When we weren’t playing dates with Elvis, Daddy and I were usually out on the road doing country package shows or onenighters anywhere we could book. To save money we always shared a motel room. These days it would be really frowned upon for a teenage girl to stay in the same room with her father. It sounds awful, but we never thought a thing about it. Our family was close, and we’d always lived in cramped quarters. We worked it out so we both had privacy. Daddy stayed dressed, and he didn’t really see me dressing, either. He’d wake up before I would and go get breakfast and a newspaper. He’d return to the room, wake me up, then go off and read the paper somewhere while I got ready.
We kept up a pretty aggressive schedule, and Daddy was very helpful to me in those early days of traveling. I appreciated that he always gave me honest feedback about my performances. He didn’t just rave about everything or tell me I was great when I wasn’t. He could see things that I needed to change, but he knew how to give constructive criticism in an encouraging way. I listened to him because I knew that any suggestions he offered came from a desire to push me to be the best I could be. I valued the fact that Daddy didn’t give empty flattery, and that when he gave a compliment he really meant it. If he thought a show went well, he’d come in that night, sit on the foot of the bed, and tell me what a good job I’d done and how proud he was of me.
I’ve been asked over the years how a little person like me wound up with such a big voice. I can thank Daddy for that. When I started singing there wasn’t really any place to perform but honky tonks and dance halls. I’d come offstage and Daddy might say, “I couldn’t hear you very well. You’ve got to sing louder and get in that microphone. I want the guy who’s sitting all the way in the back to be able to hear you perfectly clearly.” So that was my aim. I learned to really belt it out and sing with power. That wasn’t the way the demure ladies of country music did it in those days, but I didn’t care. I was never interested in trying to sound like anybody else. Daddy always told me to do it my way and to be who I am. I got a lot of encouragement from him on that.
Daddy wasn’t a big talker, but when he did speak, everyone listened. He was a sweet and jovial man, and everyone liked him. As we spent more time on the road together, he began to open up more during our conversations in the car. We’d tell jokes and stories and talk about the music business. We listened to the radio and analyzed the songs together. Our relationship deepened in those years, and I came to really value his insights. Daddy had what country folks call “good horse sense,” and was a bit of a philosophizer. He had a gift for cutting through all the fluff and getting to the heart of a problem. Maybe that’s just the difference in the communication styles of men and women. Mother and I would talk, talk, and talk some more about some issue. Then Daddy would simply say, “Well, here’s the basic problem and what you can do to fix it.” I still find myself saying, “Daddy always said …” I appreciated his input and instruction, and I feel like I gained a lot from his wisdom.
I always had good crowds because I worked hard. During every intermission I would walk around and greet people to get to know them a little bit. That didn’t come naturally to me, but that’s what Hank Thompson did. I’d seen him make a point of working the room every time I performed with him at a dance hall, and I recognized that the fans loved it. Here was the Hank at their table having a drink or taking pictures. Daddy also recognized it was an important strategy for connecting with fans and making sure they’d come see you the next time you were in town. It wasn’t always easy because I’m actually a bit of an introvert. I didn’t always feel like doing it—especially if I was suffering with menstrual cramps—but Daddy always reminded me it was part of the job. “This is the job you chose,” he’d say. “You don’t have to get up at seven in the morning and punch a time clock and stand on your feet all day, but this is part of the responsibilities of your chosen career.” I always made sure to make my way around the whole room and to do it early before the crowd got to drinking too much. I’d shake hands and see if there were any song requests, and that kind of thing. As long as I was in that club, I was “on” and I appreciated Daddy for helping me stay focused.
Another thing he emphasized was presentation. Daddy wanted me to dress nicely and conduct myself appropriately any time we were in public. He liked to see me in those fancy dresses and looking like a star. He was always reminding me to keep my legs together on stage and to remember to carry myself with dignity and class. He had a little pity on me during those long road trips at least. I was young so I could go without makeup. I’d wear my hair in rollers or pin curls, and wear jeans, pedal pushers, or long pants when we were in the car. At least I didn’t have to make three-hundred-mile road trips in tight dresses and heels!
