Not only did Wendell take on the responsibility of booking the shows, but he also managed everything related to the band. Now that was a job! He had to keep up the car so they could make the dates, make sure to pay their child support, and generally keep an eye on them. There were a few times we had to bail them out of jail so they could work a job. I always had pretty good guys working with me, but they were just boys drinking and having fun and getting into trouble.
It always gave me a great sense of satisfaction that my dad got a second chance to live out his musical dreams vicariously through my career. When Wendell took over, though, Daddy was kind of lost. He couldn’t go back to barbering, since his feet gave him so much trouble. Both my folks always had a knack for finding work, so he jumped in and found different things to do. He worked with a guy selling used cars for a while. He loved people, so he enjoyed that kind of work and was pretty good at it. I know he missed the music and being on the road. Eventually, the guy who managed the Trianon Ballroom in downtown Oklahoma City left and went to Nashville for some other opportunity. When Daddy heard about it he jumped at the chance to be around music again. He took over that job and was back in his world again.
Even though I think Daddy was happy at the Trianon, I know he was a restless soul. He eventually started drinking more heavily, just because it was something to do. I don’t know if he was an alcoholic, but he liked to drink and he liked to go out every night. He was a party guy. Mother wouldn’t allow any drinking in the house, so he’d go out and get a nip from his stash in the glove box of the car. He always wanted to go out to some honky tonk or a bar somewhere so he could drink and tell jokes and have fun with the guys. Maybe with the women, too. That caused my folks some problems. They hadn’t been around each other much because they sacrificed their time together for six years so Daddy could travel with me and Mother could take care of everything on the home front. That life must have been lonely for her, even though she always stayed busy. It was a difficult adjustment for him, and I always felt a little guilty that those circumstances changed for him.
Even though there were plenty of changes in my personal life, it seemed like things were running smoothly by 1962. I had just experienced two Top 10 hits with “Right or Wrong” and “In the Middle of a Heartache.” And even though things didn’t work out with “A Little Bitty Tear” after the Burl Ives debacle, the follow-up single, “If I Cried Every Time You Hurt Me,” performed fairly well on both the country and pop charts. Capitol followed up the Right or Wrong album with another LP, Wonderful Wanda, that was well received. That year I was ranked the third most popular female act in the country, right behind Patsy Cline and Kitty Wells. Loretta Lynn was number four. The year would bring yet another change, however, that would require some big adjustments.
Motherhood was not something I’d ever dreamed of when I was growing up. I never did babysit when I was a teenager, and—with the exception of maybe posing for a fan photo—I had never even held a baby up to the point when Wendell and I married. He wanted to have at least two children, which I knew, but family planning wasn’t as widely discussed in the early 1960s as it is today. Although it was a surprise (a good surprise that I prefer to think of as God’s timing), our daughter Gina was born in the summer of 1962.
When I found out I was pregnant, I thought, Oh my gosh. Now what? What’s gonna happen with my career? It makes me sound terrible to say that, but that was my initial reaction. Being a small person, I got big pretty fast. It got harder and harder to travel, and especially to play music. I had to start holding my guitar off to the side when my baby bump got too big to work around. I performed up until the last couple of months of my pregnancy, but I had some trouble. I nearly lost Gina in Las Vegas during a run at the Golden Nugget. The dressing rooms were upstairs and the showroom was downstairs, so I was going up and down all night, which was not good for the baby.
Another time, I started hemorrhaging. I called my gynecologist and he said, “You must get off your feet for at least thirty-six hours.” I was working at Charlie Genova’s Chestnut Inn, which was a place in Kansas City where I could depend on drawing a good crowd.
Wendell called and said, “Wanda won’t be able to make the show. It’s doctor’s orders. I’m sorry.”
“On, no,” Charlie said. “She’s got to be there.” Wendell reiterated that it would not be possible. Charlie called back and said, “How about this? I’ve arranged for a hospital bed, and we can have it out on the dance floor area.”
Wendell had to put his foot down on that idea. Can you imagine that? Me in a hospital bed with my guitar trying to entertain a crowd? My gosh. I think old Charlie would have had me do it, too! Those were the moments when I was glad to have Daddy and Wendell in my life so they could step in and get tough on some of these promoters and club owners who had some unrealistic ideas.
When I finally took a break from touring, I continued to record. We did the Love Me Forever album, while I was eight or nine months pregnant with Gina. That LP had a bunch of classic pop songs on it, which I really enjoyed singing. I don’t know how I did it, but somehow I was able to get those notes out, and Love Me Forever—which was released in 1963, several months after we recorded it—is still one of my favorite albums to this day.
I took two or three months off after Gina was born. We had recently moved into our first house at 2213 Laneway Drive, and I was doing my best to play the part of the domesticated woman. I didn’t know the first thing about being a mother, but I knew I was in love. Ken Nelson came and visited us and the new baby when he was in town on some other business. Capitol also sent a little savings bond and a sterling silver piggy bank, which was very thoughtful. It felt like my real family and my Capitol Records family had come together in harmony. At least that’s how it felt until it was time to hit the road again. Leaving Gina in someone else’s care was extraordinarily difficult, but there was no other choice.
