Radio station KLPR broadcast all kinds of different programming. This was before radio stations had dedicated formats for one type of music or another, so you might hear a news program at a certain time, followed by a preacher, followed by the Top 40 popular songs. This particular station had an hour of country music every weekday afternoon that was hosted by a deejay named Cousin Jay Davis. Jay played country records for forty-five minutes and devoted the last fifteen minutes of his radio time to local talent.
When I was about thirteen or fourteen, some of my church friends kept urging me to take my guitar over to the station and audition for the show. I brushed it off the first few times anyone mentioned it, but they were persistent. They’d say, “Oh, come on, Wanda. We’ll go over there with you so you can try out. Let’s do it! When do you want to go?” I would tell my friends I didn’t sing well enough to be on the radio, but finally they’d had enough of my resistance and resorted to other tactics. They dared me. Now, a dare is one thing, but then they double dog dared me. I don’t know what your experience was like growing up, but in Oklahoma, in 1951, if someone double dog dared you, you’d better be ready to deliver if you wanted to save face. I finally gave in.
One day, after classes at Capitol Hill Junior High School, I walked up the hill to Commerce Street with a group of my friends, including Beverly. The station was located on the second floor of a storefront building that housed the Capitol Hill Beacon newspaper. One of the boys carried my guitar up the steps for me. I felt like I’d brought my own cheering section. It was very encouraging to have friends who believed in my talent and thought I was good enough to sing on the air.
We waited until Cousin Jay signed off from his daily show. I wasn’t quite sure how to introduce myself or what to say, but before I could figure it out, Beverly marched right up to him with her hand outstretched. “Hello, sir. Our friend Wanda here is the best singer in the world and she’d like to audition to be on your local talent spotlight.” Jay smiled. He was polite, but seemed a little hesitant. I was only in the ninth grade by this point, and I’m sure he’d seen plenty of kids come through who weren’t as talented as they thought. The studio wasn’t very big, so he certainly couldn’t avoid me. “Okay,” he finally conceded while motioning for me to get my guitar. “Let’s hear what you’ve got, young lady.”
Once I strapped on my guitar, my shyness and nervousness melted away. I started singing my best rendition of Jimmie Rodgers’s “Blue Yodel No. 6.” Just as I was losing myself in the song, Jay suddenly stopped me midway through. I felt my face get hot. “Is something wrong, Mr. Davis?” He smiled real big. “No, Wanda, quite the opposite. You have a fine voice, and I’d be happy to have you on the local talent spotlight. Be here tomorrow afternoon and don’t forget to bring your guitar.” Beverly started jumping up and down. “I told you, sir,” she squealed. Cousin Jay started laughing. “And be sure to bring your fan club,” he added.
Before long Cousin Jay was rotating me into the local talent portion of his show once every week or two. That wound up being a very good starting place for me in terms of getting experience, singing into a microphone, responding to audience feedback, and gaining more confidence as a performer. At that time, there were a lot of local talent contests in the movie theaters on Saturdays, which were very popular and drew pretty good crowds. It wasn’t long before KLPR hosted a competition of their own. They broadcast the show on the air and encouraged people to write or call in to vote for their favorite performer. The grand prize would be a fifteen-minute daily radio show from 5:15 until 5:30 each weekday for a month. Since I’d been getting a good response to my appearances on Jay’s show, I decided to enter. Would you believe I wound up winning that thing? Suddenly, I was going to have my very own radio show, even if it was just for a little while!
For the next month, I would cart my guitar to school with me each day and then walk over to the drugstore with my girlfriends after class until it was time to head across the street to the station for my show. Cousin Jay was on from 4:00 until 5:00. Grant Lad read the news from 5:00 until 5:15. Then, the airwaves were mine for the next fifteen minutes. It was just me and my guitar, and I would play and sing whatever was popular on the country charts at the time. It might have been just pitiful, but somebody out there must have liked what they heard.