I trusted Daddy completely. He couldn’t understand why, on the rare occasions I would do a show without him, I would forget to get paid. I just never had a mind for business, and I didn’t think about that stuff. I couldn’t get interested in anything but music. I can remember several times Daddy would say, “Wanda, don’t you want to know how much money you have in the bank?” I’d say, “Well, no, not as long as you know.” I figured I was the talent and he was the brains. Together, Daddy and I were Wanda Jackson Enterprises. Mother was our silent partner, holding down the fort at home and working so hard on my stage costumes. They even built me a room off my bedroom that was like a den. I had my record player and my piano in there, as well as a little desk to sign autographs and mail letters and things. My parents were so accommodating and supportive. It was always a family business.
In July of 1955 I performed on the Ozark Jubilee for the first time. Hosted by Red Foley in Springfield, Missouri, the Jubilee aired on ABC-TV, and was really the only national country music program on television at the time. Broadcast live on Saturday nights, it was a popular show, thanks largely to the strong reputation Red Foley had earned as the host of the Grand Ole Opry segment that was carried on the NBC radio network each week.
I was invited to join the cast of the Jubilee the following month, which I immediately accepted. The show was less strict than the Grand Ole Opry in terms of requiring cast members to be there a certain number of dates per month. Regardless, I was there as many Saturday nights as I could be. It was nearly a three-hundred-mile drive between Oklahoma City and Springfield, but we would generally try to book a show or two nearby when we made the trip.
The Jubilee had its own booking agency called Top Talent, which put together package shows of both Jubilee artists and stars from Nashville. They began scheduling shows for me across the U.S., but they didn’t book me exclusively, so sometimes the schedule could get hectic. I began the month of October, 1955 with an appearance on the Jubilee, before heading out for a series of one-nighters that Top Talent booked in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Witchita Falls, Ft. Worth, and Lubbock. After just one night at home in my own bed, I was back in Springfield to play the Jubilee again, before shooting straight back down to Texas for a six-day tour with Elvis booked by Bob Neal. Two days after that Texas whirlwind wrapped up, I was due in Denver to begin a series of one-nighters booked by A.J. Bamford that took me to Salt Lake City, Reno, five cities in California, two cities in Arizona, and a final date in Albuquerque. Two nights after that I was back in Colorado for a date with yet another booker, and then right back to Farmington, New Mexico, three nights after I’d played in Albuquerque. The next morning I was on a plane to Springfield to put in my third Jubilee appearance of the month. Daddy and I racked up over 8,500 miles on the car that month alone, which was not atypical during that period. In fact, the following month, we put another 10,000 on it!
When I headed out on the road, I’d work hard and sing hard, so I perspired on stage. I was pretty hard on my clothes, so I’d have to take enough dresses to cover me for the trip. I learned early on that fringe doesn’t wrinkle, or at least if it does it doesn’t really show, so fringed dresses became a staple of my wardrobe. I’d lay out a piece of tissue paper, roll a dress up in it, and pack my suitcase that way. When we’d come home Daddy would take the clothes to the cleaners, but there were some that Mother insisted on hand washing. She said they didn’t get them clean enough at the cleaners. We were often only home for a short period of time, so it was like a race car driver pulling in for a pit stop. All hands were on deck, to turn us around and get us back out there in record time!
One rare morning when I was at home, I poured myself a bowl of cereal, but I wasn’t as hungry as I thought I was. I had some left over in the bowl.
“Aren’t you going to finish your breakfast?” Daddy said.
“No I think I’ll just give the rest to Jeepers,” I told him. I called the dog but he didn’t come. Daddy kind of raised his eyebrow, but I couldn’t figure out why. “C’mere, Jeepers,” I called a couple more times.
“Well, this is unbelievable,” Daddy muttered.
“What is it, Daddy,” I asked.
“Wanda, we got rid of Jeepers three months ago, and you just now missed him,” He said.
I felt awful. I really did love that dog, but I wasn’t there to take care of him. My grandmother was staying with us at that time, and Mother had enough on her plate between her job, keeping the household going, making my stage outfits, and caring for her ailing mother, who wasn’t able to get around on her own. Jeepers had been my responsibility since I first got him in California, but Mother didn’t need yet another responsibility.
