"It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" is a country song written by J. D. "Jay" Miller, a Louisiana record producer and songwriter. Al Montgomery first recorded it in 1952 as "Did God Make Honky Tonk Angels?" on the Feature label, which Miller owned. Kitty Wells recorded it at her first Decca session at the Castle Studio in Nashville on May 3, 1952. Released on June 23 as Decca 28232 and produced by Paul Cohen, it spent six weeks at number one on Billboard's US country chart, becoming the first solo No. 1 by a woman, and it outsold Montgomery's original. The song is an answer to Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life", set to the same melody but at a faster tempo. That melody is a traditional tune shared with "Thrills That I Can't Forget", "I'm Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes" and "Great Speckled Bird". The NBC radio network and the BBC banned the record as suggestive, and Wells was barred from the Grand Ole Opry for a time. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998 and added to the National Recording Registry in 2007. Later versions were recorded by artists including Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton and Mandy Barnett.
