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Jackie Wilson

JACKIE WILSON

YEAR

1987

INDUCTED BY

Peter Wolf

CATEGORY

Performers

Call him what you will—Mr. Excitement, the black Elvis—Jackie Wilson can’t be put into words.

Jackie Wilson’s athleticism, energy and raw sexual magnetism whipped audiences into a frenzy. He could deliver a pitch-perfect performance all while spinning, jumping and dropping to a split.

Jackie Wilson

Jackie Wilson

HALL OF FAME
ESSAY

By Michael Hill

In 1953, when the nineteen-year-old Jackie Wilson approached Billy Ward, the leader of the Dominoes, at the Fox Theater, in Wilson’s home town of Detroit, and suggested that he’d make the ideal replacement for the recently departed Clyde McPhatter, boasting that he was actually a better singer…well, Ward and the band were undoubtedly skeptical.

Then Wilson sang for them – and found himself fronting the group for the next three years, playing before the audience that McPhatter had built and winning them over with similarly abandoned blood-sweat-and-tears performances. He even put the Dominoes back on the charts once more with “St. Therese of the Roses.”

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Class of 1987
one of the most elegant performers there was
Peter Wolf
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