Betty Cody

For a brief span during the early 1950s, Betty Cody stood side by side honky tonk queens like Kitty Wells and Goldie Hill. "Betty Cody was the closest to Kitty Wells in both plaintive vocal style and heartache lyric content," wrote Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann in Finding Her Voice: The Saga of Women in Country Music. Like Wells, she would reach country music's Top Ten hit with an answer song; whereas Webb Pierce sang "There Stands a Glass," a honky tonk paean to hard living, Cody sang "Please Throw Away the Glass," inserting a woman's point of view. Cody was born Rita Cote in Quebec on August 17, 1921, the sixth of Alphonse and Aidina Cote's 11 children. Her family moved to Auburn, ME and Cody learned music from the nuns of a French Catholic school; she would continue to sing in French until the age of 14. Cody shored up her country music credentials by learning to yodel -- thanks to a brother's dare -- by listening to Patsy Montana's 1935 hit "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart." She soon found work at local radio stations and balanced her budding singing career with her regular job at a shoe factory. Her first appearance was at WCOU Radio in Lewiston at the age of 15. In 1940 Cody married a musician, Harold Breau, known in New England as Lone Pine. When Cody joined his act, she adopted her stage name and the team traveled the United States and Canada. The couple had four sons including Lenny Breau who joined the family act at three and later became a well-known jazz guitarist. In the early '50s Cody reached the height of her career when the act signed to RCA and initiated a series of recordings. Cody's formative training paid off when "Tom Tom Yodel" became a hit in 1952. Successful recordings of "Please Throw Away the Glass" and "I Found Out More Than You'll...