About This Item
Ace Records' Queen of Rockabilly is such a good idea for a Wanda Jackson collection that it's astonishing that it didn't get put together and released until 2000 - or that Bear Family Records, which is no slouch when it comes to distilling down certain aspects and angles of American country and rock & roll stars, didn't do it first. It should have been out a lot earlier, in the 1970s - that would have saved hundreds of listeners (maybe thousands, around the world) having to buy, borrow, or steal her old LPs and singles, so we could isolate and distill down her rockabilly and rock & roll tracks onto open-reel tape or audio cassette. Compiler/annotator Rob Finnis allows the songs to jump across seven years, back and forth, pulling together the strands and threads of this side of Jackson's work into a killer collection of 30 songs, clocking in at less than 70 minutes. And running through the rough and raucous rock & roll sounds is the enigma of Wanda Jackson herself - this CD touches more musical and cultural buttons than even the man who put it together seems aware of, or than Jackson herself will ever admit to. She has said that she was never as consciously committed to rockabilly or rock & roll as her career direction would seem to indicate; she spent years walking a tightrope between traditional country and rock & roll, just trying to carve out a niche for herself and earn a living, and rock & roll was as new to her as it was to most country music fans in 1954-1955. In keeping with the sensibilities of the era, as the daughter of white working-class Texas-born transplants to Oklahoma (and then to California - around Bakersfield, natch - and back to Oklahoma), blues and R&B, as something that she would do herself or allow herself to be influenced by, were mostly alien to her when she began exploring the music (with help and encouragement from Elvis Presley) in 1955. L
