“Fellas, Wanda wants to ask y’all something,” he said.
I went in to a dressing room where they were all hanging out. I said, “I’m gonna go to church tonight. Who would like to go with me?” Dead silence. I said, “Well, okay. I just wanted to let y’all know in case anyone wanted to come along.” Everybody looked at the floor. I turned to go. As I was walking away I heard a voice behind me.
“Hold it, Wanda, hold it.” I turned around. Jerry Lee was getting up from his chair. “I’d like to go to church with you,” he smiled.
I didn’t know what to say as we walked down the road to that little church. I was kind of hoping maybe several of the boys would have come along. The prospect of being alone with Jerry Lee was pretty scary to me, but once we started walking, he was a perfect gentleman. We slipped into the service a little late and sat in the back. We shared a hymnbook and sang those great old songs together that had been part of both our formative years. It was really sweet, and that memory is very dear to me. Of all the people, it was Jerry Lee who went to church with me. We’ve since become good friends, and I always enjoy seeing him. We’re about the only two left from that group.
Not too long ago Jerry and I were booked for a show in London in one of the old theaters that had recently been refurbished. The dressing rooms were on the second floor, and they didn’t have an elevator. I’d been having problems with my knees, so there was no way I was going to get up those stairs. They started hustling around, trying to figure out what to do. My husband, Wendell, said, “We don’t need anything fancy. She just has to have a little room where she can leave her jacket and her purse, and so she has some place to go.” The manager had this little cubby hole of an office on the first floor. It was tiny, but it was better than nothing. They set me up in there, and even put a sign with my name on it on the door for me. We hadn’t been in there too long when the door opened and Jerry Lee stuck his head in. He said, “Wanda, can I share the dressing room with you? I can’t get up those damn steps!” We had a good laugh over that one. It’s a long road from kicking the piano to pieces to not getting up the stairs. That day was probably the most I ever talked to Jerry Lee over the years.
Jerry Lee’s sister, Linda Gail, was with him at that show. She told me I was the one who gave her the courage to start singing, and even to work with Jerry. She said she always loved the music her brother did, but assumed that since she was a girl she couldn’t do it. She said, “You were working with Jerry somewhere and I saw you perform. It was such a thrill because I said, ‘Okay, I can do it.’ I thank you for paving the way.” I guess I was taking the hits for the other gals so they could get into rock music, too. It certainly wasn’t always easy.
By 1958, a lot of country fans were giving us rockabilly people a hard time. It was becoming obvious that country and rock were moving in different directions, and I just flat out could not get my records played on the radio. I guess the rock deejays thought I was too country, and the country deejays thought I was too rock. Plus, a lot of people did not think a girl just moving from her late teens into her early 20s should be shaking her hips in silky clothes and singing that “nasty” music. There were plenty of folks who thought rock music was straight from the devil! Sure, some of the songs were suggestive, but gosh, if you listen to those traditional country songs, they were all about cheating and drinking. They didn’t exactly have the moral high ground over rock and roll.
Even though I was innocent about the world in a lot of ways, I knew that some of the rock material I was recording was a little racy. That didn’t bother me. When you’re singing a song, it’s similar to an actor playing a part. You get into the character, and you embody that story. I knew exactly what I was doing. I wanted to be the Marilyn Monroe of country music who could bring that rockabilly energy and sex appeal into the genre. All I had to work with was my voice, my body, and my outfits. I liked being that person, and I liked the control it gave me. People look back now and say I was a fireball onstage in the ’50s because I brought raw energy to my music in a way that women weren’t really doing at the time.
I don’t remember either one of my parents having a problem with rock and roll like so many parents did back then. Mother had a very simple mind-set. She didn’t go very deep in terms of why someone would do one thing or another. She didn’t overthink it too much. She thought the songs were cute, and she always liked my up-tempo material. And Daddy, of course, understood the business aspect of it. He knew rock and roll was popular, so he encouraged me to pursue it. He probably thought it was a little controversial, but he knew that getting people talking was an important thing in building a music career.
