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Sass and style
Jeremy Charles for the Tulsa World
By JENNIFER CHANCELLOR World Scene Writer
Published: 11/2/2008 4:07 AM
Last Modified: 11/3/2008 11:38 AM
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Music icon Wanda Jackson earns Hall of Fame bid
She's lived in the same modest home for nearly 30 years. Crystal statuettes, awards, family portraits, paintings, fan art, framed album covers and candid shots of herself with celebrities such as Johnny Cash adorn the walls and shelves throughout the plush, cozy residence.
Rich red hues wash across walls and carpets, mixed with fuzzy white loveseats, metal-tinged wallpaper and smooth leather couches. Her jet black hair is done just so; her white sweater hugs her petite torso. She speaks softly, but with confidence.
"My life is a Cinderella story," Wanda Jackson reminisced recently at her south Oklahoma City home.
She was born in Maud, Okla., to struggling, working-class parents during the Great Depression era. While in grade school, she told her daddy, Tom, and mother, Nellie, "I'm gonna be a famous girl singer someday."
And that "someday" turned out to be more than any schoolgirl could ever wish for.
Wanda Jackson still calls her parents Mother and Daddy. "Mother still lives here in town," she said with a smile. She's 94. "She lives right up the street."
Jackson chewed gum and talked excitedly about her childhood. Her daddy bought her a Martin
D-18 guitar from a pawn shop when her hands were barely big enough to grip the neck.
She quietly walked from the room and appeared moments later holding a battered, tan case. "This is the original case," she said as she popped open its locks. In a classy scrawl, the words "Wanda Jackson" hug the bottom left of the antique guitar's glossy spruce top. Gingerly, she pulled it out and held its neck to rotate the instrument. She felt its scuffed back.
"There's a lot of blood, sweat and tears on that," she said as she touched the back of the guitar. "The rhinestones and things from my outfits wore it through, so mother got some leather and put it over it to save it," she said before swaying into a short verse of "Good Rockin' Tonight."
She admitted that she's saved this guitar — and a favorite fringe dress — in case she is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009. Her nomination was announced in September.
Jackson remembers being discovered by her country music idol Hank Thompson when she was only 15, as she played songs live on Oklahoma City radio station KLPR.
"He lived in Oklahoma City at the time — I didn't even know it," she said. "I got a phone call at the station after the show. They said 'A man is on the phone,' so I assumed it was Daddy.
"I picked up the phone and it was Hank Thompson," she said, a little breathless. "I nearly fainted."
Soon, she was signed to Decca Records and had a hit single, "You Can't Have My Love," a duet with Thompson's bandleader, Billy Gray.
"I was bigger than Elvis for about that long," she said with a snap of her fingers. "But those were the early days."
'Fujiyama Mama'
In 1955, she graduated from Capitol Hill High School in Oklahoma City and into Capitol Records, Thompson's label, where in 1957 she released her second hit and first crossover into rockabilly — "Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad."
During a tour of her home, Jackson spoke about a picture of her in a kimono, and reminisced about a seven-week tour of Tokyo she took decades ago. She smiled broadly and let the memories flood her.
"There was a whole 100 people cast, I came in on this rickshaw," she said with a laugh. Her single, "Fujiyama Mama" was Jackson's first No. 1 hit, and it detonated biggest in Japan, staying at the top slot for six months in 1959 and 1960.
Her throaty vocals proclaim: "I've been to Nagasaki, Hiroshima too / The things I did to them baby, I can do to you!"
"I couldn't get much airplay (with that song) in America," Jackson said with a sly smile. "We won that war, but the Japanese loved that song!"
It's a sound she credits largely to Elvis Presley, whom she met — and dated — during her time on "Ozark Jubilee," from 1955-57, when the king of rock 'n' roll himself suggested that she try the new genre of electrified music called rockabilly.
Indeed, in 2006, she recorded and released a new album in tribute to her former lover and muse, "I Remember Elvis."
And, during a period when country and early rockabilly singers wore button-up shirts with pearl snaps, long skirts and cowboy boots, Jackson and her mother bucked tradition by designing spaghetti-strapped dresses with multiple, curve-intensifying rows of undulating fringe.
She asked a friend to write "I Gotta Know," about juke boxes, true love, school and wedding rings. It was a true crossover hit, with each verse flashing from country to rockabilly and back again. Jackson wrote "Mean Mean Man" and "Rock Your Baby," which also garnered small success in the U.S.
"I didn't know I could do all that growling and roaring," she said. "But Elvis believed it, and he changed my life."
Where the boys are
While on the road with her "boys club," Jackson's notoriety for sass and style really took hold with fans.
"The stage was my kingdom. I felt like a queen," she said. "I was in the eye of a hurricane."
With all that shimmying and shaking, "I wore out a lot of dresses from the inside out," she said. Indeed, while other Okies like Patti Page crooned, "How much is that doggie in the window?" Jackson swung her hips and snarled out raunchy sexual exploits.
Her wild reputation was mostly show, she admitted. "Growing up, I always wanted to be more outgoing," she said. "I was shy."
And then there were the boys: In the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic, "Walk the Line," an adolescent Jackson is shown hugging late-night roads in cramped cars with Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins and Roy Orbison.
