WANDA JACKSON
|
Recording years |
Main genre |
Music sample |
|
1954–2021 |
Country / Early rock’n’roll |
Fujiyama Mama (1957) |
Page
contents:
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
Album
released: July 21, 1958 |
V |
A |
L |
U |
E |
More info:
|
||
|
2 |
3 |
3 |
2 |
3 |
||||
|
Tracks: 1) Day Dreaming; 2) I Wanna Waltz;
3) Heartbreak Ahead; 4) Making Believe; 5) Here We Are Again; 6) Long Tall
Sally; 7) Just Call Me Lonesome; 8) Let Me Go Lover; 9) Money, Honey; 10) I
Can’t Make My Dreams Understand; 11) Happy, Happy Birthday; 12) Let’s Have A Party; 13*) Half As Good A Girl; 14*)
Silver Threads And Golden Needles; 15*) Cryin’ Through The Night; 16*) Let Me
Explain; 17*) No Wedding Bells For Joe; 18*) Just A Queen For A Day. |
||||||||
|
REVIEW
|
||||||||
|
The lamentable side effects of it are that almost
none of Wanda’s classic 1956–58 rockabilly singles, such as ‘Hot Dog! That
Made Him Mad’, ‘Cool Love’, or the immortal ‘Fujiyama Mama’, are included
here; to get them all on one LP, fans would have to wait until 1960’s Rockin’ With Wanda (a
retro-compilation which works perfectly well as a stand-alone LP, so we will
get to it later). The decision to keep her finest A-sides off the LP means
that the fast-paced material they did
include is mostly second-rate rather than first-rate. Thus, ‘I Wanna Waltz’
on its own is a funny concatenation of seductive rockabilly with mournful
waltz — but in the overall context, it is just another collaboration with
songwriter Thelma Blackmon, intent on recreating the vibe of the earlier and
fresher ‘I Gotta Know’. Wanda’s cover of ‘Long Tall Sally’, expectedly
following in the steps of Elvis’ version rather than Little Richard’s, is
fun, but perfunctory and predictable. ‘Money Honey’, probably also borrowed from Elvis
rather than the Drifters, is at least curious in that, for the first time (I
think), the song is played at a fast tempo — though I half-suspect the main
reason for this was to somewhat blur out the necessary changes in the lyrics
("the men they come and the men they go"), which do begin to
look outrageously risqué in the pre-sexual revolution era. Chalk one
up for bravery and feminism, but from a purely musical standpoint, speeding
up the song made it lose its face in the sea of ‘Rip It Up’s and ‘Ready
Teddy’s rather than get a more expressive one (and the slick, note-perfect,
and personality-free country guitar solo seals the deal on mediocrity). The album does end on a perfect note with ‘Let’s
Have A Party’, the only time here when Jackson genuinely improves upon a
Presley original — which was simply titled ‘Party’ and included in the
soundtrack to Loving You in a
shorter, looser, genuinely party-friendly version. Wanda’s band gives the
number a full-on rock’n’roll treatment, as if rather taking their inspiration
from a ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On’, with some wild guitar / piano
interplay; most importantly, Wanda’s croaky, defiantly stand-and-deliver
performance just hits the spot perfectly. I have never understood the
enigmatic verse about never having kissed a bear or a goon (a goo? apparently Paul McCartney never
knew either when he covered the song late in his career), but it is all most
certainly about going wild and crazy, and this is one of those few Wanda
Jackson classics whose delivery is perfectly adequate to the intention. Silly
record executives only understood to release it as a single two years later,
upon which it became Wanda’s biggest ever international hit and biggest ever
US rockabilly hit (she did score higher with some of her country recordings,
though). And what of the pure country material? Well, I am
not much of a country guy, and I typically treat generic country the same way
I treat generic Broadway show tunes — it all depends on the performer rather
than on the strength of the original melody. The instrumental arrangements
and performance level of Wanda’s backing band is more or less what you would
expect of Nashville-reared professionals: tight, honest, and relatively
faceless. However, when it comes to her vocal expressiveness, I must confess
that, given the necessity of choice, I would rather listen to her than to,
say, Patsy Cline: that husky, croaky, sandpaper-ish style she imposes on
everything she sings, in my opinion, conveys more personality than the
textbookishly immaculate feminine beauty of Patsy’s vocals. On some of the
more broken-hearted numbers like ‘Just Call Me Lonesome’, she almost sounds
like the female equivalent of Hank Williams — and maybe you’d even believe me
if she had died at age 30 from heart insufficiency, but, fortunately for her
as a person and unfortunately for her as a legend, Mother Nature decided to
be more benevolent in this case. It is true that Wanda’s natural overtones, or her
willingness to keep her vocal cords tensely vibrating for almost the entire
duration of her singing parts, may eventually become grating (a good example
is the bonus track ‘Half As Good A Girl’, the original B-side to ‘I Gotta
Know’, on which she delights in extending and knife-sharpening pretty much
every vowel of the slow-moving performance); her country balladeering, when
you come to think of it, shows just as little restraint as her rockabilly
romps, and this lack of subtlety may quickly wear you down or at least
generate an atmosphere of relative monotonousness and «one-trick-poniness».