Near the end of the month the station manager stopped me as I was packing up my guitar one afternoon. “Wanda, your show’s doing well and drawing listeners. Would you like to keep doing it?” It only took me about an eighth of a second to come up with my answer to that question, “Golly, yeah. I really like singing on the radio.” He nodded his head with a chuckle. “Well,” he responded, “if you can get some good sponsors for your time slot, you can keep the show as long as you want.” Maybe a lot of adolescent girls would have been deterred, but I went after it with a vengeance. That was the only time in my life I’ve ever had to sell myself or anything like that, but I didn’t mind it one bit. Daddy helped me put together some ideas for sponsors, and then I started pounding the pavement. I went to a lumber company, and they signed up right away.
That was the start of the Wanda Jackson Show on KLPR, and I treated it with all the seriousness of a regular job. The lumber company liked what I was doing, and then Davis Furniture signed on as a second sponsor. I went to Grant Lad, who was a seasoned announcer, and asked him to help me write advertising spots. He was a real professional and seemed to admire my spunk. We got along great, and he took the time to teach me how to take the facts about special deals or sales the store was offering and put it into words that were exciting to the listeners. He gave me great pointers on how long each commercial should be, and soon I was writing my own ad copy and coming up with my interesting promo spots. It was a lot of fun, and I was always grateful to Mr. Lad for taking me under his wing in that way. It seems kind of remarkable now to think about having taken on all that responsibility at such a young age, but that was just my life. All I wanted to do was play guitar and sing. I was earning a little money for my show, but if keeping sponsors happy was part of the job, I was going to do that job one hundred percent. Plus, I was having the time of my life!
Plenty of young girls pursue careers in music today, but they have something I didn’t have: role models to look to. Patsy Montana had a big hit with “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart” in the 1930s, and that was really about it for girls in country music. Kitty Wells had not yet become a big star when I was starting my radio show, so there was no blueprint or roadmap available to me. I was flying by the seat of my pants, but it didn’t scare me to get out on a limb and try something brand new. I liked it.
Daddy was still driving a taxi during this period, and his cab stand was just a couple of blocks from KLPR. He usually got off work around 5:00, but he would typically wait for me to finish my show so he could drive me home. Daddy would listen to the broadcast when he could, and while we were driving, we’d talk about the songs I was singing and how I was interacting with my radio audience. He was as excited about my show as I was. He was really happy to see me have a chance to play music and, not long after it became permanent, he took me to a pawn shop to buy me my first good guitar. It was a Martin D-18 that I played for many years. Today it hangs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Country music was not as popular in the early 1950s as it is today. There were plenty of folks who liked it, but a lot of people turned their noses up at it, too. That made some country fans kind of embarrassed. Country music had a stigma to it at that time, and some people just didn’t want others to know they liked it. Everybody at school knew I was performing on the radio, but I didn’t get made fun of. I guess I do remember some boys laughing sometimes when I was lugging around my guitar after school. They’d call to me, “Hey, whatchya got in that case? A machine gun?” But, other than that, nobody said much of anything. I think a lot of the kids were just proud to know someone who was on the radio.
During my radio station days, there was one country artist who was my absolute favorite, and that was Hank Thompson. I bought all his records and was a big fan of the hits he’d had at that point, including the Top 10 singles “Humpty Dumpty Heart,” “Green Light,” and “Whoa Sailor.” The fact that he lived in Oklahoma City and had a TV show on WKY-TV made me an even bigger fan. I played and sang some of Hank’s songs on my show from time to time, and thought of him as my musical idol. In fact, I always liked how Hank enunciated his words and the way you could understand all the lyrics. That was something I tried to do from the very beginning, thanks to his example.
One day I had just finished my show at the station, which I had been doing for several months by that point, when someone from the KLPR office came into the studio. He said, “Wanda, there’s a call for you out here. It’s some man, but he didn’t give his name.” I looked at my watch and figured it must be Daddy wanting to know if I needed him to pick me up. I went out to the reception desk to take the phone call. A warm and friendly voice on the other end said, “Hi Wanda, this is Hank Thompson.” I just about fainted. I was tempted to think it was a joke, but Hank’s speaking voice was very similar to his singing voice, and I could tell that it was really him.
