Wanda Jackson

Wanda Jackson in Belgium , 2008

Wanda Jackson (* 20th October 1937 in Maud , Oklahoma ), actually Wanda Lavonne Jackson , is a US -American rockabilly - and Country singer.

Life

Wanda Jackson was born in Oklahoma, but grew up in California from the age of 4 . As a child she learned to play the guitar and piano. At the age of 15 she won a talent competition and was allowed to appear on a local radio station for fifteen minutes a day. The country singer Hank Thompson heard her there and encouraged her to continue performing. However, she insisted on getting her high school diploma first. In 1955 and 1956 she went on tour, including with Elvis Presley , who advised her to switch from country music to rockabilly. In 1961 she married and had two children. Her husband, Wendell Goodman, left his job at IBM to become her manager.

Wanda Jackson was the first woman to play “wild” music like her male colleagues and sing her songs in a rough voice. She was too wild for prudish America, and her greatest successes were abroad. She also sang in German, Dutch and Japanese for her fans abroad. In 1959, Fujiyama Mama was at the top of the Japanese charts for months - even though the song alludes to the atomic bombs in a less sensitive way: “I've been to Nagasaki, Hiroshima too / The things I did to them baby, I can do to you ”. Her most famous rock 'n' roll title to date was Let's Have A Party in 1960 . Other hits included Silver Threads And Golden Needles - the first recording of today's country classic, Stupid Cupid , originally a hit by Connie Francis , as well as two self-written tracks, Right Or Wrong and Mean Mean Man . Her most successful track in the US was In The Middle Of A Heartache , the record reached number 27 on the US singles chart in late 1961. In 1962 she achieved two more, smaller successes, once with a cover version of the Burl Ives title A Little Bitty Tear (# 84) and with the record If I Cried Every Time You Hurt Me (# 58). A total of five records by Wanda Jackson made it to the US charts between autumn 1960 and early summer 1962.

In Germany she was better with softer songs, but only had a very short phase of success, from April 1965 to January 1967. She was most successful with Santo Domingo , a German hit song composed especially for her by Bert Olden and Joachim Relin . The title came in 1965 to number 5 in the German charts and number 1 in the charts of the youth magazine Bravo . Wanda Jackson also recorded this title in Japanese for the Asian market. The B-side of Santo Domingo - tomorrow, yes tomorrow - was also sung in Dutch by Wanda Jackson. Unlike many other German singing stars from the Anglo-Saxon-speaking area, such as B. Connie Francis , Cliff Richard or Petula Clark , Wanda Jackson did not record any German-language cover versions of their US hits; Her German-language recordings were explicitly written for her in German (e.g. But then Johnny or Who Loses His Heart came along ) or US hits by other artists were used and provided with German texts (e.g. Oh, lonesome me by Don Gibson ), the instrumental playbacks were pre-produced in Electrola Studios in Cologne and dubbed by Wanda Jackson either in the studios of her US label Capitol Records in Los Angeles or on her next visit to Electrola in Cologne. Her last success in Germany was the title Wenn der Abschied geht , which reached number 32 in the German singles charts in January 1967.

In addition to rock and roll and country, Wanda Jackson also played gospel music at times . In her career she recorded more than 50 albums and is still on tour when she is over 70 years old. She has received numerous honors, including the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame , the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, and the International Gospel Music Hall of Fame.

In January 2011 Jackson celebrated a highly regarded comeback on the record market: The album The Party Ain't Over was produced by Jack White ( The White Stripes ) and received good reviews from BBC Music as well as the journals Spin and New Musical Express . The album contains cover versions of rock'n'roll classics like Rip It Up , Shakin 'All Over or Nervous Breakdown , as well as songs by Bob Dylan ( Thunder on the Mountain ) and Amy Winehouse ( You Know That I'm No Good ).

Discography

Chart positions Explanation of the data

Albums

The Party Ain't Over   CH 82 02/13/2011 (1 week)

Singles

Let's have a party   UK 32 09/03/1960 (8 weeks)   US 37 09/03/1960 (10 weeks) Mean Mean Man   UK 40 01/28/1961 (3 weeks) Right or Wrong   US 29 06/10/1961 (11 weeks) In The Middle Of A Heartache   US 27 10/21/1961 (10 weeks) A Little Bitty Tear   US 84 01/20/1962 (3 weeks) If I Cried Every Time You Hurt Me   US 58 04/21/1962 (8 weeks) Santo Domingo   DE 5 05/01/1965 (24 weeks)   AT 1 07/15/1965 (12 weeks) Tomorrow, yes tomorrow   DE 36 11/15/1965 (6 weeks) But then came Johnny   DE 26th 03/01/1966 (6 weeks)   AT 8th 05/15/1966 (4 weeks) When the farewell comes   DE 32 01/01/1967 (4 weeks)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ In the title it was accompanied by Gene Vincent And The Blue Caps, published under the catalog number Capitol 4397, the record reached number 37 on the US singles charts; see Joel Whitburn: Top Pop Singles 1955-1993 . Menomonee Falls / Wisconsin: Record Research, 1994, p. 299
2. ↑ Catalog number Capitol 4553; the record reached number 29 on the US singles chart in 1961
3. ↑ Wanda Jackson - Santo Domingo / Oh, Blacky Joe. Discogs , accessed December 30, 2015 . 
4. ↑ The title was first listed in the German singles charts on April 24, 1965, and the record stayed in the charts for 26 weeks, including 13 weeks in the top 10; see Günter Ehnert (Ed.): Hit balance sheet. German chart singles 1956–1980 . Hamburg: Taurus Press, 1990, p. 106
5. ↑ The title reached number 36 in the German singles charts.
6. ↑ The single reached number 26 in the German singles charts in 1966
7. ↑ [1] CD Review Collection on Metacritic.com
8. ↑ Charts DE Charts AT Charts CH Charts UK Charts US

Web links

Commons : Wanda Jackson  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

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