But then, stylistic versatility is hardly the thing commonly associated with
country performers in the first place — and the best remedy is to simply take
this stuff in small doses, rather than subjecting yourself to the entire LP
(plus six more bonus tracks culled from various B-sides) in one go. And while
Wanda Jackson is by no means a
great album, and its best tracks may all easily be found on various
representative compilations, at least its balanced ratio of country and
rockabilly seems to present a fairly authentic picture of Wanda Jackson, the
Country Girl Who Dared Make That Extra Step, in the prime of her artistic powers. |
||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
Compilation
released: May 1960 |
V |
A |
L |
U |
E |
More info:
|
||
|
3 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
4 |
||||
|
Tracks: 1) Rock Your Baby; 2) Fujiyama
Mama; 3) You’re The One For Me; 4) Did You Miss Me?; 5) Cool Love; 6) Honey
Bop; 7) Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad; 8) Baby Loves Him; 9) Mean Mean Man; 10)
You’ve Turned To A Stranger; 11) Don’a Wan’a; 12) I Gotta Know; 13*)
(Everytime They Play) Our Song; 14*) Sinful Heart; 15*) Savin’ My Love; 16*)
A Date With Jerry; 17*) Reaching; 18*) I’d Rather Have You. |
||||||||
|
REVIEW
|
||||||||
|
Unlike the self-titled debut, which was more of a
country album with a few nods to the rockabilly genre, Rockin’ With Wanda pushes the envelope in the other direction —
it really does put together the absolute majority of A-sides from mid-1956 to
early 1959, and pretty much all of them were rock (with a natural tinge of
country) rather than country. This may not actually give a completely
accurate portrait of Wanda, to whom rockabilly was really second nature after country, but it
does give a breathtakingly cool
portrait of Wanda, which, in this particular case, matters much more than
accuracy. Just to get this out of the way quickly, let us mention that 1957’s
‘Did You Miss Me?’, a doo-wop-country hybrid, suffers from excess
sentimentality which is not one of Wanda’s fortes — but 1959’s ‘You’ve Turned
To A Stranger’ is one of the best Hank Williams tributes I’ve ever heard (not
that I’ve heard too many), and its lyrics and vocal intonations are perfectly
consistent with the half-wicked, half-tortured psychologism of Wanda’s
rocking material. That’s about it for the country aspects of this record, now
let’s rock’n’roll! Although first things first, let us cool down our
expectations. Wanda Jackson’s original dream never really included rocking
the house down; she herself admits that she was actually pushed to embrace
rockabilly by Elvis while touring with him and briefly dating him some time
around 1955-56. When that finally happened, she began accepting
rockabilly-styled songs from outside songwriters as well as composing some of
her own material, but none of those songs genuinely pushed forward the
boundaries of the genre or anything; for just about any of them, you can
easily find an earlier prototype from Elvis, Carl Perkins or somebody else.
And while Wanda’s backing band from that period, The Poe Kats, were
inarguably professional and energetic (some of those lead guitar parts by
Vernon Sandusky could proudly stand next to Scotty Moore’s solos — well, second-rate Scotty Moore’s solos), I
couldn’t say that they had any striking individual identity; as in, I could
easily take delight in a purely instrumental rendition of something like
Elvis’ ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’, but The Poe Kats were just doing a strict job
of backing Wanda Jackson, and who could blame them for that? Where there was
striking individual identity was in the spirit of the songs that Wanda’s
songwriters and Wanda herself came up with — and in their delivery by Wanda
herself. The very first tune that put her on the rock’n’roll map was ‘I Gotta
Know’, occupying the honorable «grand finale» position on Rockin’ With Wanda — incidentally,
credited not to Wanda herself, but to little-remembered country artist Thelma
Blackmon, mother of Vicki Countryman, who was a school friend of Wanda’s and
would also follow in her mother’s footsteps. Apparently, judging by the
tiniest amount of musical legacy left behind by Thelma, she was a fan of
genre-bending — on ‘I
Wanta Waltz’ (sic!), for instance, she plays off the contrast between
rock’n’roll and country waltzing in a funny musical battle of attitudes.
