J.D. Miller
Musician · d. 1996
Joseph Denton “Jay” Miller was a Louisiana songwriter, record producer, and studio owner whose Crowley operation captured Cajun, swamp blues, and swamp pop music for decades. His most enduring composition is “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” — an answer song that became a country No. 1 hit for Kitty Wells in 1952 and the first major country chart-topper sung by a woman.
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- Born May 5, 1922, in Iota, Louisiana; spent childhood years in El Campo, Texas, before the family settled in Crowley, Louisiana, and settled in Crowley, Louisiana, for most of his life.
- Played guitar with several Cajun bands in the late 1930s — the Four Aces, the Rice City Ramblers, the Daylight Creepers — before turning to producing and writing.
- Began recording Cajun musicians in 1946 using the New Orleans studio of Cosimo Matassa.
- Wrote “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” in 1952 as a direct answer to Hank Thompson’s “The Wild Side of Life,” reframing the lyric from a woman’s perspective. Kitty Wells’s recording hit No. 1 on the country charts and broke the gender ceiling for country music chart-toppers.
- Built MasterTrak studio in Crowley in the 1960s; later sessions there brought Paul Simon and John Fogerty to record in southwestern Louisiana.
- Produced foundational swamp blues recordings by Slim Harpo, Lightnin’ Slim, Lazy Lester, and others on the Excello label.
- Died March 23, 1996, in Crowley after complications following quadruple bypass surgery.
