Wanda Jackson: The 'Queen of Rock' you've never heard of
- aimeeelkington153
- Dec 12, 2025
- 6 min read
This woman, Wanda Jackson, was once dubbed 'the Queen of Rock'. So what happened? Why doesn’t anyone talk about her anymore?
The 1950s was a time of breaking conventions for men in the music scene. Elvis helped pave the way for this. He emerged from the Mississippi music scene - influenced by gospel, country and R&B - and arguably started the rock n roll revolution. His sexually suggestive lyrics and even more suggestive dance moves shocked older generations across the country, but the youth were hooked. Rock n Roll swept the nation, and Elvis became an icon.
While it became more acceptable for women and girls to be fans of rock n roll music, it was unheard of for them to be performing it. This was a time where a woman couldn’t open her own bank account, buy a house or even write a will without a male co-signer, so being a trailblazer in any sense was made harder by the expectations of society. Female music artists usually fell into a box: prim, proper ‘pop’.
Wanda Jackson fully intended to smash up that box. Born in Oklahoma, her parents met at a dance where her father was playing the fiddle. The family relocated to LA so her dad could get more work, and that’s where Wanda started singing with her dad’s band at the age of just 6. Her parents took her to see the likes of Bob Wills, Spade Cooley and Tex Williams, so you can see where she got inspired.
But in all the performances she saw, it was Rose Maddox and the Maddox brothers who really stood out to her. In her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame interview, she revealed:
“It really stuck - she was feisty, so full of spunk, and they wore all those colorful, sparkly clothes. I said ‘I gotta be like her!’”
Wanda Jackson didn’t look back. She started to write her own music and, with the support of her parents, played it wherever and whenever she could. Eventually, at 15 she caught the attention of Hank Thompson, a semi successful musician who also had his own Oklahoma based TV show. He asked her to be a guest on the show, which gave her more exposure.
From that point on, she played with Thompson regularly, playing with Lindsay’s Oklahoma Night Riders. It was Thompson who kept pushing Jackson in front of record labels. Capitol Records initially passed, because of her young age. Thompson tried again with Decca records, this time selling Jackson as part of a duo with guitarist and singer Billy Gray. This time it went through.
At age just 16, she and Gray released their first successful hit - a country single called You Can’t Have My Love.
While it was successful, Jackson was hesitant about being seen as a duo; she wanted her own career. As time went on, she started releasing her own music and started to gain a reputation, even getting her own TV show in Oklahoma. Jackson didn’t want to be like other women in the music scene. She wanted a distinct image, and luckily her mother was a seamstress. She told the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame:
“A lot of the girls wore the cowboy hats then and they hung them on their backs. But I started wearing the go-go dresses. We put fringe all the way around so that I could look like I was shaking and moving a lot. It turned out to be a lot like what the go-go girls wore in the sixties. Well, I’d been wearing them for ten years by then.”
Ahead of her time in music and fashion, it wasn’t long before she got the attention of Elvis himself, and the King invited Wanda to join him on tour. The pair apparently dated in the mid 1950s, and it was Elvis who encouraged her to lean more into the rock n roll sound, as he felt her voice was perfect for it. She told Fox News in 2017:
“The thing that Elvis did for me was giving me the courage to sing this new music, like he was doing. I would tell him, ‘I can’t do that, Elvis, because I’m just a country singer! Besides, I’m a girl. I can’t sing that stuff.’ And he said, ‘I know you could if you try.’ He made me promise that I would try.”
Luckily, she kept her promise. This tour gave her the launching pad she needed to really get going. In the early days, Jackon was told by a record executive that
“Girls don’t sell records.”
She was about to prove him very wrong. She signed with Capitol Records and recorded her first rock n roll song: I Gotta Know. The song feels like the perfect mix between country and rock n roll, with the energetic verses turning into a twangy, yearning chorus.
However, it always felt like an uphill battle. She faced constant doubts from others and herself as she transitioned into rock n roll. She told Fox News:
“I recorded a lot of rock ‘n’ roll songs. They mostly had to be cover songs because nobody thought a girl’s point of view would sell … I began writing stuff and they all did well … Seems like I always had to be pushed a little bit.”
The transformation extended to the stage as well. In a world where women were expected to be polite and unassuming, Jackson snarled her sass filled lyrics and shimmied her way into the front and centre of rockabilly music. While Capitol Records at first wanted her to stay in the country genre, Jackson fought back, arguing she would sing whatever she wanted to sing.
From then on, she constantly toed the line between genres, appealing to a wide audience. In 1958, her rebellious rock n roll song Let’s Have a Party brought her even more acclaim.
This became one of her best known tracks, and I think it does a great job of summing up the fun and energetic nature of her music.
By the late 50s, it seemed inevitable that she was going to be remembered for a long time. It was around this time that she met Wendell Goodman, her future husband. She believed in her so much that he quit his job in computers to become her full time manager. They were together for 56 years before Goodman sadly died in 2017.
So, Jackson had all the ingredients to be as successful as Elvis, so why is it that so many people have never heard of her? Well, it could be argued that it’s partly due to her being so far ahead of her time. Maybe people weren’t ready for women to be dominating rock n roll, and that impacted her career.
But equally, it could be put down to something that was clearly really important to Jackson throughout her career: choice. She always prided herself in making her own decisions about her music. After the success of Let’s Have a Party, Jackson formed a band called the Party Timers. They did pretty well, releasing the successful hit Funnel of Love. But then it seemed Jackson had a complete change of heart.
She spent the rest of the 60s going back to her roots: country music. She seemed to step away from the rock n roll inspired tracks that many remember her for, but in doing so she released some great music in the country scene and formed a new legacy there. In the 70s, she then became focused on gospel music, having become a devout Christian in that time.
However, she did not forget the world of rock n roll completely. In 2003, she released her first new studio album in 15 years, which featured famous names such as the Cramps, the Stray Cats and Elvis Costello. In 2006, she released a tribute album called I Remember Elvis, featuring songs made famous by the man who inspired her to try rock n roll. In everything she did, it was clear that she had the respect of the music industry, with Bob Dylan describing her as “an atomic fireball of a lady.”
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