However, the release of that single actually post-dates ‘I Gotta Know’, so it
is possible that she was simply fueled by Wanda’s success to try and do
something in the same vein for her own self this time — and failed, because
writing songs is one thing, and making them come alive on record is
another... and, alas, some people are simply more fit to be songwriters for
others. That particular other, as late as the fall of 1955,
was still performing and tentatively writing melancholic country ballads,
clearly worshipping at the altar of Hank Williams — and actually doing a
pretty good job at winning the coveted title of «Miss Hank Williams» at least
technically (on songs like ‘Don’t Do The Things He’d
Do’, she nails Hank’s sustained nasal drawl pretty good). The problem is,
there was just not enough genuine melancholy and heartbreak in those vocals;
it’s clear that she loved Hank, but she wasn’t
Hank — she was somebody else altogether. And for all of Elvis’ alleged sexism
and «toxic masculinity», the man should be commended for being able to see
through that: he must have sensed that somebody with Wanda’s character was
actually more suited to singing rebellious rock’n’roll than plaintive
country, and that little push he gave her to build up the confidence to do it
was quite a fine act of psychotherapy. Anyway, while I am not sure how exactly ‘I Gotta
Know’ sounded like in Thelma Blackmon’s original vision, Wanda’s arrangement
is clearly inspired by Elvis’ own playful-teasing genre-bending on early Sun
singles such as ‘I’ll Never Let You Go’ or ‘Blue Moon Of Kentucky’. Ideology-wise,
it’s actually a little «conservative»: its rocking part is sort of presented
from the male perspective ("all
you ever do is dance dance dance, so we boppity bop the whole night long"),
while the lady keeps bringing the tempo down to slow country waltz in the
chorus ("if our love’s the real
thing, where is my wedding ring?"). From that point of view, you
might even say that the song (much like Thelma’s own follow-up with ‘I Wanta
Waltz’) is a mockery of the rock’n’roll
lifestyle — the rockabilly-lovin’ guy is up to no good, whereas the steady
and stable country-waltz girl is the one advocating wholesome values — but
what makes it so much more complicated (and fun!) is the utmost dedication
and excitement with which Wanda delivers the rock’n’rolling parts. It’s as if
the verse is at the same time symbolizing the vapid party attitude of the guy
and the fiery determination of the
girl to bring him up to speed. That transition from the strict,
clenched-teeth "one thing I gotta
know, I gotta know..." to the plaintive waltz of the chorus is one
of the smoothest and most original mood changes in Fifties’ pop music, and
the resulting rock-country hybrid is just screaming for a complex
psychoanalytical approach. The best news about it is that ‘I Gotta Know’ put
Wanda back on the country charts again, for the first time since her early
debut single with Billy Gray (‘You Can’t Have My Love’, from way back in
1954), and confirmed that this was just the right direction for her to
take... at least while the going was good. For her second single, she chose a
song with a rather complicated history. Originally, it was written around
1938 by New Orleanian guitarist Danny Barker and performed by his spouse,
Louisa "Blue Lu" Barker, as ‘That Made Him Mad’ — a
song about a no-good girl who just likes cheating on her husband for no
apparent reason, very Boccaccio-like. Fifteen years later, it was revived by
the Page Cavanaugh trio, with a significantly different set of lyrics by Don
Raye, and reinvented as ‘Hot
Dawg That Made Her Mad’ — this time, it is the guy who is a cheater, but he only cheats on his girl because
"she takes me for granted all of
the time", so "to teach
her a lesson, make her mad, I went out on a date with the best friend she had".
That felt rather assholish, and just one year later the song was
re-appropriated once again — this
time, by Betty Hutton, who left in the new lyrics but reversed the genres
once again, releasing the song under the orthographically and pronominally
finalized spelling of ‘Hot
Dog! That Made Him Mad’ and setting things straight: "he takes me for granted all of the time...
to teach him a lesson, make him mad, I went out on a date with
the best friend he had".
That’s pretty much the way it’s been ever since — whenever there is a serious
battle of the sexes, women tend to come out as winners even back in the
patriarchal Fifties. Anyway, because of Betty Hutton’s version, we cannot
really say that Wanda’s take on it is revolutionary — but what she did is
take a light big-band vocal jazz number and turn it into a bona fide
rock’n’roll classic. The melody here, with its little stop-and-start bits, is
more than a bit reminiscent of Carl Perkins’ ‘Everybody’s Trying To Be My
Baby’, which is a bit odd given that at the time of ‘Hot Dog!’s release
(October 1956), the Perkins tune had already been recorded but not yet
published, so maybe it’s just a coincidence — in any case, what really
matters is the vibe, and above all the amazing versatility in Wanda’s voice,
which is by now able to make each line come alive in a different way. Just
the opening itself is telling: watch the change of intonation from "I got a guy..." (problem!) to
"I like him fine..."
(cooing! not so serious a problem!) and then back to "but he takes me for granted..." (big problem!). Very naturally, and
perhaps not even realizing it herself, she gives a dynamic, dramatic
performance that somehow manages to walk that very thin line between
rebelliousness and acceptance symbolizing «feminism without fanaticism» — and
introduces way more nuances than Hutton’s strong, but lumbering delivery.
