You can imagine that, by the time I started dating Leonard, I was still pretty innocent about the world. But he taught me some things I needed to know. Sometimes we might be parked alone somewhere, and we’d get to kissing and making out a little bit. His hands would start wandering, but then he’d stop after a few minutes.
“Wanda! You shouldn’t have let me do that,” he’d say.
“Oh, really? I didn’t know,” I’d say. And he’d nod his head.
“You don’t let a guy do that. That’s just not the thing to do for a young lady.”
He said he was trying to teach me about how to behave. Of course, I see right through that excuse now! I think he might have wanted to do a little something more than help me learn to behave, but he felt conflicted about it. A few years later, he wrote and recorded a major chart-topping single called “You Better Not Do That.” It was about trying to resist “a cute little gal,” and I always wondered if the inspiration might have gone back to those moments with the two of us alone in his Cadillac—I mean pickup truck.
Even though I dated Leonard for a good while and cared for him deeply, we ultimately wound up more like close friends than a typical couple. Excluding the aspect of our relationship I just mentioned, the dynamic between us was kind of like a big brother and little sister. He looked out for me and helped me understand more about how the world worked. We also enjoyed listening to music and playing our guitars together, which is something I’ll always cherish.
One time Leonard was at the house, and we were telling him how we traveled to Bakersfield just about every summer. He was always talking about wanting to go back to California. I think he’d been there briefly during a short stint in the Marines before he was honorably discharged following a shoulder injury. He didn’t know where in California he wanted to go, but he figured one place was as good as another. Daddy invited him to join us on our vacation and ride out there with us.
I don’t remember much about the drive, but once we got to California we stopped in Los Angeles first. Leonard and I both performed on radio station KXLA in Pasadena. There was a popular DJ at the time named Squeakin’ Deacon who had us on his show. We also appeared on cowboy singer Doye O’Dell’s TV program on KTLA, which was a huge thrill. Probably the most exciting thing for me was getting to go visit Nudie’s Rodeo Tailor, the outfitter to all the Western stars of the day. There was no way either Leonard or I could afford to purchase one of Nudie’s dazzling rhinestone-encrusted outfits, but I remember Leonard paid five dollars, which was no small sum in those days, for one of Nudie’s neckties. I looked at all the beautiful clothes and dreamed about having my own custom Nudie outfit one day.
When we got to Bakersfield, Leonard went off by himself one night to a dance hall called Rainbow Gardens. The singer and band leader who performed at the club every weekend was named Terry Preston. He later became a successful country star using his real name, Ferlin Husky. During one of the breaks, Leonard went up to Ferlin and introduced himself. Before the night was over, Leonard was onstage with the band. Ferlin could see his talent immediately and talked him into staying in Bakersfield to join his stage show and play with his group.
Even though he had planned to return to Oklahoma City with us at the end of our trip, Leonard and his fancy Western tie remained in Bakersfield. He didn’t even go back home to collect his things. He rented a room from my Aunt Electa, who had moved from the cotton patch into town and took in boarders to help make ends meet after Uncle Albert died in 1950. I was sad that Leonard didn’t return home with us, but I was happy knowing he was still part of our family out in California.
What was supposed to be a two-week trip for Leonard turned into twenty years. He got a job as a chemist with Richfield Oil Company and continued to write songs and perform. Ferlin was already signed to Capitol Records and introduced Leonard to his producer, Ken Nelson. Ferlin started recording his songs, and then Faron Young, another Capitol artist, recorded Leonard’s “If You Ain’t Loving, You Ain’t Living,” which became a big hit.
Soon Ken Nelson signed Leonard to Capitol Records, where he changed his name to Tommy Collins and recorded his first major single, “You Gotta Have a License,” in 1953. The lead guitarist on that recording was Ferlin Husky. Within a few months Ferlin and Jean Shepard, another Capitol Records country artist who was signed by Ken Nelson, found massive success with their duet recording of “A Dear John Letter.” The song hit number one on the country chart and even reached the Top 5 on the pop chart. It made major stars of both Ferlin and Jean. Ferlin moved out of Bakersfield soon after.