Hank told me that he was driving in his car when he heard my radio show. “I pulled over as soon as you were finished so I knew I’d be able to catch you before you left the station,” he explained. Maybe I murmured something back to him, but I might have been too stunned to respond. “You’ve got a really interesting voice and I like your singing style,” he continued. “My band and I are playing at the Trianon Ballroom on Saturday night, and I’d like to invite you to come down and sing a couple of songs with us.”
By this point I thought for sure I was in a dream. This was just too good to be true. I said, “Gee, Mr. Thompson, I would love to, but I’ll have to ask my mother.” He laughed a little, but then realized I wasn’t kidding around. He cleared his throat.
“Good grief, girl, how old are you?”
“I’m fourteen,” I said, trying to sound as confident and grown up as possible while praying that my newly revealed age wouldn’t get me uninvited to the show.
“Fourteen? That’s hard to believe,” he chuckled. “I thought for sure you were much older than that. You have a very mature voice.” I held my breath waiting to see what he would say next. “Well, Wanda,” he finally continued, “you be sure to ask your mother and, if it’s okay with her, we’ll see you on Saturday night. And you be thinking about what you might want to sing.” I thanked him profusely and hung up the phone.
I ran as fast as I could to the cab stand to tell Daddy about the phone call from Hank. He saw me coming and got out of the car thinking something might be wrong. “Wanda, honey, are you okay?” I ran right into his arms and began breathlessly recounting every detail of my conversation with Hank. He was overjoyed by the news. “Hop in the car, sweetie. Let’s get home and tell your mother. She’s not going to believe it!” Mother and Daddy both liked Hank’s music, so there was no question about getting their permission. That Saturday night the Jackson family was going to be one place, and one place only: the Trianon Ballroom in downtown Oklahoma City. That was the big place in town at the time. You’d walk in at street level and get your ticket. Then you’d walk upstairs into a great big room with one of the best dance floors in the whole Southwest. It was raised and had a nice wooden floor. Unlike a lot of country nightspots, there weren’t many fights at the Trianon. I think people were afraid they’d fall down those steep steps!
Jay Davis wanted to go down to the show with Mother and Daddy and me, so the four of us rode to the Trianon together that night. It felt good knowing that at least I would have a three-person support team in the audience … if nothing else. We arrived a little early and I found Hank by the side of the stage. He was tuning his guitar and I didn’t want to bother him. He saw me lingering nearby and turned toward me. “Hello there, young lady,” he smiled.
“Hi, Mr. Thompson,” I stammered. “I’m Wanda Jackson.” He put his guitar down and stepped toward me.
“Of course! I’m glad you were able to make it. We’ll call you up in a little while to do your songs.”
“Oh, okay,” I said. “When did you want to rehearse?”
He just gave me a wink and said, “You’ll be fine.”
That’s when I discovered that bands didn’t really practice before their gigs in those days. We singers would go out and do our thing, and the musicians were expected to be good enough to follow us. The only problem was that I had never performed with any other pickers before. My radio show was just me accompanying myself on guitar, so when Hank called me up on stage it was a mess. I started into “Blue Yodel No. 6,” but I couldn’t keep time properly and was breaking meter something terrible. Those poor boys in his Brazos Valley Boys band had to try to follow me. At one point the group went into a solo, and I didn’t know when to start singing again. I was panicked. The musicians were behind me saying, “Okay, Wanda. Come on back in.” I was so embarrassed, but when the song was over the audience applauded.
Hank stepped up to the microphone. “How about little Miss Wanda Jackson, everybody?” They clapped even louder. “Wanda, honey, why don’t you do another one for these fine folks?” I gulped hard, smiled, and tried not to look terrified. I launched into “Jambalaya,” which was a new song at the time, but was already very popular. I was about two bars into it before the band even realized I’d started playing. And, of course, I didn’t mention to them what key I played it in. There was a little scrambling there for a moment, but Hank’s band members were real professionals, so once they got a handle on what I was doing they fell into place real quick. Audiences have always loved “Jambalaya,” and still do to this day, so by the time I finished that second song, I’d won them over. It probably helped that I was a cute little girl with my great big guitar and cowboy boots. A lot of them knew me from the radio, too. Quite a few people complimented my voice.