Also, Joe Maphis plays a cool guitar solo (watch out for those funny bass zoops! along the way). They could
really rock the house down with that thing live, too. Wanda’s next single was mostly important for being
the first rockabilly song she wrote herself — it feels obvious that ‘Baby
Loves Him’ is rather a beginner’s take on the genre, being musically
derivative of the boogie pattern going all the way back to ‘Drinkin’ Wine
Spo-Dee-Oo-Dee’, lyrically simplistic (no signs of the feminist approach
here, just an ‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’-type happy love story), and naïvely
priding itself on just how many rock’n’roll clichés it can fit inside
its two minutes (blue suede shoes, pink Cadillacs, solid beats, jukeboxes,
etc.; this may have been the first
mention of "peroxide hair"
in a rock’n’roll song, though!). But that’s not to say it isn’t thoroughly
enjoyable — a blast of tough, positive energy that makes Carl Perkins sound
like a wimp in comparison and actually rushes all the way to the top to fight
it out with the likes of Gene Vincent (and you can actually make out the
words that Wanda is singing — she don’t go for that slurring thing, or for
putting a shitload of reverb on her vocals. She can still sing like a damn
fine cavewoman even without the cave!). Then, just to show there is no such thing as a 100%
guarantee for lack of taste, out of the blue comes the ugly duckling of this
record — not a rockabilly song, not a country song, but rather a random
«homage» to the calypso craze, contributed by none other than Boudleaux
Briant, who wrote so much great stuff for the Everly Brothers but whose only
gift to Wanda Jackson ended up being this comical number on which she
impersonates a tough Caribbean chick with a terrible mock-Caribbean accent. I
don’t give a damn about the thing being «offensive» or «appropriative»; I
just feel that the poorly imitated accent makes Wanda sound not so much
«different» as just a tad cuckoo. Together with things like Chuck Berry’s
‘Havana Moon’ and ‘Pedro’, ‘Dona’a Wan’a’ remains one of those dated, unhappy
ethnic jokes which date very quickly just because they weren’t particularly
funny in the first place (which is not to say there aren’t, or weren’t,
ethnic jokes that were genuinely funny — it’s just that you should never
force an ethnic joke on a person who’s never done one before). Luckily, Wanda quickly returned to form with ‘Cool
Love’ (August ’57), co-written with her abovementioned friend Vicki
Countryman — a steady, midtempo rocker with fine guitar and piano solos on
which Miss Jackson continues educating her man about what it really means to love a demanding lady
like her ("this ain’t no ice cube
that you are with tonight!"). Lyrically, this was her most
provocative number to date, and the final vocal twist, when she suddenly
changes her stern and gruff "see
you tomorrow night" to a wink-wink sexy-kitten "see ya!" with the guys on the
backing vocals letting out a sigh of relief ("yeah!"), is hilariously unforgettable. For the next single, it seemed necessary to step up
the game. There’s been a veritable boatload of texts written about ‘Fujiyama
Mama’ over the years — here’s a huge essay on
the subject by Leah Branstetter, specializing in the «Women In Early
Rock’n’Roll» subject — so I don’t really want to stuff this text with yet another retelling of the song’s history (if
you are interested in it, I do
suggest checking out Annisteen Allen’s original version as
well as Eileen Barton’s first
cover), but I do want to stress that it was for this song, quite specifically, that Wanda came up with her famous
growling voice, which some people love (I know I do) and some hate in a
nails-on-chalkboard kind of way. One thing’s for certain: the growling voice
makes a lot more sense than the
Caribbean voice. Also, the fact that the Japanese people sent a song with
lyrics like "I’ve been to
Nagasaki, Hiroshima too / The same I did to them baby I can do to you"
to the top of the charts (unlike those stuffy Americans) simply mean that the
Japanese people know a good metaphor when they see one, without trying to
find offense where none was truly intended. After all, the song is about
female orgasm, not atomic warfare — "and
when I start erupting, ain’t nobody gonna make me stop" is Wanda’s
equivalent of Muddy’s "I’m
drinking TNT, smoking dynamite, I hope some screwball start a fight". Unfortunately, while ‘Fujiyama Mama’ really made Wanda
big in Japan, nothing much changed in her still unreceptive homeland, despite
the continuing string of classic rockabilly hits. ‘Honey Bop’ (March ’58) was
another one in the style of Carl Perkins, a bit more old-fashioned than
‘Fujiyama Mama’ (no growling and plenty of the old-school rockabilly reverb
on the vocals) but every bit as fun and energy-packed as everything that came
before it. ‘Mean Mean Man’ (August ’58), Wanda’s own unabashed re-write of
‘Mean Woman Blues’, brings back the ‘Fujiyama’ growl and paints a cool
picture of toughness and submissiveness at the same time, precisely what
Elvis did with ‘Mean Woman Blues’, but from a female perspective. Finally,
‘Rock Your Baby’ is arguably the single best song Wanda ever wrote by herself
— the "rock your baby, all night long!" hook is clearly borrowed
from "train kept a-rollin’ all
night long", but she finds a new way to emphasize it, with each word
descending like a whiplash, and the alternation of lighter, whee!-style intonations in the verses
with the all-out attack in the chorus creates an almost delirious effect.
