She was just six when she first told her dad of her plans to become a singer and she meant it – Wanda Jackson would go on to completely redefine what it meant to be a woman in music. Despite what Capitol Records told her when she first approached them, she showed the industry that girls do sell records, lots of ‘em. And she was happy to point out that girls could rock as hard as any man.
Faced with a lack of material she could relate to, she vowed to create her own, and the likes of Mean Mean Man sparked off that nascent desire to sing songs from a woman’s perspective. While the mainstream media of the time presented women as kitchendwelling husband-pleasers, Jackson was the dichotomy of that sexist, staid image. From her primal, snarling vocals – as stirring as anything that came out of the rockabilly fraternity’s mouth – through to her many Rose Maddox-inspired, often damn right outrageous stage outfits (as flamboyant as anything hanging in Elvis Presley’s wardrobe), Wanda levelled the playing field, and then some. Plus, of course, even though she went on to have a romantic involvement with the King, who encouraged and influenced her, she was in the charts before he was. She threw caution to the wind when she strayed from her country audience (and the stuffy Opry establishment that had the audacity to make her cover up) and transformed herself into a rockabilly queen – give Funnel Of Love a quick spin for a clever illustration of her transition.