I had that idea of being a lady drilled into me, and I liked that aspect of my personality. But I had this other side that was kind of raging and wanting to get out. The stage was my outlet. I felt so comfortable onstage unleashing this other side of myself. I just wish I had fought a little harder for some of the things I wanted. There was so much more I wanted to do on stage, but they were things that were unheard of at the time. I wanted to have staging with the band on risers. I wanted to come down a stairway onto the stage like Marilyn in Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend. I wanted fans blowing my hair like Beyonce does now, but nobody would have even entertained that concept all those years ago. Even if they did, there was no way to transport those kinds of props at the time when we were traveling from city to city in a four-door sedan.
I did what I could with what I had, but nobody else did much of anything. I would have been considered feisty if I’d done nothing but tap my toe, never mind moving my hips like a female Elvis. Kitty Wells just barely breathed. Same with Jean Shepard. Those were the only two girls who were popular. I was the third one to come along and, even though they both did better in country music than I did, neither of them had rock music to fall back on over the years. Country music has taken some dives, and there have been times when it wasn’t popular at all. Those have been the moments when my rockabilly fans have stayed loyal. I’m proud that I was forging a path in both fields, and it served me well in the long run.
In retrospect, I’ve been called the first sex symbol in country music. I’m proud of that. I’ve often thought, Well, they didn’t know it at the time. They didn’t recognize it for what it was. They tried to hush me up, but I stayed steadfast and hung in there even when I couldn’t get a hit. I remained true to my own voice and my vision, and I stuck to my guns. Daddy liked that I didn’t copy anyone else, but it probably limited me at the time. It took a lot of years before folks looked back and appreciated what I’d done to pave the way without reaping any immediate benefits.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve always been a bit of an outsider in Nashville. Looking back, I realize I didn’t really play shows in the deep South very often back in the 1950s. Even though I was very country, I had more of a West Coast sensibility about my music. Maybe that was a good thing, because I didn’t feel constricted by Nashville’s rules, but I think my career probably suffered somewhat. The truth is I couldn’t have been put in that narrow box. I wanted to push boundaries and try new things.
My wide range of musical interests was making it trickier for Capitol to know what to do with me. Ken decided I should record an entire album, along with a handful of singles, over the course of four days in April. The album that would become my self-titled debut included pop material, such as “Let Me Go Lover,” which had been a hit for Patti Page, and rock covers like “Long Tall Sally” and “Money, Honey.” Most of it, however, was country. One of the songs I cut was “Heartbreak Ahead,” which is the song I’d cut on my original demo when I first recorded at Hank Thompson’s home studio in 1953. I guess Ken figured we’d keep throwing darts and see what stuck.
Another song we recorded for the Wanda Jackson LP was “Let’s Have a Party.” I wasn’t planning to do it, but we had a little extra time on the recording session and were trying to figure out what to cut. We thought about it and thought about it, but nothing came to mind. Fin
ally, I said to Ken, “This isn’t really country, but how about ‘Let’s Have a Party?’ I’ve been opening my show with it recently and people really like it.”
Even though Elvis had included the song in his movie Loving You, that’s not how I knew it. In fact, I didn’t even realize Elvis had recorded it. I became familiar with “Party” through Larry and Lorrie Collins, who performed as The Collins Kids on Town Hall Party in Los Angeles. Though it was just a local TV program broadcast from Compton’s Town Hall, the show was extraordinarily popular on the Coast. It was the Grand Ole Opry of California, but it embraced an edgier and more rockabilly-oriented sound than the country music community back east. The Town Hall Party cast was always good to me. The house band, led by Joe Maphis, was fantastic and worked really hard to get the songs right. I always felt welcome when I was there, and felt a kinship with Lorrie Collins, who was one of the only other girls singing rockabilly at the time. She was dating Ricky Nelson. I guess we had something in common as females making our way in a male-dominated genre while dating guys who were a big part of creating the blueprint for rock and roll. I always liked Ricky’s music, but I only ever worked one show with him, which was down in Houston. I wish we’d had the chance to work together more often.