With Ferlin gone, Tommy recruited Bakersfield’s Buck Owens for his next recording session. It wouldn’t be long before Buck and Merle Haggard would make Bakersfield famous as the country music capital of the West, but it was Tommy who helped pave the way for their success. In 1954 and 1955, Tommy landed half-a-dozen songs in the Top 15 on the national country charts, and I couldn’t have been more proud.
If Daddy hadn’t invited Leonard Sipes to join us on our family trip to California, he might have never met Ferlin Husky, gotten signed to Capitol Records, or given Buck Owens his first real gig as a studio musician. He might not have met Merle Haggard, who always credited Tommy with helping him learn how to be a great songwriter. Of course, Tommy could have just gotten out to California some other way. He was so talented he was destined to make a name for himself. And Buck and Merle almost certainly would have found their way to fame, too. There was just no denying how good they were! It seemed like there was something in the water out in Bakersfield when it came to great music. But sometimes I like to think that maybe the Jackson family had a hand in setting the wheels in motion that gave birth to the Bakersfield sound!
In the fall of 1952 I started tenth grade, which meant leaving junior high and starting a new adventure at Capitol Hill High School. Now that I’d had a real boyfriend, the floodgates opened up. Mother used to say, “Wanda put down her doll, and the next day she started dating boys.” I guess to her it must have seemed that way, but I just enjoyed spending time with Leonard, and I enjoyed getting dressed up to go out. I was fourteen years old and, I was coming down with a bad case of boy craziness.
In many ways, I was turning into a stereotypical teenager. I remember that Mother could not get me to hang my clothes up. I’d throw them on the bed or lay them across a chair or whatever. She was such a “type A” personality that it just drove her nuts. She’d tell me to do it, but when I didn’t she’d come along and hang them up for me. She spoiled me in that way. Daddy finally told her to stop doing that. He said, “Just let it pile up. Let her see how bad it can get.” But I still didn’t hang them up. Then some crisis moment would come where I couldn’t find a particular white blouse I needed to go with a particular skirt or something. Mother would say, “Well, look in that pile,” and I’d find it all messed up and wrinkled. She would keep harping on me to just put the clothes away. Daddy would finally say, “Wanda, go in there and do what you’re being asked to do.” He started by speaking to me about it firmly, but finally had to spank me to get me in line again. He said, “You WILL hang your clothes up. Your mother can’t follow you around all your life.” Daddy was trying to teach me responsibility and help me for the future, but Mother would have just taken care of me and babied me if it was up to her. I don’t know why I was so rebellious about that one particular matter, but that was the last time Daddy ever spanked me. I guess I was rapidly leaving the little girl stage and becoming a young woman.
With Leonard Sipes on his way to becoming Tommy Collins in California, I found myself another Leonard. Literally. My second boyfriend was a guy in school that I’d had my eye on, and his name was Leonard, too. We went out several times and I really liked him. He ended up asking me if I’d be his girl, and he gave me his class ring to wear. That lasted for a little while, but my boy craziness started flaring up, and I got to wondering about my options.
Maybe I was restless or maybe I’d gotten bored, but my time with t
he second Leonard had run its course. I was tired of him, and I knew it wasn’t right to keep stringing him along if I wasn’t really serious about our relationship. I decided to give him back his ring. I made up my mind to do it after school, and I remember waking up that day just sick to my stomach. I don’t like confrontation, and I can’t stand the idea of somebody being mad at me or me being mad at them. I felt queasy and anxious all day. I told Beverly about my plan to return the ring. I said, “I just can’t stand having to do this and break poor Leonard’s heart. I promise I will never wear another boy’s ring again.” She liked to remind me of that promise a few years later after I met a young man named Elvis Presley. But that’s another story.