Later on, my grandmother told me about the day they came to get Jeepers. Mother had called the dog pound, if you can imagine. It makes her sound so hard-hearted, which she wasn’t, but we didn’t really know any better then. Mama said when the people from the pound came, she could hear Jeepers barking and squealing. “It was so hard for me to sit there, knowing I couldn’t move or get out of my chair, when they took Jeepers away,” she told me. That tells you how wrapped up in my career I was and how little I was home to not even realize for three months that my little buddy was gone. I was heartbroken when I figured out what happened, and I never had another pet until many years later.
In December of 1955 I returned to Nashville for another Decca session. It had been over a year and a half since my hit with Billy Gray, and I hadn’t been successful in getting another record on the national charts. I was getting great exposure on national television and drawing good crowds at live shows. I was even voted “Best New Female Singer” by Country and Western Jamboree magazine’s 1955 Reader’s Poll, but, for whatever reason, I was struggling to find success on the radio.
That finally changed the following year when I was back on the charts once again. But it wasn’t a song from my Decca session in December. In fact, it wasn’t even a song I’d recorded. Instead of finally getting to the charts as a solo artist, I got there as a songwriter when Bobby Lord had a Top 10 country hit with a tune I wrote for him called “Without Your Love.”
Bobby was a fellow Ozark Jubilee cast member who was close to my age, and we became good friends. Columbia Records had signed him in the early ’50s and, like I would soon be doing, he cut both country and rockabilly material. We were scheduled for road shows together pretty regularly by Top Talent, and Bobby would ride with us sometimes to help Daddy with the driving. We had a lot of fun. Bobby was just crazy and funny, and we all had a great time together. Daddy trusted Bobby, too. Sometimes, if we had a short trip that was just a quick out-and-back, Daddy would say, “Get in touch with Bobby. If he’ll go with you and look out for you, I think I’ll sit this one out and stay home for a little break.”
Bobby and I were out on the road together one time and got into a conversation about songwriters. I don’t think he had ever really applied himself to try to write songs of his own at that point, so I issued him a challenge. I said, “I’ll tell you what, Bobby. When I write a song, I like to have somebody in mind that I think would sound good singing it. I’m going to write a song that hopefully you’ll like and, if you do, you can record it on your next session. And maybe you can write one for me.”
“Okay, it’s a deal,” he said. “I’m gonna try to write one for you, too.”
The next time we saw each other at the Jubilee we played our songs for each other, and they were both good. He cut “Without Your Love,” and it became the only Top 10 hit that Bobby ever had. Even though everyone liked him and he was a good entertainer, Bobby never got really big. His voice didn’t sound real country, and he just didn’t reach that “big star” status. I always wished he had. Even though the song he wrote for me, “Did You Miss Me,” didn’t become a hit, I was proud to have had a hand in encouraging him to write.
The Jubilee cast included, at various times, Webb Pierce, Porter Wagoner, The Browns, Leroy Van Dyke, Sonny James, Carl Smith, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Jean Shepard, and Brenda Lee, who was just a ten- or eleven-year-old kid when she joined the show. Because it was such a high-profile TV program, every major country star wanted to work on the Jubilee. From Eddy Arnold to Patsy Cline, Lefty Frizzell, George Jones, Little Jimmy Dickens, Faron Young, Ray Price, and just about any other name you can name, I got to stay right there in one place and work with them all! I was never shy about a fan or another artist taking a picture with me, but for me to ask someone else if I could take a picture with them would make me so nervous. I hated to ask Daddy to snap a photo of me and another performer. That’s why I only have very few snapshots of all the legendary artists I worked with over the years.
I was meeting at least as many performers playing package shows on the road, and was always eager to watch others’ shows to see what I could learn. The country music community was more like a family in those days, and people tended to help one another more often. I remember I was doing a show with Ferlin Husky one time, when he gave me a bottle of Avon’s Ambush perfume. He said, “Wanda, you’re a young lady now, and you need to wear nice perfume. Don’t ever wear that cheap stuff.” He said, “Here’s something to start with. This isn’t a real expensive one, but it’s better than what you’re using.” That just endeared him to me, and I appreciated his honesty. I got to pay that forward with a girl in Sweden several years ago. She was a very good-looking young lady who sang like a bird, but talk about body odor! A lot of Europeans still didn’t wear deodorant at the time, so I got her some and said, “Trust me. You need to use this.” Another time I had a French photographer who smelled so awful I didn’t know if I’d get through the shoot. In that case, I was too scared to even take enough of a breath to make the suggestion!
