At this time, Wells adopted "Kitty Wells" as her stage name. Johnnie Wright chose the name from a folk song called "Sweet Kitty Wells". Wells toured with the pair, occasionally performing backup vocals. Before Wells' rise to stardom with "Honky Tonk Angels", Roy Acuff and the Smoky Mountain Boys toured with Wright and Wells for a time. Acuff advised Wright not to make his wife his show's headliner because he thought women could not sell country music records. On Louisiana Hayride, Wells performed with her husband's duo. Wells, however, did not sing on their records until signing with RCA Victor in 1949, releasing some of her first singles, including "Death At The Bar" and "Don't Wait For The Last Minute To Pray", neither of which charted. While these early records gained some notice, promoters still were not keen on promoting female singers, so Wells was dropped from the label in 1950. 1952: "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" In 1952, Paul Cohen, an executive at Decca Records, approached Wells to record "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels". Wells was disenchanted with her career prospects and was considering retirement, but agreed to the session (at Owen Bradley's studio on May 3, 1952) because of the $125 union scale recording payment. "I wasn't expecting to make a hit," said Wells later. "I just thought it was another song." "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" was an answer song to Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life" and its lyrical treatment of seductive, wayward women. Wells' single retorted, "It's a shame that all the blame is on us women." The record's message was controversial at the time and was banned by many radio stations. NBC, in particular, was troubled by the lyric, "It brings back memories of when I was a trustful wife". Wells' slight alteration of "trustful" to "trusting" lifted the network ban on the song. It was temporarily banned from the Grand Ole Opry. Nevertheless, audiences were greatly enamored of the song. The single took off during the summer of 1952, and sold more than 800,000 copies in its initial release. It was the first single by a female singer to peak at number one in the eight-year history of the country music chart, where it remained for six weeks. (Certain female country songs, notably Patsy Montana's million-selling "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart",