By Emily Savage
Staff Writer

Wanda Jackson, the sweet lady with the nasty voice, has been touring the world as the queen of rockabilly for that last 53 years.

A documentary that followed Jackson through two years of touring premiered at the South By Southwest Music and Film Festival in Texas last week and will make its broadcast debut on the Smithsonian Channel at 9 p.m. on May 18.

The producers decided to call the look at Jackson’s life, “The Sweet Lady With the Nasty Voice” because the phrase was used to describe the singer-guitarist in an article and it stuck, Jackson said.

“I don’t know where (the journalist) came up with that — I would’ve said ‘wild’ voice,” Jackson laughs, “but to put it in perspective, in my era women just did not (sing) like I did.”

The 70-year-old, grandmother of four began her music career in Oklahoma — where she lives to this day. Her father put a guitar in her hands when she was six years old and her love affair with music began, she said.

As a high school junior, Jackson met Hank Thompson who helped secure her first record deal with Decca Records. At the time, the budding musician was solely playing country songs, but her life and music style were about to drastically change.

In 1955, Jackson began her first tour, playing with Elvis Presley. Jackson said she developed a crush on Presley and the two quickly began dating.

At Presley’s insistence, Jackson began to sing and play rockabilly songs, she said. Jackson explained that rockabilly was the craze at the time and Presley had tapped into it.

The term rockabilly had grown out of the word “hillbilly” — a name Jackson said she and other musicians hated to be called.

“I say rockabilly is like country music on steroids,” Jackson added.

Presley helped change the course of Jackson’s career all those years ago and she paid back the favor in 2006 with a tribute album to the King titled I Remember Elvis.

When Jackson switched from Decca to Capitol Records in 1956, she began to include rockabilly tunes on her country albums. Her first album for Capitol was full of country songs, but had one rockabilly song — “Let’s Have a Party”— just because she liked it so much, she said. The tune has become her biggest U.S hit to date and she still closes every show with it, she said.

Early in her career, Jackson said it was difficult to find rockabilly songs because people weren’t writing them for women. She began writing her own songs and covering others with her signature growl.

“I didn’t realize what a rebel I was being,” she said, “It was like the American public was saying ‘we’re not about have this’ but then it happened it in spite of them.”

One song American audiences and DJs simply would not touch was Jackson’s quick, upbeat cover of “Fujiyama Mama.” The song begins with the line, “I’ve been to Nagasaki, Hiroshima too — the same I did to them baby, I can do to you.” Jackson said the song was about a woman being like the atom bomb or a volcano.

“That song was number one in Japan,” she said, “They loved it!”

In 1961, Jackson met Wendell Goodman, who worked for IBM at the time. Goodman eventually became her husband and manager, which he remains to this day.

“I gave him a choice of who was going to give up their career,” she said, “and he thought mine looked a lot more exciting — I was tickled to death!”

Now her life and career have come full circle, with a new generation interested in rockabilly music.

“Rockabilly has such a vast audience,” she said, “now when I sing those rockabilly songs, I feel like a teenager again!"