(Here’s a fortunately-surviving live version, taken at
a slightly slower tempo than the studio recording, but with even more rasp on
the vocals — how this insane chord shredding had not taken out her voice in
over half a century is one of the universe’s unexplained mysteries). Still, commercial success did not come — not only
was this kind of music unwelcome from a lady singer, but the golden days of
rock’n’roll themselves seemed to be coming to an end by late 1958 — and so it
is no secret, perhaps, that in desperation Wanda turned back to country. I
forgot to mention that most of the B-sides to all those rockabilly classics were
country tunes, as Wanda was trying to placate both her old and new fans at
the same time; in 1959, however, for a brief period she once again switched
to country exclusively, which could sometimes be a good thing (as I already
said, ‘You’ve Turned To A Stranger’ is quite beautiful in its melancholy) and
sometimes questionable (Cindy Walker’s ‘A Date With Jerry’ is almost
unbearably corny — what in the world is Wanda Jackson doing, singing a dippy
sacchariny ditty about dating "the key of the school" "at the
prom in my dreams"? And who the heck is Jerry? Are they referring to
Jerry Lee Lewis? Is this a veiled metaphor at the mistreatment of the Killer
after his infamous marriage?). Even after the belated release of ‘Let’s Have A
Party’ and its unpredictable and unprecedented commercial success showed
everybody that under certain conditions, the public would be willing to
accept Wanda Jackson as a rock performer rather than a country one, it was
already a bit too late for that — the classic stretch of her rocking singles
from ‘I Gotta Know’ to ‘Rock Your Baby’ would never be repeated. That
particular stretch, however, can still be honored, admired, and freely
enjoyed on all sort of levels with as much gusto as any similar stretch from
Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis, Buddy Holly, or any other black or white
male rocker from the 1950s. It’s just about the most perfect combination of
early feminism, down-to-earth rootsiness, musical professionalism,
catchiness, and unpretentious fun one could theoretically imagine. |
||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
Album
released: January 1961 |
V |
A |
L |
U |
E |
More info:
|
||
|
2 |
4 |
4 |
2 |
3 |
||||
|
Tracks: 1) There’s A Party Goin’ On; 2)
Lonely Week-Ends; 3) Kansas City; 4) Bye Bye Baby; 5) Fallin’; 6) Hard Headed Woman; 7) Tongue Tied; 8) It Doesn’t
Matter Anymore; 9) Tweedlee Dee; 10) Sparkling Brown Eyes; 11) Lost Week-End;
12) Man We Had A Party. |
||||||||
|
On
October 28, 1960, Wanda Jackson entered the Bradley Film and Recording Studio
in Nashville, Tennessee, to record what would, somewhat arguably, remain as
her single most badass studio performance: a cover of Leiber and Stoller’s
‘Riot In Cell Block #9’, originally a hit for The Robins (soon to be The
Coasters) back in 1954 but then largely forgotten until it was revived by
Wanda in this blistering version, with some of the lyrics appropriately
re-written to put the action inside a women’s penitentiary — which might just
make this cover the first ever song to detail (albeit humorously) the daily
business of a bunch of female inmates. Backed by Roy Clark, a rising star in
both the musical and TV industries, she rocks every bit as hard as usual, but
this time, with the added benefit of a little bit of «social relevance»,
playing the bad girl behind bars rather than merely the mischievous girl at
the sock hop ball, which is where that raspy growl really comes in handy — suspending disbelief is easy-peasy under
such circumstances. And
it wasn’t just one song, either. The entire five-day Nashville recording
session at the end of October, 1960, produced more fire than any other period
of such short duration in Wanda’s life. Note the difference from the January
1960 sessions in Hollywood, which were relatively short and only produced a
small bunch of pleasant, but easily forgettable country tunes like ‘Please Call
Today’. That difference was very clearly triggered by the sudden and
unexpected success of ‘Let’s Have A Party’, a song that had already been
issued on Wanda’s first LP but, for some reason, was thought of as a
potential single by Capitol only two years later. Unlike Wanda’s country
singles, this one put her back on the charts — for the first time since ‘I
Gotta Know’ — and convinced both the singer and her executives that, despite
the overall changing tides, there might still be some demand for Wanda Jackson
as the little sister of Elvis Presley, rather than of Patsy Cline. |
||||||||
|
The happy result, still left behind for us to enjoy,
are these five days in Nashville that yielded the entirety of this LP, plus a
couple of additional singles, starting with ‘Riot In Cell Block #9’ and
ending with the famous ‘Funnel Of Love’ that we shall discuss in connection
with her second LP from 1961. The absolute majority of these tracks were
rockers, and although there was almost no original songwriting involved, each
and every one was ideally molded to reflect Wanda’s personality. The only
thing that makes the record bow down to Rockin’
With Wanda is that there are few truly outstanding numbers like ‘Fujiyama
Mama’ or ‘Rock Your Baby’ — but then again, Rockin’ With Wanda was really a compilation, with the benefit of
choosing the best from an approximately two-year period of successes and
failures; There’s A Party Goin’ On
is a cohesive album, indeed
reflecting a sort of «rock’n’roll party» over a five-day musical bash in a
Nashville studio — and it is one of those albums that works better as a whole
