The Migration of Butterflies: Music City to Sin City

While men in early country music had the rebellion of rhinestones against the highly regulated Nashville sound, their sequins and colored thread seemed to dull and fade as it became the new Nashville staple being supplied by Nudie Cohn. Once again, Music City gained control with the new standardized rhinestoned apparel. While male country singers fought for lame and rhinestones, the women felt there was something more to be changed. 

Chet Atkins, placed in charge at RCA, the highest-regarded record label in the city, spent time refining what pleased him as the central country music sound. While Atkins kept things strict, Owen Bradley would make the Nashville sound more complex and soothing, trading fiddle for violin. Women in Nashville became outspoken and overdressed while Atkins and Bradley honed in on the instruments and booth panels.

In 1952 Kitty Wells put herself on the front lines. It wasn’t God who made honky-tonk angels her response to the hit The Wild Side of Life of that same year. The wild side of life: a tale of a man reiterating a woman’s cold acts and rejection.

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

Wells had a reply: it wasn’t God that made honky-tonk angels filling in the story. Every ending has a beginning; every cause has its effect. Wells' quick retaliation immediately became controversial stepping out of Nashville’s with themes of sorrow, alcoholism, and down-home memories.

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 woman

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

In 1968, just a couple of months after her TV debut on the Porter Wagoner Show, Dolly Parton released "The Bridge," a song of secret affairs in the night on a bridge so very tall. The woman falls pregnant unwed with no man to meet at the bridge any longer. She contemplates her affairs, the nights, and the depth of the water before succumbing to societal judgement.

Tonight, while standing on the bridge

My heart is beating wild

To think that you could leave me here

With our unborn child

My feet are moving slowly

Closer to the edge

Here is where it started

And here is where I'll end it

Parton tells another tale released later in her career in 1970, though originally written when she was 18. Banned from radio, Down from Dover reveals secret realities: another woman is pregnant and unmarried. This man, different from the one on the bridge, gave hope. He’d leave town to provide and return for the birth. The young girl justifies and hopes, facing religious disapproval and family disappointment, remaining naive until the child’s stillbirth, reasoning with the tragedy.

My body aches; the time is here

It's lonely in this place where I'm lying

Our baby has been born, but something's wrong It's much too still I hear no crying

I guess in some strange way she knew

She'd never have a father's arms to hold her

And dying was her way of telling me

He wasn't coming down from Dover

In 1969, with a slit clean up to her hip, Bobbie Gentry presented Fancy, a young girl turned to prostitution by her mother due to poverty. Gentry would perform Fancy live on television in a red mini dress with sequins and slip on her hip, toting a red ostrich boa. Fancy controversially confronts God, poverty, and prostitution. Coming out of poverty to society, staying loyal to her mother’s hopes and to her locket, "to thine own self be true."

She said, "Here's your chance, Fancy; don't let me down."

She said, "Here's your one chance, Fancy; don't let me down."

Lord, forgive me for what I do

But if you want out, well, it's up to you

Now don't let me down now

Your mama's going to move you uptown

Fancy used prostitution as a survival tactic; Gentry would use her audience as a survival tactic. In Mississippi, Gentry learned the hard facts of poverty and the lack of choices for women. Gentry wrote Fancy to be understood by women and ridiculed by men. Using women’s liberation to question if no one is going to help why shouldn’t Fancy take control? Gentry used music as her financial flee from poverty before slipping into common society the 80s.

The coal miner's daughter, Loretta Lynn, preached "The Pill," written in the same year as Rated X but not recorded or released until 1975 due to Nashville's hesitation. Lynn uses the song to portray the dehumanized approach to traditional pregnancies through animalistic analysis. Seeking freedom in the new free world.

This old maternity dress I've got is going in the garbage

The clothes I'm wearing from now on won't take up so much yardage

Miniskirts, hot pants, and a few little fancy frills

Yeah, I'm making up for all those years since I've gotten the pill

Lynn was married by 15 and bearing children by 16 and by the time she had her first hit, she was pregnant with twins. When Lynn’s career started to take off she was looking for freedom and liberation. By the time the pill was available Lynn had reached the end of her maternal clock writing the song to encourage women to take the pill.

Though these women were silenced on the radio and canceled by TV broadcasters, their voices echoed through the Opry. Against Atkins and Bradley, these women became country stars as the two men faded. Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and friends are cited as the fathers of outlaw country. Before outlaw country came the migration of butterflies, pollinating country music with feminist activism. Sharing raw womanhood in society before retreating to the wings.