Laura Cantrell’s tribute to Kitty Wells

The exceedingly talented Laura Cantrell, a sometime WFMU DJ whose Not the Tremblin’ Kind was said to be John Peel’s favorite record ever, has a new record out called Kitty Wells Dresses. As the title implies, it is a loving tribute to the nonegenarian country star Kitty Wells, whose clear-eyed ballads steered remarkably clear of easy moral judgments and exhibited a short-story writer’s grasp of the complexity of human relationships. Cantrell’s album is all covers but one, the title track, which envisions her slipping into the shoes, clothes and accoutrements of the Grand Ole Opry sensation – the plainly made, modestly cut “robes of a queen.”

Here’s Cantrell


And here’s Kitty Wells herself