I discovered recently the songs of Wanda Jackson.
I hope you will enjoy her too.
Jackson was just 16 when country star Hank Thompson took her under his wing after hearing her on an Oklahoma radio station. Her single "You Can't Have My Love," a duet with bandleader Billy Gray, became a national hit while Jackson was still in high school. In 1955 Jackson hit the road as the opening act for Elvis Presley, just months before Elvis' career exploded. The two hit it off, dating for nearly a year. Elvis gave Jackson his ring. He also encouraged her to stretch out beyond country by singing rockabilly.
"My dad always told me, 'If you're going to do something, be different at it,'" says Wanda Jackson, 'stand out in some way, do a little bit more.'" Jackson took her dad's advice. In the mid-1950s, at the dawn of the rock 'n' roll era, she became one of the fledgling genre's first female stars, an energetic 18-year-old rockabilly queen who dated Elvis, made frequent stabs at the Top 40 and tore through the music industry like a Midwestern tornado.
Wanda Jackson - Hard-Headed Woman
Wanda Jackson - Cool Love