I always liked older guys, so once I started high school, if I dated anyone they were usually a senior. That meant I went to three different proms. As a tenth-grader I was invited to the senior prom by a boy named Billy, whose ill-fitting suit was just about falling off him. He must have borrowed it from his father. I still have photos of myself as a teenager going to all these events with different boys. These were usually just school friends or boys I went out with once or twice. I was too wrapped up in my music and too boy crazy to pay attention to any one young man for very long.
That’s not to say I didn’t have a handful of steady boyfriends for short periods of time. I remember a young man named Ronnie Bruce that I enjoyed talking with. He was so cute and was very athletic. There was another boy named A.G. Lane who I really fell for. He was a steel guitarist who was very talented, and I used him on some performances sometimes. We dated for a little while and we went to his senior prom together in 1954. Then there was Raymond Brooks, who was my date to my senior prom in 1955. I went out with him for a while because he was such a good dancer!
I even went to a Christmas dance with Harold Taylor, who was better known as Jody Taylor around Oklahoma City. Jude and Jody were performers who also worked in the furniture business later on. Jody ended up marrying country singer Norma Jean, who was a very close friend of mine. But that was okay because I ended up marrying someone Norma Jean had dated. But that, too, is another story.
Chapter 6
YOU CAN’T HAVE MY LOVE
I think back often to the day I got that phone call from Hank Thompson when I was working at KLPR. It was probably the most memorable day of my life. That was a real turning point for me, because it was Hank who set me on a path toward becoming a professional entertainer. Had it not been for Hank Thompson, the world might never have heard of Wanda Jackson.
Since I already sang with him at the Trianon Ballroom and at various other public appearances in and around Oklahoma City, Hank soon invited me to appear on his local television show. Soon after that, KLPR launched a UHF television channel, and I landed a thirty-minute TV show where I’d perform, as well as do my own commercials promoting furniture stores and different things. There was a local country duo named Wiley and Gene who were nationally popular, and they managed the KLPR TV studio. I worked with them quite a bit on television and on their live shows. There was a little group of us, including Anita Bryant and a kid named Doyle Madden, who were popular on local TV.
That exposure, combined with my radio work, was creating a good bit of local buzz for me as a teenage country singer. As I became better known around Oklahoma City, I’d start to get recognized when I’d go out. I was becoming a minor celebrity and didn’t have as much privacy as I once did. People would sometimes ask me for my autograph. I loved it! Entertainers are all just big kids and, no matter what some of them might tell you, we like attention. I enjoyed it then, and I guess I have to admit I still do. In later years, if I ever did complain about it, Daddy would remind me that I was a public figure and that it was part of my job to greet the public. Of course, I never quite got that concept. Visiting new places, meeting new people, and getting to make music never felt like much of a job to me. It felt like a party!
Thanks to Hank’s mentorship I was getting more polished and professional every day. Even though I was still a high school student, Hank thought it was time to push my career to the next level. In 1953 I went to his pink house on May Avenue to cut a demonstration recording with his band. Hank had professional recording equipment and a bar set up in his garage, which made for a neat little home studio arrangement. He and his wife, Dorothy, didn’t have a large house, but it was a nice place. Hank set up microphones for the band in the front room, but since he used quite a few musicians, it spilled over into the dining room, too. We recorded several songs that day, which Hank planned to use to help find me a record deal. One of them was “Heartbreak Ahead,” which had previously been recorded by a singer named Charline Arthur. I used to go to the Big D Jamboree fairly often, where Charline was a regular cast member. She wasn’t pretty by any stretch, but she was little, and you talk about feisty! She was quite a fireball. She played a big ol’ upright bass and wore pants, so she was really a ground breaker for me. I just loved that song of hers, so I learned it and started doing it. When Hank wanted me to record, I knew I wanted to do that one.