Wendell was as head-over-heels for the little bundle as I was, and he was ready to grow the brood immediately. I was an only child, so I wasn’t so sure, but he thought having both a boy and a girl would make for the perfect family. I thought maybe we should at least space it out a little bit. I guess birth control pills had just started to get popular around that time. I started taking them after Gina was born, but every time I took one I would get morning sickness as if I was pregnant. That was strange because I had never gotten morning sickness when I actually was pregnant. Needless to say, those pills didn’t last for very long. Natural consequences being what they are, I was pregnant again less than a year after Gina came along.
My son, Gregory Jackson Goodman, was born January 1, 1964. Wendell always jokes that he missed his tax deduction by just three hours. He tells people, “I had Wanda running around the football field and doing sit-ups, but Greg just refused to come in 1963.” It sounds hard to believe, but the minute we clinked our glasses together to toast the New Year at midnight, I clutched my stomach. My labor had started!
I didn’t have much of a breather between the two babies, and having two children certainly didn’t make it any easier on me and Wendell to have to be away so often. The kids had several nannies, but Ms. Willis was the one who was with us the longest. She became part of the family, and we were also very blessed to have actual family nearby. Both my parents and Wendell’s parents were local, so they could stop in whenever they were needed. Once Greg came along we moved once again to 8400 Charlotte Drive, which wasn’t far from our previous house. That was the first home we actually built, and we have some great memories of our young family in that house.
As much as I loved my kids, pregnancy was not easy on me either time. I had them both via C-section, but I had to go through a good bit of labor. In fact, it was shortly before I became pregnant with Gina—when I had my appendix removed—that the surgeon told me I would have trouble with pregnancy and would need to have children via C-section should I ever get pregnant. I don’t know what he saw when he was poking around in there, but I wa
s glad to find out the information when I did. Once Wendell got his boy, I was off the hook. I wouldn’t have to endure the unpleasant part of the process again, so we decided to go ahead and officially cap the Goodman family head count at four. I couldn’t have asked for two better children, so I knew we weren’t going to top ourselves!
Because they were close in age, Gina and Greg always had each other to rely on when their parents were off traveling. They got along remarkably well for siblings, and I was grateful that they were always close. Even though they were buddies, their personalities were very different. Gina never wanted anyone to know that her mother was Wanda Jackson. She wanted to make her own way in the world and be appreciated on her own merits. She wasn’t going to use my name to get a part in the play or attract friends. Greg, on the other hand, headed off to kindergarten with one of my LPs under his arm and announced to the class, “This is my mother!” We’ve always had a good time kidding him about that!
Often, when Wendell and I were traveling for weeks at a stretch, I’d open up a suitcase to discover that Gina had slipped one of her toys in our luggage to go along with us. It was so sweet, but that just broke my heart. I knew she wanted to be the one to stow away to be with her mom and dad, so she was sending an ambassador in her place. When the kids got a little older, we would turn some of our summer tour dates into family vacations. If I was working at fairs, we could bring them along to ride the rides and have cotton candy and that kind of thing. I knew it wasn’t a normal childhood for them, and I’ve always carried a little guilt about that.
Mother kept Gina and Greg on the weekends, so she practically raised both my kids. She was always there for us, and I was so grateful for her steady and consistent influence in their lives. All the grandkids and great-grandkids eventually started calling her Bobo (pronounced Bob-oh). That came from my mom’s niece, Naomi. Mother’s side of the family called her Nellie Bob, which was a nickname her dad started calling her when she was a kid. Naomi couldn’t say that when she was a little girl, so it just came out Bob. And it stuck. Bobo was the matriarch, and a pretty important person in our family. As it turned out, Bobo was more like a mother to my kids than I was. Even when I was home it was hard to be fully present. There was always some kind of demand like, “I’ve got to go get this outfit finished for the show next weekend,” or “I need to go to this photo shoot,” or “I’ve got to rehearse with the band.” I always had stuff to do, so I didn’t even really know all the kids’ friends. I don’t think I was a very good mother. My kids say that’s not true. They say they understood what I was doing, but it couldn’t possibly have been easy on them. I look at what parents they turned out to be and wonder where they got it. I feel like I didn’t do anything right!
Chapter 18
With Otto Demler (left) and his engineer at Electrola Studios in Germany.
SANTO DOMINGO
After “If I Cried Every Time You Hurt Me” faded from the charts in 1962, I couldn’t get back into the Top 40 to save my life. Capitol released several singles, including “I Misunderstood,” “The Greatest Actor,” “One Teardrop at a Time,” “But I was Lying,” “This Should Go on Forever,” and “Let Me Talk to You.” None of them, however, hit the Billboard charts.
