Wanda Jackson parties on, with help from Jack White

Wanda Jackson parties on, with help from Jack White


Posted on January 23, 2011 by Peter Cooper



Wanda Jackson performing at the Ryman Auditorium in September of 2010

(photo: Shelley Mays/The Tennessean).



At the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, a 52-year-old, black and white clip plays over and
over again, as visitors stop to gawk. The footage shows a 21-year-old Wanda Jackson strumming,
shimmying in a spaghetti-strap dress and singing “Hard Headed Woman” on the television show
Town Hall Party.

“It’s one of the most popular items in the entire museum, and it has been for a decade now,” says
the museum’s Michael Gray, a music historian. “Some visitors who aren’t familiar with who she is see
that video and then go to the store and ask for her CDs.”

When she taped Town Hall Party, Jackson was an aberration and a pioneer. She was the most
prominent female rockabilly artist of her time, blending country roots and R&B energy like a distaff
Elvis Presley. Now, as she prepares to release her new album, The Party Ain’t Over, produced by Jack
White on his Third Man Records label, she is a 73-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer who smiles at
the memory of her 1950s days.

“I was quite the young lady, with gloves and hats,” she says, sitting on a couch at the Third Man
offices in Nashville. “And then I’d get onstage and I’d change.”

That transformation, from quiet young woman to provocative dervish, had a ripple effect in popular
music.

“Janis Joplin, Pat Benatar, even Lady Gaga owe something to Wanda Jackson,” says music historian
and critic Rich Kienzle, who wrote the liner notes for Jackson’s 1990 Rockin’ the Country retrospective
album. “She opened the door for everybody else because she had a sense not only of the musical
but also of the visual. There were other great female rockers around that time, but Wanda projected
this blend of sexuality and glamour on top of her vocals that was something no one else could touch.”

Such a blend is different at 73 than at 21, but Jackson remains in demand. The new album, which
sets her searing, snarling vocals against raw rock, country and gospel backdrops, is gaining national
and international attention, and last week she and White performed on the Late Show With David
Letterman. On Tuesday, Jan. 25 — the same day the album is released — she’s due to perform on
Conan.

“I’m having more publicity and celebrity now than I ever had when I was younger,” Jackson says.
“And I’m having the time of my life. I’ve been touring for 55 years now, with only one year off, and
that one year nearly killed me. I said to (husband) Wendell, ‘Honey, get me back on the road!’ ”
Blazing a trail

Jackson, who lives in Oklahoma City, was planning an album of duets in 2009 when her manager
contacted White to see if he was interested in collaborating on a track. He wasn’t. Instead, he
wanted to record a single and perhaps an entire album at Third Man. The single, a version of Amy
Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good,” went well, and White — who won a best country album
Grammy in 2005 for producing Loretta Lynn’s Van Lear Rose — forged onward with Jackson.

“I think of Jack as a velvet-covered brick,” she says. “He’s very cool and relaxed, but he wants to get
so much out of you. He really pulls it out of you, but he does it in such a sweet way that you can’t get mad.”

That description could also apply to Jackson, who spent her youth quietly challenging the status quo.
Her form-fitting stage outfits drew notice, raised eyebrows and caused Ernest Tubb to demand she
cover up on one Grand Ole Opry evening (“He said, ‘You can’t show your shoulders,’ ” Jackson
recalls). And her inclusion of African-American piano player Big Al Downing in her band flew in the face
of 1950s segregation standards.

“One time, we were doing a show and the manager, who hadn’t noticed the band before, came out,
called me over and said, ‘We can’t have a black person in here at all, and certainly not onstage,’ ”
Jackson says. “He said, ‘The rest of you are fine, but get rid of him,’ meaning Al. I turned around and
said, ‘Guys, let’s pack it up. If Al can’t stay, I can’t stay.’ ”

Raucous material such as “Let’s Have a Party” and “Fujiyama Mama” also were far from the norm for
’50s females, and their chart performance suffered for the difference. Much of what is now Jackson’s
best-known material failed to triumph on American radio playlists.

“This was a time when Patti Page was singing ‘(How Much Is That) Doggie in the Window,’ and
Wanda was singing about eruption and destruction,” Gray says. “Her significance shouldn’t be
gauged by chart success. She was a trailblazer.”


A fresh start
In the studio, White wasn’t interested in a nostalgia piece or a sonic replication of Jackson’s
rockabilly ’50s or her 1960s and early ’70s days as a country music hit-maker (she notched a total of
18 Top 40 country singles, all but two recorded after 1960). Instead, he sought to construct aural
landscapes as wild and odd as Jackson’s still-potent voice. On covers of Eddie Cochran’s “Nervous
Breakdown” and Johnny Kidd and the Pirates’ “Shakin’ All Over,” she sounds unrestrained and
reckless in a way she had not in four decades.


“It was the most challenging thing I’ve done since I had to record in German in the 1960s, because I
don’t speak German,” she says. “I was wondering how long I’d be able to tour and keep doing the
old material I was doing. I wanted something fresh. Jack pushed me into the 21st century.”
Reach Peter Cooper at 615–259-8220 or pcooper@tennessean.com.


Related viewing
Wanda Jackson, "Thunder On The Mountain"



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