Wendell got on the phone to start canceling some of the shows that were coming up on the itinerary. One of them was at the six-hundred-seat Frontier Room in the White Horse Bowling Academy in Trenton, New Jersey. He explained to the owner, Charlie Fox, that, due to religious convictions and personal changes, we’d have to cancel the date.
“Wendell, you can’t do that,” Charlie said. “I’ve got a signed contract and the date is coming up soon. Everything is set and we’ve been advertising.”
“I know it, and I’m sorry,” Wendell said. “But if you’ll look at the contract down at the bottom, in small print, it says ‘This agreement can only be altered or changed due to an act of God.’ Well, sir, this is an act of God and we can’t come do your show.”
“Okay, in that case, Wendell, it’s fine,” Charlie finally said. “We’ll work it out.”
We still had some nightclub dates on the books that were coming up too soon to cancel, so I began sharing my testimony on stage. Sometimes that was the easiest thing in the world for me to do, but other times I was a little hesitant about how the audience might react. I remember doing the very last show before we gave up the clubs. It was in Kansas and I recall thinking, Lord, I don’t want to give my testimony tonight. I was out there in front of the audience, and the decision about whether to talk about my faith or not was weighing on my heart. I was thinking, Should I or shouldn’t I? I got to the end of the show and never did tell the audience about my conversion. I was just glad to be saying “goodbye” to the honky tonks and was ready to get off the stage and call it a night. I was waving to the crowd as the band was playing my exit music. I went back to the same place where I thought I’d come on stage, but I couldn’t find the opening in the curtain. I thought, Well, maybe it was behind the drums. There was a little path, so I followed it over there, but still no opening! I literally could not get off that stage. Finally, a lightbulb went off. I realized, “Oh, God isn’t going to let me go.” That’s the moment I realized that God’s got a sense of humor. I went back to the microphone and I said, “Folks, I want to tell you why this is the last place I’m working.” I explained my new priorities, and I got a lot of applause. Then I just walked off stage, and the opening in the curtain was right there where it had been when I first went on!
At the end of October we participated in our first revival, which was held at the First Baptist Church in Choctaw, Oklahoma. It was a full eight days of singing and bearing witness to what the Lord had done in our lives, and it was such a joy. Twenty-one people joined the church, and we made so many new friends, including the church’s regular pastor, Brother Harold Thompson, and his wife, Mamie. We felt like God was blessing us with new relationships and a spirit of excitement. Being around so many spiritual people helped shape us in positive ways.
When we were home we often participated in church events around our area with Brother Paul. We sang and shared our faith at a revival at Southwest Friendship Baptist Church in early November that drew record crowds. At the end of that month we did a revival with Brother Harold Thompson in Anadarko that drew the largest crowd ever for that church. The next several months were a blur of Baptist church visits, including eight days in Corpus Christi, Texas, a five-day revival at First Southern Baptist Church in Wasco, California, near Bakersfield, an appearance at First Baptist Church of Whitesboro, Texas, near Gainesville, and a pair of concerts at Immanuel Baptist Church in Wichita, where there were record crowds of three thousand people in attendance. It was there that I prayed with someone who wanted to receive Christ for the first time. It was a sixteen-year-old girl named Brenda Dutton, and I was so thrilled to share in the experience of leading her to faith. When I gave a 1972 gospel concert at Red Star Baptist Church in Cape Girardeau, I was reminded of how I’d first met Elvis in that town several years prior. I would always treasure my performances with the King of Rock and Roll, but I was filled with a much deeper joy to be performing for the King of Kings!
Shortly after we were saved I was praying about my smoking. I knew I shouldn’t be doing it, but I was worried and afraid I couldn’t give it up. I had been smoking for around fifteen years at that point, and I really liked it. On one of our road trips I was trying to fall asleep in the back of our motor home while Wendell was driving. I was praying about that smoking, and I felt like God was saying to my spirit, “Wanda, don’t be afraid.” After that, I was able to let go. I’ve come back to that gentle reminder so many times over the years when I’m facing challenges that I know I can’t tackle with my own strength.
Eventually we formalized our gospel presentation, calling it “an evening of entertainment and inspiration.” I would sing and Wendell would share his testimony, followed by an invitation for others to come forward to receive Christ if they felt God calling them. We traveled together in a van, just the two of us, with our own audio equipment. I didn’t carry a band at that point, which would have been too cost prohibitive. Instead, we just used prerecorded tracks, over which I sang live. It was a radical change of lifestyle, but Wendell and I felt happier and more fulfilled than we ever had before.
It was all so different from what I was used to. I had never had stage fright playing in honky tonks, but the first few times I sang at churches, I was so scared I was throwing up before I went on. I hadn’t learned a lot of lessons yet. If you really put God in charge, you really don’t have to figure it all out ahead of time. I was used to singing for people who were there for a party. It was nighttime, and there was smoke, and everyone was drinking and acting silly and having fun. Suddenly, there I was in a long dress—not a miniskirt—and no fringe and no go-go boots. And it was daylight and everyone was sober! I didn’t know how the church folks would react to me.
