Obviously, that wasn’t my fault, but I can assure you I was sent out in the hall plenty of times just for laughing too much during class. I remember, when I was in fifth grade, there was a girl in our class named Jeannette. I was looking around the room and not paying attention to the teacher, as usual, when Jeannette starting heading down the aisle to turn in a paper. She was walking along minding her own business when that poor girl’s panties suddenly dropped around her ankles. I tried to be quiet but I couldn’t contain myself. I started snickering. Boy, she felt it right quick, and she just jumped out of those drawers! I thought I was going to lose it. I wound up out in the hallway over that one, but I couldn’t help it. I just loved laughing and having a good time. I’ve always loved a party atmosphere and, considering it was already starting at that young age, I guess I come by it naturally!
The school bus stopped almost right in front of our duplex on South High Street, so I enjoyed having a little autonomy to travel to and from school on my own. Since I would usually get home before Mother, she gave me my first little chore. It seems like we had fried potatoes with supper about every night. She showed me how to peel a potato, but she didn’t use a peeler. That would have been too easy. Instead, she used a knife. It seemed as though Mother did everything the hard way. She would have me peel the potatoes, and then she would slice them up later when she got home from work. That was my job. She also had me set the table before we ate. I think that was all she trusted me to do. She wouldn’t teach me anything else because she didn’t have the time. I don’t know if my mother was a great cook, but she did pretty good, and we all stayed fat and sassy. We had some kind of meat every night with fried potatoes and maybe green beans or something. She would fix a salad with just lettuce and tomato, and then use mayonnaise for the dressing. We just didn’t have that many choices. She couldn’t make elaborate things because she had too many other things to do. Mother was always in a hurry and wanted everything done “right now!” I do look back on those days fondly, though. In those days, people sat down as a family and ate together. Sadly, that’s not as common anymore, and I think we’ve lost something as a society by letting that tradition go by the wayside.
Mother and Daddy eventually built their first little house at 721 Southeast 35th Street, which wasn’t far from where we’d been living with Aunt Flossie. From our new house, we could walk down the street, take a right on Lindsay, and go a couple of blocks up to South Lindsay Baptist at the corner of 33rd. Mother joined the church soon after we returned to Oklahoma, and I did, too. It would become a very important place to me and my family over the years.
Mother was a real stickler about attending Sunday school each week. I could occasionally skip church, but never Sunday school. We had our little envelopes that we wrote our names on and put our little donation in each week. I’d faithfully put my dollar in there. Those envelopes also had little boxes to check on the back about whether or not you read your Bible every day, and if you studied the lesson from your Sunday school book. Those disciplines were ingrained in me, and I really loved the church and all the activities it provided. Baptists always give an altar call at the end of the service in case there are people there who want to surrender their lives to God. I didn’t really fully understand what that meant at the time, but I kept a hot path down that aisle. I wasn’t running from God when I was a kid. In fact, I was trying to run to him. It would take time, however, before I understood what it meant to accept God’s love and grace for what it is, instead of trying to respond out of a misguided fear of divine punishment. But that day would come later.
Some of my closest friends were kids I went to church with, especially Beverly Wright, who became my best friend and with whom I stayed close for the rest of her life. Everybody loved Beverly. She was a gregarious, heavyset girl, and the life of the party. By the time I was around twelve years old, we’d get together for parties at Beverly’s or someone’s house after Sunday services. I’d carry my guitar and sing some songs or do some yodeling, which I was trying to perfect at the time. I don’t know how I got it in my head, but I thought if I was gonna be a girl singer, I had to learn to yodel. I taught myself to do it by listening to it over and over on the radio. I jokingly tell people you learn to yodel by getting on a horse, getting into a good trot, and setting him loose on forty acres. That shaking will make your voice yodel right away! I remember the song “Chime Bells,” by Elton Britt, which made a big impression on me. That was one I would practice yodeling with all the time. That’s how you actually master it—practice! I was also very influenced by Hank Williams, so “Jambalaya” and “Kaw-Liga” became staples for me when I would sing at parties.
