Before Dolly Parton, This Song Became Country Music's First Million-Seller By A Woman

While numerous Dolly Parton songs became bigger than country music and sold very well, the first country song written and performed by a woman to move a million records isn't among them. About three decades before Parton got her start, and only a few years after Vernon Dalhart gave country music its first ever million-seller, one of the most popular "singing cowgirls" of the 1930s reached that staggering level of commercial success. Patsy Montana made the first song by a non-male country music performer to sell that many copies.

Ruby Blevins left Arkansas in the 1920s for Los Angeles, where she became a country music radio performer named "Rubye Blevins, the Yodeling Cowgirl from San Antone." Then she concocted a new persona, the sprightly and spunky Patsy Montana. As part of the Montana Cowgirls, she appeared on musician Stuart Hamblen's radio show and toured with cowboy performer and actor Montie Montana. When that act split up, Montana headed up the country and western swing string band the Prairie Ramblers. Through a series of live radio performances on "National Barn Dance," a Chicago program also broadcast nationally by NBC, Montana drummed up interest in a song she wrote, "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart." The 1935 single went on to sell an unheard of million copies. 

Patsy Montana connected with the Prairie Ramblers in 1933, and she sang on Chicago radio's "National Barn Dance" and "Smile-A-While." Then she gave songwriting a shot. Montana came up with a piece about a young woman trying to reconcile her hard-won independence with the desire to find love. Titled "I Wanna Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart," the music was based on that of "Texas Plains," composed by her previous boss, Stuart Hamblen.

When the Prairie Ramblers did "I Wanna Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" from a special New York broadcast of "Smile-A-While," their publisher persuaded Art Satherley of the American Record Company to book a recording session. Satherley wasn't convinced a song by a female artist would be popular. Clearly, he didn't read the room correctly.

Montana isn't one of the few country musicians in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but she's been honored by many other institutions. She was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996, the same year she died, while the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame actually named its entertainer award after her. Her legacy also lives on beyond that — "I Wanna Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" has since been covered more than 60 times, with versions from stars like Suzy Bogguss, the Chicks, Lynn Anderson, and LeAnn Rimes.