Not long after my conversion, I was performing at an open-air concert at Disneyland in California. While I was singing it was like a light switch came on and I realized, Hey, I’ve got the confidence now that I never had before. All of a sudden I thought, I can do anything. God had a lot to do when He got a hold of me. He had some chiseling to do if He was going to form me into my best self. But I was ready. Wendell and I always said, “If God can use us, He must be desperate!” But if He wanted us, we were all His.
Chapter 22
MY TESTIMONY
In March of 1972 Capitol Records released my 20th album, Praise the Lord, featuring a cover photo that was, ironically, taken of me onstage in Las Vegas. Oddly enough, I’d begun recording it in January of the previous year, several months before I gave my life to Christ. I finished up the sessions in December, where I recorded an original song, “My Testimony.” I’d never written a gospel song, but I just opened my heart and shared what happened in my life. It’s one of the strangest songs I’ve ever written in terms of the feel and the structure, but it’s also one of my favorites because it’s pure autobiography.
There’s nothing like the zeal of a new convert. After I surrendered my heart to God, I was very enthusiastic. I was so full of joy because I’d found a very real peace in my spirit. I’d come to realize that everyone needs Christ. He died for everybody, but it’s up to each person to accept or reject His offer of love. I was ready to tell that “good news” to anyone who would listen, and, frankly, my zeal probably got to the point of annoying a few people. My heart was in the right place, and I never meant to be pushy, but looking back I realize I could have toned it down a bit. I confess I was a little impatient when others didn’t immediately share my enthusiasm. Ultimately, my new faith impacted my relationship with Capitol Records in unexpected ways.
After the Praise the Lord album, Capitol released a secular LP called I Wouldn’t Want You Any Other Way. It included the songs “Back Then” and “I Already Know (What I’m Getting for My Birthday),” both of which had been Top 40 country singles for me the previous year. They had enough material in the can to round out the album, so I wasn’t back in the studio until October of 1972. As I was preparing for the session, I told Ken Nelson I wanted to do another gospel LP. “No,” he sai
d. “We can’t have that. Capitol’s not in the gospel field and, once we’ve done a gospel record with an artist, that’s all we need.”
Around that time I was approached by Word Records. They said they wanted to record my gospel material. I still had two years before the end of my Capitol contract, so I asked Ken if I could sign with Word to put out gospel music on their label while fulfilling my contractual obligations to Capitol by releasing country music for them at the same time. “No,” he said. “It doesn’t really work that way. You can’t be signed to two record labels at the same time.” We had several conversations about it, but he wasn’t changing his mind. I kept hounding him to at least let me record gospel for Capitol if he wouldn’t let me do it for Word. The answer was always, “No.” We were on the phone one afternoon when Ken finally said, “I think I know where your heart is, Wanda. You should pursue a company that specializes in gospel music so you can do what you want to do.” Even though I had two more years on my contract, Ken arranged for Capitol to let me out of the deal after recording one final album.
My last Capitol LP was Country Keepsakes, which was recorded during two trips to Nashville in late 1972 and early 1973. George Richey produced the first session, while Joe Allison finished the album. Capitol released two singles, “Tennessee Women’s Prison” and “Your Memory Comes and Gets Me,” but neither appeared on the charts.
In between the two final Capitol sessions I recorded my debut Word album, Country Gospel. All my Capitol recordings since the start of 1970 had been cut at Jack Clement’s studio in Nashville, which is where we did the Word album, too. In fact, many of the musicians who played on my Capitol recordings were there for the Word sessions, including guitarists Billy Sanford and Ray Edenton, and steel guitarist Weldon Myrick. There were several new faces, too, including Billy Ray Hearn, who was my producer and A&R man at Word.
There’s a perception that I turned my back on secular music in the 1970s, but that’s not true. Shortly after my conversion I was playing at a little club in Omaha on a double bill with Hank Thompson. Hank was a pilot and flew himself to most of his shows, but his band’s bus broke down en route to the performance. I was on first, so I stalled while Hank and one of his musicians, who flew with him, grabbed a couple of guys from the warm-up band and put together an impromptu version of the Brazos Valley Boys. I had already played a full ten song set by the time Hank figured out his plan, so I went back out and played another half dozen songs while he ran through the set list backstage with his new recruits. It wound up becoming a pretty informal performance while I was stalling, and it was actually a lot of fun. I was chatting with the audience members and I told them, “Write your requests down and pass them up to the stage. If we don’t know ’em, we’ll just make ’em up!”
I realized at that moment that the Lord was giving me a forum to talk about Him with my audience. I loved singing and sharing my story in churches, but I didn’t want to run the risk of just preaching to the choir. I also wanted to get out where folks who might never set foot in a sanctuary would have a chance to hear about God’s love. I continued to play country music in theaters and club venues, but wanted to avoid the honky tonks and bars where audiences were more rowdy and there was a lot of drinking going on. Wendell and I had given up alcohol in our own lives. When someone experiences such a dramatic conversion, the pendulum can swing in the other direction before striking a balance in the middle. That was true for us, but we also felt like God was calling us to that radical change of direction in our lives at that time. We knew it was a big adjustment, but we wanted to be faithful.