rather than a sum of the individual parts. Remember, it was the fall of 1960
— Brenda Lee’s ‘I Want To Be Wanted’ was riding all the way to #1,
symbolizing «Little Ms. Dynamite» succumbing to the sweet temptations of
«Europop» — and not even any boys were rocking as hard as Wanda and her team
in Nashville, let alone any girls. It’s easy enough to poke fun at the fact that the
album opens with ‘There’s A Party Goin’ On’ (credited, by the way, to Don
Covay of future ‘Mercy Mercy’ and ‘See-Saw’ fame) and closes with ‘Man We Had
A Party’ (Jessie Mae Robinson’s sequel to ‘Let’s Have A Party’) — but there’s
every reason to pocket the irony when you understand that ‘There’s A Party
Goin’ On’ rocks even harder than the song whose formula it was so clearly
destined to emulate. It’s louder, it’s tighter, the vocal performance is even
raspier, the "yeeeaaahs!" are even dirtier, and Roy Clark’s shrill
and sharp lead guitar work is even more aggressive. Admittedly, third time
around, ‘Man We Had A Party’ is less of a smash (although there are a few
more original high-pitched electric licks to rock your boat), but its past
tense makes for a nice finale — it works fine enough in the context of the album. In between the party-goin’ and the party-endin’
anthems, you get rocker after rocker after rocker, almost as if the «soft
revolution» of 1960 never happened. Probably the most famous of those LP-only
tracks is ‘Hard Headed Woman’, another Elvis-inherited chestnut that Wanda
used to introduce in concert as "one of the most beautiful
love songs that’s ever been written", proving to the world that Okie
girls can have a Hollywood
diva-level sense of irony. The double irony is, of course, that Wanda
acknowledges and owns the song’s
allegedly misogynistic lyrics — switching the message from "girls are nothing but trouble" to
"us girls are trouble, and you’d
better know it!" In Elvis’ hands, the song was just a fast and
furious rock’n’roll number (and you probably didn’t pay as much attention to
the lyrics anyway as you did to Elvis’ breathtaking light-speed delivery of
them); Wanda, with her naughty girl rasp, gives it an aura of playful
mischief, making you really root for Eve, Jezebel, and Delilah deep down in
your heart. It’s also a somewhat rawer version, without the mildly Vegas-y
horns of Elvis’ original and full emphasis on the pumpin’ rhythm section and
interlocking guitar/piano lead lines — the toughest rock’n’roll sound you’re
going to hear from 1960. Even when Wanda decides to cover LaVern Baker’s
classic novelty number ‘Tweedle Dee’, her rasp and growling are no slouch
compared to LaVern’s imposing «Big African Mama» presence — and Clark, once
again, manages to make the song sound more dynamic and aggressive with his
no-funny-business soloing. Then there’s ‘Kansas City’, also convincingly
gender-inverted ("got some crazy
little fellows and I’m a-gonna get me one") and every bit as fun as
every male version ever played, though you probably won’t help noticing how
Wanda finishes the song with her little disclaimer: "...just one!", she purrs in her
sexiest tone, letting you and your parents know that she does have her lady
standards for playing around. However, she does not edit out the line about a "bottle of Kansas City wine", despite any implied risks of
promoting female alcoholism. Good for you, Wanda. Most of the other songs are covers of country and
pop artists, from Charlie Rich to Neil Sedaka, but pretty much all of them
are toughened up significantly. Fast tempos, deep bass, heavy drums, sharp
guitar solos are the norm here for all the rearrangements; a song like
‘Fallin’, for instance, is downright superior to Connie Francis’ original hit
from 1958, fully preserving the «love-is-dangerous-magic» spirit of the
original and further enhancing it through the collected effort of the rhythm
section, Clark’s solo, and Wanda’s wolf-howl. Or take ‘Sparkling Brown Eyes’,
made into a country hit earlier that year by George Jones: George’s version is a
fast-paced, but starry-eyed (and perhaps slightly drunk) serenade — Wanda and
Roy Clark introduce a whiff of menace, as if it weren’t really the
"wings of a beautiful dove" the singer was pining for, but more
like the "fins of a ravenous shark" (hey, too bad I wasn’t even
alive at the time when such a lyrical amendment could have been offered to
make perfect sense). Overall, even if not every song has its share of
truly memorable moments, the session as a whole is a total gas. Really, there
is no special kind of ambition here — just a desire to quickly capitalize on
a brief moment of triumph while the iron is still hot — but everybody is
having so much fun that the thirty minutes fly by in a flash. This is precisely the kind of album
that loyal old school fans must have been waiting for from Elvis in 1960,
losing faith in the man when they were presented with Elvis Is Back! instead — too bad most of them were probably too
snub-nosed to agree to place the same faith in an «Elvis in a skirt». Of
course, the album did not chart, and neither did all those sequels to ‘Let’s
Have A Party’, and this is probably why Wanda Jackson would never have this
kind of energetic recording session ever again. But in retrospect, one thing is probably true:
because of her sex, Wanda Jackson may have been one of the last performers to
jump on the original rockabilly bandwagon — forfeiting any claims to «laying
down the foundations» of rock’n’roll — but she was also one of the last
performers to jump off it, keeping
on rockin’ for quite a while after the original founding fathers had all
succumbed to the Fifties’ Curse (well, «a while» meaning about one year, at
