was a trusting wife.”

Rather than post the original versions of these songs, I’m posting more recent covers that seem to me to emphasize the lyrics though wonderful updated Country and Western arrangements featuring amazing pedal steel guitar work and expert fiddle players. ENJOY!!