Ken listened to “Let’s Have a Party” and said, “I don’t know. It doesn’t really fit with the rest of the album.” He was right. I basically screamed my way through the song, which didn’t make a lot of sense on an album of predominantly country material. But we didn’t really have a lot of other ideas. Finally, he said, “Okay, go ahead and do it.” We were getting close on time, so I think we did it in one take. It’s all we had time for.
Once we finished up the album, we spent a day recording a handful of songs intended for singles, including my rockabilly originals, “Mean Mean Man” and “Rock Your Baby.” Though I had recorded a couple of originals since getting into rockabilly, those were country songs I came up with and later adapted to the new style. I hadn’t really focused on trying to write songs from scratch that were specifically formulated for rockabilly. I finally had to do it out of necessity, since there just wasn’t much material available for a girl rocker. I could change the gender on some of the guys’ songs, but I was always trying to find another “Fujiyama Mama,” or something a girl could do. I knew I wasn’t going to get a hit copying Chuck Berry, Little Richard, or Elvis, but I wasn’t sure where to turn.
One day Daddy said, “Wanda, you’ve been writing country songs for a long time. Since we can’t find any material, why don’t you just write some rock songs?”
At first, I thought he was crazy. I said, “I can’t write that kind of stuff.”
“Well, I’ve listened to these songs and they sound real simple to me,” he said. “Most of them are just three chords. I think you could write one real easy. I even have an idea to get you started. Write one about a mean boyfriend doing something you don’t like, but you think you love him anyway.”
He showed me the beat he had in his head, and that got me started. Pretty soon, I realized I could do it.
“Mean Mean Man” was my first one, but “Rock Your Baby” was written soon after. Honestly, I didn’t really ever consider myself a songwriter, but if I got a good idea for how to say something, or if I thought of a good title, I would write a song around it. I love words. I love rhyming and stringing words together, even if there are folks who are a lot better at it than I am. I never had the discipline to say, “Well, next week I’ll sit down and write songs for my new album.” For me, the songs that come in quick bursts are the only ones that are any good. If I have to work on a song for a couple of days, that means I’m laboring over it. That’s when I know there’s probably nothing there. A lot of times those were the songs where I would just toss them. For a song to work it has to just flow out of you. Those are the ones that are rare, but they’re also the ones that have the most power.
My rockabilly records are considered classics among fans of the genre today, but after “I Gotta Know,” the rest of the 1950s were a commercial dry spell for me in terms of getting a hit. Capitol released a dozen singles before the decade was out, but we weren’t having any success. In fact, they didn’t even schedule any recording sessions for me at all in 1959. I guess Ken Nelson had plenty in the can, and they likely weren’t looking to invest more time and effort in an artist who wasn’t proving particularly successful compared to some others on their roster.
At the very same time the Capitol Records executives were scratching their heads over what to do with me, I was finding international success in the unlikeliest of places. I landed my first number one hit in 1958, but not in the US. Would you believe that my first chart-topping hit and taste of superstardom actually came from halfway around the world?
Chapter 13
FUJIYAMA MAMA
In January of 1959, Mother and Daddy and I moved from our house on Southeast 35th Street in the South Lindsay neighborhood of Oklahoma City to a bigger home about two miles away at 525 Southwest 42nd Street. Daddy was always very careful with money and refused to buy anything we couldn’t afford to pay for with cash.
The idea of avoiding credit was drilled into my head at an early age. I forgot how old I was, but I was already working and making ten or twelve dollars here and there. Daddy opened up a savings account for me, and that’s where all that money went. Hope chests were a big thing back then. You had to have that hope chest before you got married. There were some dishes I liked and I was showing Daddy, saying, “Look here, there’s all these pieces and it’s just three hundred dollars.”