Even though I felt self-conscious about letting Hank see how green I was, he was enthusiastic. “You did real good, Wanda,” he said as I left the stage. “Just don’t forget to have fun.” I was pretty serious about performing and I might have been a little uptight. But, then again, I was a fourteen-year-old girl onstage in a big dance club for the first time—and with my musical hero watching my every move. I’m just glad I didn’t pass out or fall off the stage!
Even as bad as I was that first night, Hank wanted me to come back. He saw the potential in me and, despite having the top country band in the nation and scoring hit after hit, he was still kind enough to be interested in my career. Almost every time he was in town, he’d have me come sing with him. I was still in school, so I couldn’t go on the road, but it got to where I worked with him pretty regularly when he played local shows. I’d forget my lyrics, continue to break meter, and make all the mistakes that a person makes when they’re learning to work with a band. I had a lot to figure out, but Hank was gracious enough to let me make my mistakes. He gave me the space to mess up because he knew I was serious about getting good, and he knew that every misstep was a learning experience. He stuck his neck out for me by letting me get on his stage when I wasn’t ready, but it was the finest education I could have asked for. Hank was a true friend and mentor, and I can’t possibly overstate how much he did for me.
After performing with Hank for a while, I was becoming more confident on stage. Before long, I auditioned for Merl Lindsay, an Oklahoma City—based Western swing bandleader who had a regular Saturday radio show that was broadcast from the Palladium Ballroom. Merl wrote “Water Baby Boogie,” which became a country standard. He also recorded as an artist for the MGM and Mercury labels in the early 1950s. His band, The Oklahoma Night Riders, was a popular and well-respected group in the area. When I found out they were looking for a girl singer, I decided to try out.
Fortunately, Lindsay was already familiar with who I was from my radio show, and he liked my voice. I got the job, so I started working with them regularly and appearing on their radio show. I would just sing a few songs throughout the night, but I stayed up on stage the whole time. I’d clap or dance along a little bit. One of the guys in the band taught me to play a little percussion. It was a good experience to spend entire nights on the bandstand where I could study what everyone was doing, watch how audiences reacted, and observe the nuances of how to properly interact with a crowd. I felt like I was going to country music college, but my professors were the Oklahoma Night Riders and Brazos Valley Boys. I couldn’t have asked for better teachers.
Believe it or not, I’d never heard a recording of my own voice up to that point. I knew what it sounded like in my own head, but all the radio work I’d been doing was live, so I’d never had a chance to actually listen to myself objectively. Even though Merl Lindsay’s show was broadcast live on Saturday nights, the radio station would replay it on Sundays. Soon after I started performing with Merl, I wanted to listen to the re-broadcast. The only problem was that it conflicted with church. One week Mother said that if I went to Sunday School first, I could go out to the car and listen to the show while she stayed in the church service.
I was out there listening to the show by myself, but when I heard my own voice I froze. It sounded nothing like I thought it did! I didn’t like what I heard at all, and I began sobbing in the car. I couldn’t believe it. I said out loud to nobody, “I can’t be a girl singer. I’m not any good!” That experience really threw me for a loop. I thought, Boy, what am I going to do if I can’t be a singer? It’s all I ever wanted. Looking back, I don’t know if I was actually bad and got better, or if it was just the shock of hearing what my voice sounded like to other people. Either way, Mother and Daddy came to my rescue. I told them I didn’t think anyone could possibly like my voice, but they reminded me that all those people who listened to me on KLPR liked it. They pointed out that Merl Lindsay liked it enough to hire me, and that Hank Thompson seemed to think it was good enough to stake his reputation on. I was almost ready to quit, but my parents knew where my true love was, and they talked me through it. And I’m sure glad they did.