We’d do these package shows and be out for two weeks at a time, so the guys liked to entertain themselves by pulling practical jokes and getting into trouble. It wasn’t ever anything too bad, just nonsense to keep themselves entertained. I remember one time Top Talent sent several of us out for a tour supporting Marty Robbins. Marvin Rainwater, who was a fellow Jubilee cast member, decided to pull a joke on Marty on the last night of the tour. During his portion of the show, Marvin told the audience his plan. He said, “Just go along with me.” What he did was he got a big card and wrote “laugh and applause” on one side and “quiet” on the other. When Marty came out to do his set, he started delivering his onstage one-liners that usually got a great response. Instead, everyone was silent. Little did Marty know that Marvin was poking his head out from that back curtain holding up his sign. When Marty would say something serious, everyone would break into applause. He didn’t know what to think!
The boys could get pretty silly, but most of the time I didn’t know what all the jokes were about because I didn’t hang out with them much. Daddy would know. He loved to joke and was playful, but he kept me away from all that for the most part. I wanted to be where they were telling jokes, having a drink, swapping stories, and having a great time, so sometimes I felt a little left out. I remember in the early days when we were traveling with Hank Thompson, it was pretty unusual to have dressing rooms large enough to accommodate his band. Instead, they would all hang out on the bus until it was time for the show. If there was a matinee we’d all stay at the theater until the evening. I’d want to go hang out with everybody, but most of the time I didn’t get to. Daddy was very protective of me. A man knows men, and I was smart enough to know that. If Daddy said something about some guy, it was probably true. He knew what the guys were talking about when I wasn’t around, and that’s why he wouldn’t let me into the dressing rooms. There were some men that Daddy didn’t mind me being around because he knew they were upright guys and more settled. Autry Inman and Charlie Walker come to mind. Sonny James, who was with me on the Jubilee, was another one. He was very responsible. But there were only a handful on Daddy’s strict security clearance list!
Precisely because of the national exposure I was getting on the show I was offered some opportunities for jobs that would have forced me to leave the Jubilee. At one point, Ernest Tubb wanted to hire me as the girl singer with his band. Despite our previous run-in at the Opry, it was tempting. Ernest was a legend and always drew huge crowds. I would have worked more and made more money, plus Daddy thought it was a pretty exciting opportunity. I kept thinking about it. It was getting closer to the time I had to make a final decision, but every time I’d think about leaving the Jubilee I would just cry and cry. It seemed like the Nashville people had a clique, and it was easy to feel like an outsider. At the Jubilee we were a smaller group and, gosh, if somebody got a hit, we were just tickled to death for them. It seemed that Nashville was more competitive and there was more jealousy going on, while the Jubilee cast was a family. One time Daddy saw me tearing up in the car and asked, “What’s the problem?”
“I don’t want to leave the Ozark Jubilee,” I said. I was just having so much fun and making good friends there. “Daddy, when I think about leaving it makes me so sad.”
Daddy looked at me and said, “Well … then don’t.”
Simple as that. That was his way of cutting through the drama and getting to the heart of a problem. I needed that kind of clarity that he brought to my career planning.
In the summer of 1956 Jim Halsey became my booking agent. He had founded his company with Hank Thompson as his first client in the early 1950s. I was his second. Over the years, The Jim Halsey Company would become the largest country music talent agency in the world, representing a roster that included Roy Clark, The Oak Ridge Boys, Tammy Wynette, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Leon Russell, Reba McEntire, Clint Black, The Judds, Dwight Yoakam, and too many more to name. Halsey became so successful he eventually sold his company to the prestigious William Morris Agency in 1990. Back when I started working with him, his vision and tireless promotion skills were the boost that I needed. Daddy had been working with various bookers on a piecemeal basis, but Halsey was able to consolidate the efforts and negotiate better fees. Where I had been getting about $75 for a booking, I was now getting $150, $200, and, in some instances, as much as $500 for a single show. At the end of 1955 I’d made a little more than $7,600. With Halsey’s help, I doubled my income in 1956, earning over $15,000 by year’s end. That doesn’t sound very impressive now, but that’s the equivalent of nearly $135,000 in today’s dollars. I wasn’t exactly living in the lap of luxury, but I was working hard, living my dreams, and making a very good living—especially considering I was still a teenager.