I mentioned before that my lack of athletic prowess guaranteed I would never grace a Wheaties box, but I was reminded of that one day while playing softball with some church friends. I was at bat, but when the ball came across the plate, I swung and missed. I swung that bat so hard that I spun myself around. At that moment, my friend Estle Wall had picked up the ball to throw back to the pitcher. Somehow, I got in the way, and that ball hit me right in the chin. I felt a sharp pain and what seemed like a ringing in my ears. I felt tears welling up in my eyes. I opened my mouth. “Am I bleeding?” I asked Estle.
She winced. “No, but it’s not good,” she replied. “You’ve broken your teeth.”
Sure enough, my two front teeth were cracked. Mother and Daddy took me to the dentist and, for several years, my front teeth were gold. They didn’t have much they could do back then in terms of white caps or anything like that. I remember the dentist telling my mother that, at my young age, he wanted to put something strong there that would hold up. I had those gold teeth until I saw a picture of myself. Of course, there was nothing but black-and-white film then, and that gold looked black. I couldn’t stand it.
We went back to the dentist, but he discovered that I had somehow gotten an abscess in one of those teeth. I don’t know why, but he decided he had to pull the gold caps off without anesthesia. Mother and Daddy and the dentist’s nurse held me down while he went to work. It was excruciating. They got those gold caps off and he said, “We’ll get those teeth out now.” He pulled out my two front teeth and then, for no reason at all, he pulled out the two on either side of those. He said it would look better for a bridge. So, ever since I was about twelve, I’ve had to wear a bridge. It took me forever to learn to talk with that stupid thing. I’d wake up in the morning and wouldn’t have the bridge in my mouth anymore. I would have woken up in the night and sleepily thrown my teeth across the room. I’d find them in the closet or down at the foot of the bed or something. Those fake teeth were my deepest held secret. I was embarrassed, and I didn’t tell anybody about it.
Mother found me a new piano teacher within walking distance of our house, but she didn’t understand the way the guy in Bakersfield had taught me to play. I had never paid any attention to that bass clef, but this teacher wanted me to start learning the left-hand parts. I just couldn’t get it. I would go to her house each week for a lesson, but I didn’t like her too much. I probably didn’t like her because she was trying to really challenge me and teach me, but I was always trying to do things my own way. I wasn’t interested in all her theory. I just wanted to know enough to get by and play the songs I liked, but she had me doing little kid stuff to try to teach me the rudiments of the instrument. She thought I wasn’t really trying, and we probably gave up on each other pretty early on. She got to where her boyfriend was there every time I’d come for a lesson. She’d say, “Now practice that for a minute,” and then she’d go over and they’d love on each other in the corner. It might have lasted as much as a year, but I eventually just quit. I can’t even remember what her name was now.
By that point, I was probably about evenly skilled on both the piano and guitar, but I couldn’t sing as easily while playing piano as I could with the guitar. Since people encouraged me to bring it when we’d have school or church parties, I increasingly gravitated to the guitar. I rea
lized early on that’s what my audience wanted!
Since I was getting a little older, Mother would occasionally let me head downtown with some church or school friends. Capitol Hill was the main area where there were some movie theaters and a drugstore where kids could congregate. I would head over to that area with Mother every Saturday so she could pay bills and do some shopping, but I was just starting to become a teenager, and was wanting to strike out on my own without her sometimes. One of my favorite things to do was meet up at the drugstore at the corner of Commerce and South Robinson Avenue to get a Coke with my friends. It was fun to feel like I was just starting to become a young lady and could enjoy a little independence of my own.
