Kitty Wells — Nashville, Tennessee

Kitty Wells — Muriel Ellen Deason — was born on August 30, 1919, in Nashville, Tennessee, and became the first female country music superstar — the Queen of Country Music — with her 1952 recording of 'It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,' a direct answer record to Hank Thompson's 'The Wild Side of Life' that gave women's perspective a voice in country music for the first time. The song was initially banned by NBC for being too suggestive, which only increased its notoriety. It reached number one and stayed there for six weeks, establishing Wells as a commercially viable solo female artist at a time when the industry considered women supporting acts.

Wells spent her entire life in Nashville and her career was managed by her husband Johnnie Wright of Johnnie and Jack. Her influence on subsequent generations of female country artists — Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton — was foundational and directly acknowledged. She was the first woman inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and the first to receive a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. She continued performing into her eighties.

Wells was a Nashville institution whose career and personal life were deeply embedded in the city's musical geography. She died in Madison, Tennessee, in July 2012, at the age of 92. The Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, where she was among the first inductees, is the primary monument to her legacy. Her home in Madison, Tennessee, was a Music Row-adjacent institution.