"Jerry Lee would pull off my ponytail," she said with a laugh, referring to a battered hair piece she sometimes wore while performing. "He'd start coughing and say, 'Don't you ever wash that thing?' He'd pull it off and hand it to Elvis. I'd say, 'Nope, here, you do it.' He was a good kidder."
And some of those roadside gigs in the early days were a little dicey, especially when the musicians had to rely on the venue to provide quality gear.
"We'd go early to stop by the venue and just check it out, and he (Lewis) always had to check out the piano. And, boy, if they'd given him some old upright clunker, oh, he'd say, 'I am going to literally tear this apart before I'm through tonight.' And he'd do his best to."
Smashing gear was status quo, but riding in a car filled with famous wild men definitely was not.
"Well, I couldn't do that! Daddy wouldn't even let me drive from city to city with Elvis. He said, 'We have our car, you can ride with me They can ride with us if they want to,' " she said, then laughed. "He kept me on a pretty short leash. He probably needed to."
All these years later, Jackson occasionally still wears Elvis' ring on a chain around her neck.
"One of the first questions everyone always asks me is 'Was Elvis a good kisser?' I tell 'em of course Elvis was a good kisser," Jackson said before pointing a ruby-tipped finger at a man walking into her living room. "But I found one that kissed better — and I married him."
Jackson fell in love with her soon-to-be husband, Wendell Goodman, on a bowling date on one of her short visits home from touring. In 1961, the couple married.
In an era when counterparts such as Janis Martin quit the business to be with her spouse and family, Jackson's husband did the unheard-of: He left his well-paying job at IBM to manage her career. Together, they had two children, hit country songs, hit rockabilly songs, hit rock songs, international record deals, tours and albums.
'Filly' fanatics
It took decades for her music to resonate with a broader fan base: "This young generation has really discovered me," she said with an expansive smile.
In 2003, Jackson recorded and released a new album, "Heart Trouble," and invited some of her biggest fans along for the ride: Lee Rocker, Elvis Costello, The Cramps and Flores all made appearances on the album.
"More has happened in the last few years than I ever dreamed possible," she said as she patted her salon-perfect hair, rolled her chewing gum in her mouth and sighed.
"This old gal even plays Daisy Rock guitars," she said as she pointed to her new pink guitar. The company sponsors her and other rock icons, like Avril Lavigne, Nancy Wilson of Heart and Atsuko Yamano of Shonen Knife.
In the 2008 documentary about Jackson, "The Sweet Lady with the Nasty Voice," Bruce Springsteen summed up his fascination with the legendary singer.
"There's an authenticity in the voice that conjures up a world, a very distinctive place and time, that is so specifically American," Springsteen said.
It's an ageless time, one that Jackson embodies, and one that she said she can't imagine ever leaving.
"Me? Retire?" she asked rhetorically. "Never."
Jennifer Chancellor 581-8346
jennifer.chancellor@tulsaworld.com
State song
Wanda Jackson’s “Let’s Have a Party” secured
her place in history when she became the
first woman to record a rock ’n’ roll tune. The
song is nominated (with nine others) as our
state rock song.
Vote at tulsaworld.com/okierocksongvote
through Nov. 15.
A partial Wanda Jackson timeline
1937: Born Wanda Lavonne Jackson
in Maud, Okla.
1952: Wins a spot on a 15-minute
local radio show on KLPR in Oklahoma
City.
1954: Discovered by her idol Hank
Thompson after a live performance
on KLPR. Records and releases the
national hit “You Can’t Have My Love.”
1954-55: Signed to Decca Records.
Graduates from Capitol Hill High in
Oklahoma City and hits the road with her
father as chaperone and tour manager.
1955: Meets and begins dating Elvis
Presley while doing the ABC show
“Ozark Jubilee.”
1956-73: Signed to Capitol Records.
1958: “Raunchy” version of the
rockabilly song “Fujiyama Mama” is
released; later goes to No. 1 in Japan.
1958: Records the first rock ’n’ roll
song by a woman, “Let’s Have a Party.”
1960: Jackson officially forms her
band, The Party Timers. Her rock crossover
album, “Rockin’ With Wanda!” is
released.
1961: Marries Wendell Goodman.
They eventually have two children
together and are still married today.
1964: “Two Sides of Wanda” album
gets Grammy nomination for Best
Country & Western Performance,
Female.
1965: Tops the charts with her German-
language ballad “Santo Domingo,”
from the album of the same name. It
went to No. 1 in four German-speaking
countries.
1980: Starts the first of over a decade
of European tours, embarking on a
wave of rockabilly revivalism that still
lasts today.
1988-1989: Jackson hosts 13 episodes
of “Country Gospel” on Trinity Broadcasting
Network.
1990: Inducted into the International
Gospel Hall of Fame. “Greatest Hits”
album released.
1994: Inducted into the Oklahoma
Country Music Hall of Fame.”
1995: Embarked on her first American
tour since the 1970s.
2001: Inducted into the Oklahoma
Music Hall of Fame.
2006: Jackson records and releases
“I Remember Elvis.”
2008: Jackson’s “Let’s Have a Party”
is one of nine songs up for vote as the
official Oklahoma state rock song. Voting
ends Nov. 15 at
tulsaworld.com/okierocksongvote.
2008: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
announces that Jackson is one of nine
finalists for induction in 2009.
By JENNIFER CHANCELLOR World Scene Writer
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