2:44
single, 1951
Written by Arlie Carter and William Warren
This song was one of the biggest hits in country music history, spending 15 weeks at number one on the Billboard chart. It had been released in 1951 by Jimmy Heap and His Melody Masters. A plaintive, honky-tonk weeper about a gal who won't settle for being a wife and spurns a man, more interested in the "gay night life" where "the wine and liquor flow" and, according to the narrator, where she can be "anybody's baby." It also contains the memorable line, "I didn't know God made honky-tonk angels." (This line inspired songwriter J. D. "Jay" Miller to write the 1952 answer song "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," which became the first hit single for pioneer female country vocalist Kitty Wells.) It also indirectly inspired the title of Lou Reed's "Walk On the Wild Side," being named after Nelson Algren's 1956 novel A Walk on the Wild Side which was itself named after this song. What a legacy! And nearly forgotten now.
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