“Do you really want them?” he asked.
I was sure about it. I said, “Oh, yeah, I want ’em. And I can pay for it for just five bucks per month.”
“No, we don’t work that way,” he said. “You’ve got a little over three hundred dollars in your savings account, so if you want them you’ll pay for them outright, but that will take almost all your money.”
I realized I didn’t want them that bad after all.
Daddy’s financial cautiousness caused some friction between him and Mother because she really wanted to move somewhere with a two-car garage. That would have cost more money, so Daddy refused. Mother said, “All right, Tom. That’s fine. If you’ll only agree to a house with a one-car garage that’s okay with me. But I get the garage!” And that’s what happened. Mother really liked to keep her car looking good and shiny, and Daddy knew it was a serious matter for her. He built a carport onto the side of the house for the second car. When she wanted to build a laundry room, Daddy wouldn’t splurge for that either. He said she was fine doing the wash in her garage!
It was a stressful time to move. Just a few days after we relocated to the new house, I had to pack for my very first trip overseas. Despite the worries Ken Nelson had about the song offending people, the Japanese branch of Capitol Records issued “Fujiyama Mama” with a picture sleeve that showed my photo next to a cartoon drawing of Mount Fuji. After my record hit number one in Japan, Daddy and I were invited for a seven-week tour starting in Tokyo. I always loved Oriental style, and Japan was the only foreign country I can remember ever wanting to visit when I was growing up. My bedroom was decorated with Japanese furnishings, including a beautiful privacy screen. I just loved that look and was fascinated by the culture. We had to leave poor Mother at home to unpack all the boxes, but she was so organized and had her particular way of doing things that she was probably glad to have us out of her way!
On January 27 we flew from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles to change planes. At that time a lot of the airline gates were outside, so you might not even go into the terminal when you were traveling through a city. This was when airplanes were powered by propellers, but when we landed at LAX and were headed to another gate to catch our next flight, we noticed there was a buzz going around and people seemed to be gathering for something. They were saying there was going to be a jet airplane landing soon and everyone was really excited. “A jet plane,” Daddy
whistled, “I’d sure like to see that.” We headed over to where everyone was congregating. While we were watching the jet descend, there were a couple of guys standing behind us.
“Man, how does that thing fly?” one of them asked. “It’s got no propellers!”
“Yeah it does,” the other one said. “They’re just going so fast you can’t see ’em.”
We just couldn’t imagine how a plane could possibly fly without propellers!
Once we left Los Angeles we took another flight to Hawaii, where we changed planes once again and flew from there on to Japan. It was pretty late when we finally landed in Tokyo. We were rolling along the tarmac when Daddy said, “Boy, they’re going all out for somebody here.” I looked and saw a lot of people gathered on the observation deck waving, as well as a bunch of photographers. I thought maybe they were hoping to spot a jet airplane landing there, too. Daddy said, “There must be some kind of dignitaries on our plane.” Once we got up to the gate, they opened the door and I stepped out onto the stairs. Daddy was right behind me when he leaned over and nudged me. “Baby, you better start smiling. I think this is all for you!” That’s when I realized they were calling my name, and all those flashing cameras were snapping pictures of me! I knew that “Fujiyama Mama” had been a success, but I had no idea I was a big star in Japan. We didn’t have the global media then that we have today, so I had no way to know.
The pictures of me coming off that plane are kind of funny compared with today’s standards for travel attire. Even though we’d just spent thirty-two hours flying, I was wearing a nice red dress, high heels, a mouton fur coat, and a half hat with little feathers. We had to have our hats! And, of course, gloves and a big purse. I was so put together. I wouldn’t dress like that for thirty-two hours of flying anymore, but I was sure glad I happened to be dressed up at the time. I would have never imagined that I’d be getting the most attention of my life the moment those plane doors opened.
Every Night Is Saturday Night Page 13