most, but time did move on pretty fast in 1960 — not as fast as in 1967, for
sure, yet one year did make quite a bit of difference). If, in January 1961,
you wanted yourself a nice fresh slab of crunchy rock’n’roll, who could you
turn to? Kudos to the crazy little girl-fellow from Oklahoma for keeping that
flame alive for at least a few more months. |
||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
Album
released: October 1961 |
V |
A |
L |
U |
E |
More info:
|
||
|
2 |
2 |
3 |
1 |
2 |
||||
|
Tracks: 1) Right Or Wrong; 2) Why I’m
Walkin’; 3) So Soon; 4) The Last Letter; 5) I May Never Get To Heaven; 6) The
Window Up Above; 7) Sticks And Stones; 8) Stupid Cupid; 9) Slippin’ And A
Slidin’; 10) Brown Eyed Handsome Man; 11) Who Shot Sam; 12) My Baby Left Me. |
||||||||
|
REVIEW One
of the few «soft country» songs recorded by Wanda and her band during those
tumultuous sessions of October 1960 was ‘Right Or Wrong’, a pretty little
ballad that she, surprisingly, wrote herself — surprisingly, because in stark
contrast to all of her rebellious, self-asserting, feminist-empowering rock’n’roll
material, this one’s subject was perfectly adapted to country music’s classic
«stand-by-your-man» ideology: "Right
or wrong I’ll be with you / I’ll do what you ask me to / For I believe that I
belong / By your side, right or wrong" — quite a long distance from ‘Hot
Dog! That Made Him Mad’, I’d say. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with this approach:
people are allowed to have multiple sides, and as long as we decide to
interpret such songs, for instance, as advocating devotion, compassion, and
forgiveness rather than mindless slavish submission, there’s really nothing
to be ashamed of. The specific problem
with ‘Right Or Wrong’ is that it is simply not a very interesting song —
feels like a pretty generic country tune with a bit of a doo-wop flavor,
spilling all its charm in the first fifteen seconds and kept alive only by Wanda’s
careful articulation of each syllable; say what you will, but the girl could
be pretty seductive in her sentimental-submissive avatar. The Nashville-style
backing vocals and the Magical Mystery Chimes throughout are quite corny,
though. |
||||||||
|
Ironically, in retrospect it is the B-side to the ‘Right
Or Wrong’ single, originally forgotten and only resuscitated decades later on
extensive compilations, that has eventually managed to draw critical and fan
attention and is generally considered today to be one of the artistic
highlights of Wanda’s career. ‘Funnel Of Love’, written by country great Charlie
McCoy and the relatively unknown Kent Westbury, is one of those «what the
fuck?» songs where you’d expect
things to be normal and predictable, but somehow they turn out really, really
weird. Under the surface, it’s more
or less typical catchy country-pop; on
the surface, it’s sort of a «Carmen-meets-Madame-Butterfly» display of
dangerous and exotic sensual passion, a perfect Dionysian antidote to the Apollonian
declarations of ‘Right Or Wrong’ if there ever was one. For starters, what’s up with Roy Clark’s guitar
sound here, all twangy and flangy and bending those notes as if he was
playing a koto rather than an ordinary electric guitar? The song completely
draws you in from the opening chords that promise you a very special ride —
maybe even an excitingly warped and deviant one, replete with the same wolfey
"aah-ooommm" vocal
harmonies you typically meet on a titillating Coasters record. Next, there’s Wanda’s
own vocal — with that devilish rasp coming back in its full glory — and,
funny enough, the vocal melody is
structured a little like a «funnel», swirling over the same phrases a couple
of times before being «sucked inside» the instrumentation. The message of the
song is the same as in Johnny Kidd & The Pirates’ ‘Shakin’ All Over’ (no
coincidence here that Wanda would resuscitate that one half a century later
during her «grandma years» with Jack White) — but where Kidd always
emphasized the idea of «love as fear»,
Wanda here is more happy with the concept of «love as orgasmic submission to
the unknown», so next time you consider a hentai tentacle porn project or
something, think of adding ‘Funnel Of Love’ to the soundtrack. But as cool as it is to see justice served in the
historical perspective, back in April 1961 it was ‘Right Or Wrong’, the A-side,
that gained most of the airplay and not only earned Wanda her highest place
so far in the country charts (#9), but even broke her into the general Top 30
— and that was the deal which sealed her fate. Whether it was truly her own
decision to revert back to pure country or it was subtly forced on her by her
record label is something we’ll probably never know; in any case, it would be
unjust to blame her for taking that decision at the time — when even stalwart
Southern rockers like Jerry Lee Lewis were going back to the good old country
barn. While There’s A Party Goin’ On
did give some hope that the spirit of rock’n’roll would live on in soldier
girls such as Wanda, in the end it is worth remembering that «Wanda Jackson,
the rock’n’roller» was, after all, just an artistic persona — and when the
time, as it seemed back then, came to retire that artistic persona, that was
just what she did, without any extra tear shedding or anything. No, it wasn’t
«fake» — some might argue that «Wanda the rocker» was always closer to «the
real Wanda» than «Wanda the country singer» — but it would be ridiculous to
assume that Wanda Jackson was some sort of, you know, Keith Richards, cruelly
trampled upon and choked by the record industry to prevent her from realizing
