All Kindsa Music Mag

Imagine dating Elvis Presley…

Wanda Jackson could. And did.

You see, a lot led up to that moment – and Wanda became so much more than just “the King’s Girlfriend”. 

You see, when Wanda was 12, she won a local talent show that gave her a 15-minute live slot on KLPR in Oklahoma City. Soon enough, it was lengthened to 30-minutes when the radio station realized that she had serious talent.

She really started her professional career in 1953 at age 17, and she sang strictly country. After being heard by Hank Thompson, “The King of Swing”,  on her daily KLPR slot, and while still in high school, she signed with Decca Records and released a handful of cutesy ballads and swingin’ little lovey-dovey singles, including some duets with Billy Gray. 

After finishing high school in 1954 and traveling to Nashville to record, Wanda made her Grand Ole Opry debut, trailblazing the women’s fashion game by wearing a spaghetti strap dress her mother made for the occasion – only for her to be told it was “unacceptable” by legendary country singer Ernest Tubb and host of the show, as she was forced to cover up with a fringe jacket. As if this wasn’t enough, Jackson also heard Opry members badmouthing her backstage.

In her 2017 book titled Every Night is Saturday Night written with Scott Bomar, she recalled “I decided that night that the Grand Ole Opry scene was not for me” –  a decision that would change her life.

When 1955 came around, she was offered the opportunity to tour on a shared bill with some growing young star named Elvis Presley, whose career was just catching serious wind with his batch of hit singles out of Sun Studios in Memphis. Of course, Wanda accepted – with her father coming along as her chaperone/manager.

Being on the road together, Wanda and Elvis hit it off, and began dating. They’d sneak to movies together, go get burgers, etc. Beautiful, young, innocent love! And so during their time together, the story goes that Elvis convinced Wanda that she’d be a natural in the fresh, young genre of rock & roll. While initially hesitant, Elvis explained to her that crowds were changing, and sales were with the young generation. She was singing songs about drinking and marriage to adults, when she could be making a killing singing about partying and dancing to teenagers.

So while rocking up some numbers yet still hanging onto her country roots (much of this was due to the record labels struggles of how to market her in the still relatively-new genre of rock & roll, while her best-selling hits were country), Wanda Jackson began her journey.

And while rock began its marriage with “hillbilly” music, Wanda Jackson began her journey to becoming “The Queen of Rockabilly”, and quickly made waves among the teenage generation across the United States – and while her contract with Decca dissolved, Wanda signed with Capitol Records (after previously being rejected a few years prior after being told by producer Ken Nelson “girls don’t sell records” – she proved him wrong).

 Go listen to “I Gotta Know”, one of the three songs recorded by Wanda in her first session with Capitol. You’ll hear the newfound relationship between country and rock & roll very clearly – it’s incredible, switching between country-waltz and pure rhythm & blues straight 4/4 time. This is where it all starts.

Now that you’ve got the backstory, here’s where “Hard Headed Woman” comes into play.

In 1958, Elvis first released “Hard Headed Woman” – a tune written by African-American songwriter Claude Demetrius (whose songwriting career likely started with Louis Armstrong in the 1920s or 30s) off the movie soundtrack for drama film “King Creole”, starring Elvis himself – and the song quickly shot up to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. 

By this time, Wanda was churning out covers of rock & roll and rockabilly herself, doing “Money Honey”, “Long Tall Sally”, and her infamous great-song-but-no-way-that-shit-would-fly-today “Fujiyama Mama”. Her legendary and iconic “nice girl with a nasty voice” image was growing, as her release of “There’s A Party Goin’ On” made it to  #37 on the Hot 100.

Originally, producer Ken Nelson (yes, the same guy who said “girls don’t sell records”) was against Wanda singing her songs in her iconic, powerful rasp. 

In a feature story with the Chicago Tribune in 2012, Jackson recalled “He would be at my sessions, one time (producer Ken Nelson) was not satisfied with the way I was singing, he kept making me do a song over. He wanted it smoother. My dad came into the studio – he was a quiet guy, so when he spoke, it mattered — and he pulled me aside. ‘Pay no attention to Ken, just rear back and sing this song the way you feel it.’”

The rest is history.

Wanda then decided to record her own cover of “Hard Headed Woman” in 1960, and released it as a track on her second LP, also titled “There’s A Party Goin’ On” in January of 1961. This is peak Wanda Jackson as “The Queen of Rockabilly”.

One-minute and 59 seconds, “Hard Headed Woman” is a complete blast of Wanda Jackson’s ripping, iconic singing voice, rollicking rhythm, and fiery rock & western swing inspired rockabilly guitar licks by the influential and future host of Hee Haw, Roy Clark.

With Wanda on vocals, it’s as if “Hard Headed Woman” takes on an entirely new meaning. As she sings,

“A well a hard headed woman, a soft-hearted man, has been-a causin’ trouble ever since the world began, oh yeah, ever since the world began, oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho, a hard headed woman is a thorn in the side of a man”.

You see, when Elvis sang it, the whole tune feels like this so-called hard headed woman is holding a man back from being…a man? Whereas when Wanda gives it her treatment, it’s as if the hard-headed woman takes on a sort of femme-fatale persona. Delightfully devilish in demeanor, taking advantage of a man who has been on a high-horse for too long. Her “trouble causin” has become…”trouble causin’”. It’s badassery at its finest. She becomes this icon of feminine power, so rare in her time and her industry.

The song continues throughout its verses with biblical references to Adam and Eve, Samson and Delilah, King Ahab and Jezebel. All women who for lack-of-better-words, “did their men dirty”, and did what they wanted. Women of fierce energy, have you – not to be fucked with.

Wanda Jackson really brings that stuff to light. With her “sweet girl” persona, the second you’re hit with her searing, gravelly voice – you start to think otherwise.

You really get a great visual of Wanda in this footage of her performing the tune at Town Hall Party in 1958, a radio-turned-TV-show filmed in Los Angeles that showcased great artists ranging from Patsy Cline and Martha Carson to Johnny Cash, Dick Dale, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis.

When I was 16 my family went on a road trip across the heart of the American South. With my mom, brother, sister, both grandparents and I squeezed into one car, we traveled through the Bible Belt, stopping in both Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee.

 It was somewhere along this way that I really got in deep with artists like Merle Travis, The Collins Kids, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Jackie Breston, Elvis (my grandma is a super-fan so I’d had a healthy dose of him my whole life), Carl Perkins, The Everly Brothers, the list goes on. All artists I had been exposed to as a little kid by my Grandparents or Dad, but finally old enough to appreciate their importance. I am still a firm believer that Merle Travis is one of the greatest guitarists of all time.

It was during this trip I began to truly understand the level of importance Wanda Jackson had on the history of music, and what an icon she was and still is, at age 84. A complete trailblazer for women in music and in life in so many ways. She did it her way.

When you watch that footage or you listen to the studio recording of “Hard Headed Woman”, you’ll immediately get it. I know you will.