At the same time, the church was becoming more open to fresh ideas and recognized that it needed to change some things if it was going to reach a new generation. When I was growing up there were very strict rules about how one dressed for church and those kinds of things that can become legalistic. The 1970s saw an openness to modern life and a concerted effort to be more welcoming. I remember when I started wearing pants to church instead of skirts or dresses. Daddy, even though he wasn’t religious, could not believe it. He was running the Trianon Ballroom at the time and they had a strict dress code. Daddy said, “I’m not having any woman come into that club in pants, and you’re wearing them to church!” He didn’t understand that the world was changing. When Wendell and I became Christians, Daddy didn’t find us much fun to be around anymore. He was happy for us. He knew it was a good thing, but he still didn’t think it was for him.
In that same spirit of openness, I didn’t see any conflict with recording and performing both secular country music and gospel. In fact, that was my plan all along. If Ken Nelson had allowed me to record both styles for Capitol, I would have stayed as long as they’d wanted me. One of the things that attracted me to Word was that the owner came to our home and told us, “It’s a wonderful time for you to sign with us because we want to expand and start doing some country music, too.” That sounded good to me. I was voted Scandinavia’s most popular female singer in 1971. A country music promotional organization called “The Nashville Sound of Puerto Rico” named my Salutes the Country Music Hall of Fame album the “best of the decade” in 1972. That same year I embarked on an international tour as a UNICEF ambassador along with several country stars, including Tex Ritter, Connie Smith, Freddy Weller, Tom T. Hall, and Leroy Van Dyke. I knew people were still interested in hearing Wanda Jackson sing country music, and Word was filling our heads with thoughts of grandeur. We could do both country and gospel and work some big shows. They had all kinds of things in mind.
Just before we signed with them, Word opened a subsidiary imprint called Myrrh, which is probably best known as the label that launched Amy Grant’s career. The idea was that my gospel records would be released on Word and my country records would come out on Myrrh. In 1974 I released my debut country album for the new label, which was called When It’s Time to Fall in Love Again. The label released two singles, the title track and “Come on Home (to This Lonely Heart).” The first didn’t hit the country singles chart at all, and the second one just barely crept into the Top 100, peaking at number 98. It would be the last time one of my country singles would chart in Billboard.
Around the same time they released my country album, Word signed country legend Ray Price to their Myrrh imprint, too. Ray scored a Top 5 country hit with “Like Old Times Again,” so I had faith that the label could keep me on the country chart once we hit our stride together. I looked forward to trying again, but it turned out that I’d never get another chance to record country for them. The ABC/Dot label purchased Word in the mid-1970s and, after the sale, the folks at Dot didn’t know what we were talking about in terms of recording country. Dot was having tremendous country success with Roy Clark, Donna Fargo, Don Williams, and Tommy Overstreet, so they were doing just fine in the country market. They were more interested in Word for the gospel material, so I fell through the cracks once again. Whereas Capitol indulged me with one religious album and insisted I focus on country, the Word/Myrrh folks, after the sale, felt like they’d indulged my one country album and wanted me to focus on gospel. I was stuck, once again, being pigeonholed.
Between 1975 and 1978 I released three more albums for Myrrh, or Word, all of which were gospel. Now I Have Everything, from 1975, included “Jesus Put a Yodel in My Soul,” while neither Make Me Like a Child Again or Closer to Jesus are particularly memorable to me. We thought our deal with Word was going to be great, but the ABC/Dot purchase threw a wrench in the plan. At that point I wanted to be a big duck in a little puddle, but Dot had such a powerful roster that I felt like I was getting lost. I just didn’t feel at home there.
I had always been outside the mainstream of the country music world in Nashville, and the gospel music community wasn’t much different. The Dove Awards, which are the Christian music industry’s equivalent of the Grammys, never recognized me in any way. It didn’t really hurt my feelings, but it did make me a little mad. Just because I didn’t live in Nashville and go to one of the
churches there doesn’t mean they couldn’t have invited me to sing on some program during their annual convention. But I never heard anything from them. At some point I decided, “Okay, I’ll just stay out west and do my thing.” I was already used to that anyway.
By the late 1970s the Word deal was over, and Wendell and I felt like we needed a change. We started to wonder what God’s plan for our lives would be going forward. We were praying about it a good bit, and Wendell felt like God was telling him that it was time for us to quit traveling and quit show business altogether. We were friends with Manley Beasley, who was a prominent Southern Baptist evangelist in Dallas, as well as with an Alaskan businessman named Jerry, who had sold a large piece of property and wanted to use the money for a new ministry endeavor. Wendell, Manley, and Jerry felt God was leading them to build an office building in North Dallas that would be leased to various ministries that could share resources, such as a printing department, marketing department, and office equipment as a way of uniting together and saving operational resources that could be directed into their direct ministry efforts.
Every Night Is Saturday Night Page 22