and making use of her true nature. Above all, she was a normal Fifties’ gal,
and she, too, probably felt that the exuberance of rock’n’roll was a «phase»
that had to be let go once the artist stepped into his or her «mature»
period. Anyway, the transition was still gradual: the
sessions for Right Or Wrong, most
of which took place over just two days (April 17–18, 1961) at the very same Nashville
studio that yielded the bulk of There’s
A Party half a year earlier, yielded a more or less equal number of
country-oriented and rock’n’roll-style tracks, with the label deciding that, in
accordance with the fad of the times (see Elvis’ Something For Everybody as a natural inspiration), one side of
the LP would consist of nothing but country ballads and the other of rockin’
material — a bad, bad fad, especially bad if your source material
is not all that great in the first place. The country side is just a total snooze. Back when Wanda
was still a bona fide rocker, a country ballad slipping in now and then was a
perfectly sensible choice, for the sake of diversity and mood swing — not to
mention that, when she was not recording that material en masse, some of those had interesting and quirky melodic and
vocal touches. Here, the title track is followed by five covers of
contemporary country artists, and it’s dull as heck. Yes, it’s a professional
Nashville backing, and yes, Wanda does good as a country singer, but this is
all painfully stereotypical, the waltzing mid-tempo quickly gets unbearable, and
the idea of a «quirky touch» for any of those songs is, for instance, to
include a deep-set thunderous drum roll in the middle of chanting the title
to ‘I May Never Get To Heaven’ because... because what? to punctuate the
self-sacrificing stunning blasphemy of the line? ... whatever. If you are a fan of the generic country sound of
early Sixties’ Nashville, the A-side of the LP will be perfectly enjoyable,
but it seems she is striving for the fame of Patsy Cline here more than ever
before, without giving any convincing arguments as to why we should actually
bother. So let’s skip right ahead to the rocking side and... it should be
awesome, right? Just like her previous album and all?... Alas, no. The B-side has nowhere near the same
exhilarating party energy as the tracks Wanda and her band recorded on the
previous album. Perhaps it was a different set of musicians (no source has
been able to properly identify who specifically is playing along here), but mostly
it was just a matter of ever so slightly toning down the intensity of
yesterday. Even when Wanda covers classic rock’n’roll material, such as Little
Richard’s ‘Slippin’ And Slidin’ or Chuck Berry’s ‘Brown Eyed Handsome Man’,
she seems to be holding back. The rhythm section is a bit more cuddly and
playful, the guitars are altogether more melodic, and the brutal rasp is
unleashed only very occasionally (on ‘Slippin’ And Slidin’, mostly). Just a few months earlier, Wanda’s version of ‘Hard Headed
Woman’ showed that she was fully able to tackle the King head-on, all but
beating him at his own game when the fire was fed well enough. Now, this
relatively much more tepid cover of ‘My Baby Left Me’ sounds slower, more
stiff and disciplined than Elvis’ classic performance of the Arthur Crudup
classic: decent, but utterly unimportant, with Wanda singing in a
perfunctory, disinterested manner, almost as if somebody just begged her to
do an Elvis number and she reluctantly agreed upon this one. Her run through
the befuddling verses of Chuck Berry’s ‘Brown-Eyed Handsome Man’ is much more
inspired and involving in comparison, but the song is still way too polished
and fragile next to Chuck’s own version. An attempt to branch out is made by covering Ray Charles’
‘Sticks And Stones’, with the electric piano player, whoever he is, actually
doing an excellent job in capturing the essence of Ray’s playing — it’s only
too just that the extended solo takes up about a third of the song’s running
time — but the impact of such a branching is lessened when the other two «rocking»
songs actually turn out to be facetious country-pop numbers, namely, Neil Sedaka’s
‘Stupid Cupid’, originally a hit for Connie Francis back in 1958, and George Jones’
‘Who Shot Sam?’ from 1959. Both songs were fluffy, if fun, from the start,
and neither of these performances is much of an improvement on the original. In the end, the «rocking» side leaves you a bit
bewildered. If it is so seemingly uninspired, and if the general strategy was
to move Wanda away into the country market for good, why did they include it
in the first place? The most logical answer that springs to mind is that they
intentionally recorded a subpar
rocking set so as to make the old fans believe that Wanda Jackson, the «female
Elvis», had naturally run out of rock’n’roll juice, and make it easier for
them to accept her crossing to the other side. Or maybe they were just
following actual guidelines from Elvis’ camp — «feel free to do a rock’n’rolling
number from time to time, but remember that the word of day is playful, not provocative». Regardless, the fact of the matter is that the
rocking tracks on this album are just OK. Enjoyable as background music, but
nothing «iconic» about them whatsoever. In the end, one single ‘Funnel Of Love’
is worth all the twelve tracks on this album put together and multiplied by
ten — an unfortunate historical anomaly, as it turns out, rather than an
exciting artistic path that the lady may have pursued to continue forging her
own identity. Or, perhaps, may not
have pursued, if we accept that Fate is always stronger than one person’s
dreams and ambitions, in the end. |
||||||||