I was just coming off my most successful couple of years as an artist, but I was having a lot of trouble holding on to it. One of the big reasons that it often felt like an uphill climb for me was because I chose to remain in Oklahoma City. I knew the best songwriters were in Nashville, and I knew how they operated. If they wrote a great song, they wanted someone to record it immediately. Why would they be motivated to sit on a potential smash hit by holding it for me when there were plenty of popular singers right there in Nashville who were available to record it right away? The harsh reality is they couldn’t get those songs to me, and if they could get them to me, I couldn’t set up a recording session on short notice. The other girls who were based in Nashville got the first crack at the best songs. I often got the dregs, and I probably missed out on some hits because I wasn’t in the middle of the action. As they say, you must be present to win.
I have to admit that moving to Nashville was pretty tempting, but there was no way we could do that. We had our family nearby to help take care of the kids, which we wouldn’t have had in Tennessee. Wendell and I discussed it on several occasions, but choosing not to go to Nashville was a sacrifice we decided to make for our family. Our children’s lives were unstable enough as it was. We weren’t about to rip them from the only consistent support network they had and throw them into an even more chaotic life. It wasn’t an easy decision, in terms of my career, but I have no doubt it was the right decision for us and our family.
I finally caught another break in 1965 and found myself back on top with another number one single. But I had to go outside the Nashville system to make it happen. In fact, I had to go pretty far. Capitol Records asked me if we’d be willing to go to Germany to record some songs for Electrola Records, which was their German distribution partner. To make matters more interesting, they told me they wanted me to sing in German. I’m a country girl from Oklahoma, so I have enough trouble with English! I said, “How in the world am I going to sing in German?”
I was told that Electrola was interested in working with me because my voice was “very pleasing to the German ear.” The idea was that they would write material especially for me and then coach me on how to sing it. I was pretty intimidated at the prospect and, even though I’ve faced plenty of challenges, sometimes my first instinct is to run the other direction. I was wary, but Wendell talked me into it. We decided it would be a good opportunity to travel together on someone else’s dime. We’d never been to Europe. In fact, at that point, Wendell had never left the US, and the only international trip I’d ever taken was my tour of Japan. Plus, we figured there was nothing to lose in giving it a try.
In March we flew to Cologne, where Electrola was based, and where they had their big pressing plant. When we went to the studio we met Otto Demler, an Austrian producer who was assigned to oversee the sessions, as well as a German vocal coach who was recruited to help me with my pronunciation. They hadn’t sent me the songs ahead of time, so I was feeling pretty uneasy. “Where are all the musicians?” I asked after we spent a few minutes getting to know one another.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Otto smiled. “We’ve already recorded the instrumental tracks for you. We’ll just add your vocals.”
By that point I was getting really nervous. I said, “How in the world can you have an arrangement made and the tracks recorded when you don’t know what key the songs should be in for my voice?”
Otto chuckled. “Oh, we’ve done our homework,” he said. “Our writers studied your recordings and they know your vocal range.”
I shot a glance at Wendell. He nodded reassuringly, but I could tell he was feeling a little uneasy, too. “Ken Nelson usually counts on me for the tempo of the songs,” I added. “He’s always told me not to let the band set the tempos.” Otto put his hand on my shoulder.
“Trust me,” he smiled. “We have just the right tempos for you.” I finally decided to just go with the flow.
Otto had four songs prepared, starting with “Santo Domingo.” I had to write out all the words phonetically in order to know how to deliver them correctly. We’d record two or three lines and then we’d stop so I could look over the next couple of lines to make sure I could pronounce them right. The vocal coach would get exasperated, grab my chin, and try to move my mouth right. He was giving me fits! I kept getting the words wrong and was getting incredibly frustrated. I would get really mad, start crying, and run out of the studio to the ladies’ room. Wendell would have to come in and give me a pep talk to keep me going. I spent six hours at the microphone for “Santa Domingo” alone. There were over thirty musicians on that recording, including the string section, four backup singers, and an opera singer from Berlin who they recruited to sing those high notes. Once I got through my pa
rt, the final record just gave me chills. In terms of production and technology, the Germans were ahead of us at that time. It was definitely the most lavishly produced record I’d ever been a part of up to that point. When my part was finally completed, however, we still had three more songs to go!
A long day stretched into a long night, but I got through it. I felt silly most of the time because I didn’t really know what I was singing about. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be sad or happy. One song had a recitation, so that was an interesting moment! In the end, they said I did an excellent job and that my German sounded natural. Of course, I have no way of knowing if that’s true or not, but when they released “Santo Domingo” as a single, it became a Top 5 hit on Germany’s national chart and reached number one in Bravo, which was the country’s preeminent teen magazine. I think it’s really interesting that the only two number one records in this Oklahoma country gal’s career came about in Japan and Germany!
Every Night Is Saturday Night Page 18