Sometimes, I acted more like a dumb kid than a young lady, however. I once shoplifted a magazine from the newsstand across the street from the drugstore and snuck out with it somehow. I loved to see look at those movie magazines with Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor and folks like that in them. I was drawn to glamour, and for some reason I couldn’t resist taking it. I felt so guilty about it that I couldn’t sleep that night. I brought it back the next day and slipped it back onto the rack. Nobody ever knew, but I felt bad. I was driving by there recently with my granddaughter, who’s in her twenties, and pointed out where that newsstand used to be. I said, “That’s where I stole something for the first time.” She started laughing. “The first time?” she said. “How many more times were there?” I had to chuckle about that. “Maybe I didn’t word that like I meant to,” I told her. “It was an isolated incident. Your sweet grandmother doesn’t have a secret life of crime in her past!”
My favorite thing to do with my friends—when I wasn’t taking a five-finger discount at the newsstand like a hot-handed little kleptomaniac—was listening to the jukebox at the drugstore. We’d check out the hits of the day and talk about what we liked about each song. I especially loved to hear the girl singers and imagine what it would be like if I ever heard my own voice on a record one day. It seemed as far-fetched as the idea of me winding up next to Marilyn Monroe in one of those magazines, but I enjoyed the fantasy.
Just across the street from the drugstore was a little radio station called KLPR that had a small studio inside that could accommodate about twenty audience members. Sometimes after school we’d walk to the station and watch the performers play on the air. It wouldn’t be long before I would get my own chance to strap on my guitar, step up to that microphone, and beam my voice over the airwaves to the good people of Oklahoma City.
Chapter 4
TURN YOUR RADIO ON
Radio station KLPR broadcast all kinds of different programming. This was before radio stations had dedicated formats for one type of music or another, so you might hear a news program at a certain time, followed by a preacher, followed by the Top 40 popular songs. This particular station had an hour of country music every weekday afternoon that was hosted by a deejay named Cousin Jay Davis. Jay played country records for forty-five minutes and devoted the last fifteen minutes of his radio time to local talent.
When I was about thirteen or fourteen, some of my church friends kept urging me to take my guitar over to the station and audition for the show. I brushed it off the first few times anyone mentioned it, but they were persistent. They’d say, “Oh, come on, Wanda. We’ll go over there with you so you can try out. Let’s do it! When do you want to go?” I would tell my friends I didn’t sing well enough to be on the radio, but finally they’d had enough of my resistance and resorted to other tactics. They dared me. Now, a dare is one thing, but then they double dog dared me. I don’t know what your experience was like growing up, but in Oklahoma, in 1951, if someone double dog dared you, you’d better be ready to deliver if you wanted to save face. I finally gave in.
One day, after classes at Capitol Hill Junior High School, I walked up the hill to Commerce Street with a group of my friends, including Beverly. The station was located on the second floor of a storefront building that housed the Capitol Hill Beacon newspaper. One of the boys carried my guitar up the steps for me. I felt like I’d brought my own cheering section. It was very encouraging to have friends who believed in my talent and thought I was good enough to sing on the air.
We waited until Cousin Jay signed off from his daily show. I wasn’t quite sure how to introduce myself or what to say, but before I could figure it out, Beverly marched right up to him with her hand outstretched. “Hello, sir. Our friend Wanda here is the best singer in the world and she’d like to audition to be on your local talent spotlight.” Jay smiled. He was polite, but seemed a little hesitant. I was only in the ninth grade by this point, and I’m sure he’d seen plenty of kids come through who weren’t as talented as they thought. The studio wasn’t very big, so he certainly couldn’t avoid me. “Okay,” he finally conceded while motioning for me to get my guitar. “Let’s hear what you’ve got, young lady.”
Once I strapped on my guitar, my shyness and nervousness melted away. I started singing my best rendition of Jimmie Rodgers’s “Blue Yodel No. 6.” Just as I was losing myself in the song, Jay suddenly stopped me midway through. I felt my face get hot. “Is something wrong, Mr. Davis?” He smiled real big. “No, Wanda, quite the opposite. You have a fine voice, and I’d be happy to have you on the local talent spotlight. Be here tomorrow afternoon and don’t forget to bring your guitar.” Beverly started jumping up and down. “I told you, sir,” she squealed. Cousin Jay started laughing. “And be sure to bring your fan club,” he added.
