She might not be the most recognizable country star today, but at one time Wanda Jackson was a pioneer on the country music scene, particularly over the rockabilly airwaves. Her characteristic vocal “growl” made her popular in several genres — country, rock and gospel — all of which she recorded simultaneously.
Jackson was born southeast of Oklahoma City in the town of Maud, Oklahoma in 1937. Her father worked any odd job he could find and played piano in small towns in the area. When she was was just 4 years old, her family set out for California to find their fortune, like so many Okies had done during the waning Great Depression.
There, Jackson’s father learned the trade of barbering, and the family soon moved to Bakersfield, a city where rockabilly would take off faster than Buck Owens’ Cadillac.
In 1943 Jackson got her first guitar, and her father spent hours teaching her to play. Her mother recalled no difficulty getting young Wanda to practice; instead, she said, it was almost impossible to get her to stop. By the time she turned 9, Jackson had picked up the piano as well — and she was soon composing her own songs.
In 1949, the Jacksons returned to Oklahoma City to settle, where her father sold used cars.
Jackson attended school just two blocks from KLPR’s radio studios. At age 13 she worked up the nerve to appear in a station-sponsored talent contest. Her performance so impressed the programmers that they gave her a 15-minute daily program.
Her professional music career had begun.
Just a few years later, she met country star Hank Thompson, who asked her to record a song for his band. She took him up on the offer, and followed up that first tune with several songs, including “You Can’t Have My Love,” which was a major hit in 1954. This led to a contract with Decca Records and a spot in Hank Thompson’s tour of the northeastern U.S.
After finishing high school in 1955, Jackson went back on tour, this time with a young Mississippi-born performer named Elvis Presley.
Presley encouraged Jackson to explore rockabilly — and her voice certainly fit the bill.
She soon signed a contract with Capitol Records and began performing in Las Vegas, where she became a full-fledged star performing from the 1950s through the 1970s. She was also a headliner in Reno, Nevada, and at numerous country music venues throughout the country.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Jackson was a prolific hit producer. “Right or Wrong” and “In the Middle of a Heartbreak” were two of her original hits, followed by songs like “Let’s Have a Party,” “Little Charm Bracelet,” “Happy, Happy Birthday” and “The Box He Came In.”
“Fujiyama Mama” became an international sensation and a major hit in Japan. This, along with other songs, led Jackson to tour overseas where she became one of country music’s first international stars.
“You know, I’ve recorded in German, Dutch, and Japanese. I’ve had top hits in Germany and Japan, and I don’t speak any of those languages,” Jackson once said of her international notoriety.
“I’ve been told that I shouldn’t try to learn them because it might ruin my natural accent and inflection … I guess what it all comes down to is the feeling — the feeling, the mood of a song is the same no matter what the language.”
In the 1960s, Jackson married an IBM programmer from Texas, who took management of her career into his own hands. She was touring the world, and soon had a syndicated television show, “Music Village.” Throughout this period, she was backed by her band, The Party Timers.
By the early 1970s, Jackson re-discovered Christianity, left Capitol Records and began producing gospel music on the Word label.
Over the course of her career, Jackson recorded a variety of music ranging from rock to country and gospel — but she’s probably best remembered as “The Queen of Rockabilly,” largely thanks to the encouragement offered by Elvis Presley.
The “rock” in rockabilly stuck with Jackson; in 1984, after being encouraged to tour overseas, she released her first rock album in two decades. By the 1990s, her rock albums were once again recognized in America, and she began a new rockabilly tour.
In 2009, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before releasing a new record “The Party Ain’t Over.” She continued touring, ultimately announcing her retirement in 2019.
In all, Jackson had a professional career that spanned eight decades.
Through it all, Jackson’s most noticeable vocal characteristic was what’s often been referred to as a “growl” or a “snarl.”
Whatever it was, fans loved it, and critics clamored to explain and describe it. One claimed her voice “captured the elemental low-class wildness” of her type of music “better than any female of her day.” Another described her voice as “spring-loaded dynamite wrapped in sandpaper.” And still another described Jackson as a “really sweet lady with a nasty voice.”
Jackson goes down in history as having been nominated for two Grammy Awards and the Fellowship Award from The National Endowment for the Arts.
Aside from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, she’s been inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Country Music Hall of Fame and even the German Country Music Hall of Fame.
She was even named one of Country Music Television’s “40 Great Women on Country Music.” And if you take a trip to Oklahoma City, you can even stroll down Jackson Alley in the city’s Bricktown entertainment district.
Jackson’s career is too long and distinguished to be summed up in a single short article. She recorded 44 studio albums, four live albums, 37 compilations, and two box sets over her years in music. Numerous recordings reached the Top 40 on the Country charts.
She also released a total of 81 singles and nine international singles, and she even appeared in three music videos. Her singles appeared 53 times on worldwide charts including U.S., U.S. Country, U.S. Adult Contemporary, Australian, Canada, the Netherlands and the UK.
Today, you can find a lot of Wanda Jackson’s work on YouTube, and you can still buy her albums to stream online. If you do, you’ll be getting a taste not just of country music history, but also but a worldwide tour of music from the second half of the 20th century.
Although we don’t seem to write much about female artists here at Rhythm of the Road, we plan to do more in the future. Many country music pioneers and females influenced by the pioneers are out there, just waiting to have their stories told.
Since retiring from a career as an outdoor recreation professional from the State of Arkansas, Kris Rutherford has worked as a freelance writer and, with his wife, owns and publishes a small Northeast Texas newspaper, The Roxton Progress. Kris has worked as a ghostwriter and editor and has authored seven books of his own. He became interested in the trucking industry as a child in the 1970s when his family traveled the interstates twice a year between their home in Maine and their native Texas. He has been a classic country music enthusiast since the age of nine when he developed a special interest in trucking songs.
