Wanda Jackson

Induction Year: 2009

Induction Category: Early Influence

Wanda Jackson (vocals, guitar; born October 20, 1937)

The rockabilly field of the Fifties wasn’t exactly crowded with female performers, but Wanda Jackson didn’t let that stop her from making her mark. She emerged from a small town in Oklahoma to become the first Queen of Rockabilly. Jackson started out her career singing with the likes of Hank Thompson and Red Foley, who hosted the Ozark Jubilee Barn Dance. Her first contract, arranged with Thompson’s assistance, was with Decca Records, and she had a country hit in 1954 with the duet “You Can’t Have My Love.”

With encouragement from , who she met while on a package tour in 1955, Jackson moved in the direction of rock and roll. “You should be doing this kind of music,” he advised her. Her early singles for Capitol Records, to which she signed in 1956, typically consisted of a country song and a rock and roll number. Jackson’s rockabilly recordings – including such red-hot Fifties sides as “Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad,” “Rock Your Baby,” “Mean Mean Man” and “Honey Bop” - are among the greatest ever made, regardless of gender. These rocking sides featured renowned country-music accompanists such as Buck Owens (rhythm guitar) and Ralph Mooney (pedal steel).

In 1957 Jackson gave the full-blown rockabilly treatment to a rhythm & blues number called “Fujiyama Mama.” Though it missed the U.S. charts, it became a hit in Japan. Jackson topped herself as a rock and roll singer with “Let’s Have a Party,” a song previously recorded as “Party” by (for the film Lovin’ You) and the Collins Kids. By now she’d recruited a hot rockabilly act, Bobby Poe and the Poe Cats, as her backup band. Unusually, for the time, it was an integrated band that included black pianist Big Al Downing.

On “Let’s Have a Party,” Jackson’s voice is as uninhibited and raw as that of any male Fifties rocker, and guitarist Vernon Sandusky matches her energy with his uninhibited licks. Recorded in 1958, the song wasn’t released as a single for two years – and only then when a deejay started playing the track after discovering it on her first album, Wanda Jackson. “Let’s Have a Party” became Jackson’s first Top Forty hit, reaching #37.

Jackson cut a striking visual image onstage in the conservative Fifties. “I was the first girl that I know of in country music to sing in a tight dress, more of a sexy type outfit: high heels and long earrings and silk fringe dresses,” she told Goldmine’s Jeff Tamarkin. “I designed those and was wearing them long before the go-go dancers were popular in the Sixties.”

Her flamboyance raised eyebrows in the conservative country world – especially on the Grand Ole Opry – but fit right in with the freewheeling spirit of rock and roll. Capitol had her record more rock and roll on the albums There’s a Party Goin’ On (1961) and Rockin’ With Wanda (1963). Her band, the Party Timers, included guitarist Roy Clark, a future legend in the country field. Jackson had two more Top Forty hits in 1961 - “Right Or Wrong” (#29) and “In the Middle of a Heartache” (#27) – but both betrayed more of a country than a rockabilly sound, and that’s ultimately the direction she pursued for much of the rest of her career.

Wanda Jackson’s moment on the pop charts passed as quickly as it came, but the rockabilly songs she cut in the late Fifties and early Sixties are highly valued by those in the know. On top of being the Queen of Rockabilly, for 20 years – before, during and after her time as a rock and roll pioneer – Jackson enjoyed a formidable presence on the country charts. She racked up 30 C&W hits between 1954 and 1974; ironically, many hardcore country fans are unaware of her involvement with and impact on rock and roll.

In the long run, Jackson felt more at home with country music than rock and roll, though it had more to do with the lifestyles than the music. “At the time, I got thrown into the rock and roll scene and I didn’t understand these people,” she told Goldmine’s Jeff Tamarkin in 1987. “I was just country folk, you know?”

In 1971 Jackson became a born-again Christian, and throughout the Seventies she recorded gospel as well as country music. Jackson has returned to rock and roll from time to time, too, in recent decades. Rock ‘n’ Roll Away Your Blues was released in the mid-1980s. In 2009 she returned to her roots once again with I Remember Elvis, a tribute to her old friend and touring partner.

TIMELINE

October 20, 1937: Wanda Lavonne Jackson is born in Maud, Oklahoma.

1954: Wanda Jackson, still in high school, signs to Capitol Records

1955: Wanda Jackson meets while on tour, and they cultivate a friendship.

1956: encourages Wanda Jackson to sing rock and roll, playing her records from his collection to emphasize the point.

June 8, 1956: Wanda Jackson’s first session for Capitol Records yields “I Gotta Know,” a country-rockabilly hybrid.

April 1958: Wanda Jackson cuts her self-titled debut album, which includes the rockabilly raveup “Let’s Have a Party,” is released.

August 29, 1960: “Let’s Have a Party,” by Wanda Jackson, becomes the singer’s first Top Forty rock and roll hit reaching #37.

1962: Rockin’ With Wanda, the second album by Wanda Jackson, is released.

April 21, 1962: Wanda Jackson makes the pop charts for the last time with a country ballad, “If I Cried Every Time You Hurt Me.”

June 1971: Wanda Jackson converts to Christianity and begins singing and recording both gospel and country music.

1973: Wanda Jackson leaves Capitol records after nearly 17 years over their objections to her desire to make more gospel records.

1984: Wanda Jackson records Rock ‘N’ Roll Away Your Blues, her first rock and roll album in 20 years, in Kumla, Sweden. It is released in the U.S. three years later on Varick Records.

October 17, 2000: Queen of Rockabilly, a 30-track compilation of Wanda Jackson’s rockabilly recordings from the Fifties and Sixties, is released on Ace Records.

April 4, 2009: Wanda Jackson is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the 24th annual dinner. Rosanne Cash is her presenter.

RECOMMENDED TRACKS

1. Let’s Have a Party
2. Fujiyama Mama
3. Rock Your Baby
4. I Gotta Know
5. Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad
6. Honey Bop
7. Mean Mean Man
8. Hard Headed Woman
9. Riot in Cell Block #9
10. Cool Love

RECOMMENDED READING

Dahl, Bill. “Wanda Jackson: Queen of Rockabilly Recalls 50 Years of Rockin’ With the Best of Them, Including Elvis Presley.” Goldmine (February 6, 2004): 14-19.

Jackson, Wanda. Let’s Have a Party. Alred Publishing, 2006

Kienzle, Rich. Liner notes for Vintage Collections, by Wanda Jackson (Capitol, 1996).

Tamarkin, Jeff. “Wanda Jackson: That Happy Country Gospel Rockabilly Party Gal!” Goldmine (May 22, 1987): 6-9.