Hank was trying to get a recording contract for both me and Billy Gray, who was his band leader. There weren’t as many little oddball record companies back in 1953 as there would be after the rock-and-roll explosion, so if you wanted to record, you usually needed the help of a big label. Ken Nelson, who signed Tommy Collins to Capitol Records in Hollywood, was also Hank’s producer and A&R man at Capitol, so that seemed like the best place to start. Ken listened to the demos and decided they weren’t interested in Billy, but he liked my voice.
“She’s good,” he told Hank after hearing half of the first song. “How old is she?” Hank told him I was sixteen. “Oh, heavens no,” Ken shot back. “When she’s an adult I’ll be willing to have a talk with her. We’ve already got an underage girl on Capitol that’s giving me fits and causing all sorts of legal problems.”
I assume he was probably talking about Jean Shepard, who was not yet of age when she and Ferlin Husky had their hit duet with “A Dear John Letter” a few months earlier. From what I understand, they had to go to court to finalize her contract and then have Ferlin assigned as her legal guardian for the pair to travel out of state on tour. The label certainly wasn’t looking for any more of that drama.
“Besides,” Ken added, “girls don’t sell records!”
Ken’s line about girls not selling records has become a wellknown part of my story in interviews over the years. It’s usually interpreted as the gauntlet that was thrown down and the challenge I was determined to overcome. That’s partially true, but it’s also true that Ken wasn’t exactly wrong, either. There were only a small handful of exceptions. Other than Jean Shepard, the only recent success for a girl singer would have been Kitty Wells. She had a major smash with “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” the previous year, which was Billboard’s first number one country hit by a female country solo artist. Before that, you have to go all the way back to 1935 when Patsy Montana became the first female country artist to sell more than a million copies of a single with “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart.” That was one of the first songs I ever learned, and I was thrilled to death when I got to meet Patsy in Nashville one time. I recognize that Ken wasn’t being sexist, so much as he was thinking about business. But it still gave me a little nudge to prove him wrong! It would just take a little time before I’d get that chance.
When things didn’t pan out with Capitol, Hank approached Paul Cohen, who was the head A&R man at Decca Records. Hank was thrilled that Decca was interested in signing both me and Billy Gray, and called the house to tell me the good news. I still remember when the Decca contract arrived in the mail one day. I was sitting on the couch playing my guitar when Daddy pulled it from the envelope and held it out for me to see. I flipped that guitar over on my lap, turned it into an impromptu table, and signed that contract on the dotted line. The next day at school they announced over the loudspeaker, “Congratulations to our own Wanda Jackson, who has signe
d a recording contract with Decca Records.” Beverly said you could hear the applause and cheering all down the hallways.
Everybody at school supported me except for one teacher. I can’t even remember his name now, but he was my history instructor. When it came time to record my first songs for Decca in March of 1954, Mother and Daddy and I took the week off school and work to drive out to Hollywood for the session. When I came back everybody was thrilled, but this man didn’t think that was right for me to take a week off school to make a record. He made it pretty hard on me after that. I passed his class, but he gave me a D, which I couldn’t believe. We were assigned a project that I completed beautifully. I wrote a detailed report and recruited a friend, who was a great artist, to illustrate each of my points with a unique drawing. We took everything, placed it in a folder, and bound it perfectly. After all that hard work, that guy still gave me a D. I hate to say it, but he was a horse’s heinie!
Any disappointment I might have felt about my history grade, however, was more than offset by the thrill of having the opportunity to record in a professional studio for the first time. After two and a half days of recording sessions at Capitol’s studio, Hank brought his whole band over to the Decca facilities on Melrose Avenue for back-to-back sessions with Billy Gray and me. I was scared to death on that first session, but Mother and Daddy were there, and I knew the guys from the band, so it was a little more comfortable. I’d do what they call positive self-talk to get the courage up to give it my all. It seemed like everyone was on my side and they were pulling for me, so it was a real mix of fear and excitement.
Every Night Is Saturday Night Page 6