Before long Cousin Jay was rotating me into the local talent portion of his show once every week or two. That wound up being a very good starting place for me in terms of getting experience, singing into a microphone, responding to audience feedback, and gaining more confidence as a performer. At that time, there were a lot of local talent contests in the movie theaters on Saturdays, which were very popular and drew pretty good crowds. It wasn’t long before KLPR hosted a competition of their own. They broadcast the show on the air and encouraged people to write or call in to vote for their favorite performer. The grand prize would be a fifteen-minute daily radio show from 5:15 until 5:30 each weekday for a month. Since I’d been getting a good response to my appearances on Jay’s show, I decided to enter. Would you believe I wound up winning that thing? Suddenly, I was going to have my very own radio show, even if it was just for a little while!
For the next month, I would cart my guitar to school with me each day and then walk over to the drugstore with my girlfriends after class until it was time to head across the street to the station for my show. Cousin Jay was on from 4:00 until 5:00. Grant Lad read the news from 5:00 until 5:15. Then, the airwaves were mine for the next fifteen minutes. It was just me and my guitar, and I would play and sing whatever was popular on the country charts at the time. It might have been just pitiful, but somebody out there must have liked what they heard.
Near the end of the month the station manager stopped me as I was packing up my guitar one afternoon. “Wanda, your show’s doing well and drawing listeners. Would you like to keep doing it?” It only took me about an eighth of a second to come up with my answer to that question, “Golly, yeah. I really like singing on the radio.” He nodded his head with a chuckle. “Well,” he responded, “if you can get some good sponsors for your time slot, you can keep the show as long as you want.” Maybe a lot of adolescent girls would have been deterred, but I went after it with a vengeance. That was the only time in my life I’ve ever had to sell myself or anything like that, but I didn’t mind it one bit. Daddy helped me put together some ideas for sponsors, and then I started pounding the pavement. I went to a lumber company, and they signed up right away.
That was the start of the Wanda Jackson Show on KLPR, and I treated it with all the seriousness of a regular job. The lumber company liked what I was doing, and then Davis Furniture signed on as a second sponsor. I went to Grant Lad, who was a seasoned announcer, and asked him to help me write advertising spots. He was a real professional and seemed to
admire my spunk. We got along great, and he took the time to teach me how to take the facts about special deals or sales the store was offering and put it into words that were exciting to the listeners. He gave me great pointers on how long each commercial should be, and soon I was writing my own ad copy and coming up with my interesting promo spots. It was a lot of fun, and I was always grateful to Mr. Lad for taking me under his wing in that way. It seems kind of remarkable now to think about having taken on all that responsibility at such a young age, but that was just my life. All I wanted to do was play guitar and sing. I was earning a little money for my show, but if keeping sponsors happy was part of the job, I was going to do that job one hundred percent. Plus, I was having the time of my life!
Plenty of young girls pursue careers in music today, but they have something I didn’t have: role models to look to. Patsy Montana had a big hit with “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart” in the 1930s, and that was really about it for girls in country music. Kitty Wells had not yet become a big star when I was starting my radio show, so there was no blueprint or roadmap available to me. I was flying by the seat of my pants, but it didn’t scare me to get out on a limb and try something brand new. I liked it.
Daddy was still driving a taxi during this period, and his cab stand was just a couple of blocks from KLPR. He usually got off work around 5:00, but he would typically wait for me to finish my show so he could drive me home. Daddy would listen to the broadcast when he could, and while we were driving, we’d talk about the songs I was singing and how I was interacting with my radio audience. He was as excited about my show as I was. He was really happy to see me have a chance to play music and, not long after it became permanent, he took me to a pawn shop to buy me my first good guitar. It was a Martin D-18 that I played for many years. Today it hangs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Every Night Is Saturday Night Page 4
