Rockabilly queen and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Wanda Jackson will play a show Saturday at the 66 Bowl in Oklahoma City to help mark the bowling center’s 50th anniversary.
That’s a nice little coup for the 66 Bowl, a prominent business on Route 66 on the city’s west side.
But an even bigger story reported by The Oklahoman is that Jackson soon will be collaborating with Jack White, the leader of the popular garage-rock band The White Stripes and producer of Loretta Lynn’s highly acclaimed “Van Lear Rose” album of 2004.
It’s difficult to overestimate how big of a development this is for Jackson, 72. “Van Lear Rose” wound up being one of the biggest-selling albums of Lynn’s career, and it remains tied for all-time highest-rated album at Metacritic. And the album wasn’t a humongous departure from what Lynn was doing, most notably because she wrote all the songs. White simply found ways to make those previously unreleased songs — some of them 30 years old — sound vital.
A lot of people heard the rambunctious “Portland, Oregon,” but “Miss Being Mrs.” was arguably the emotional center of the album:
Jackson told The Oklahoman that White was “going to stretch me some” during their collaboration. I reckon that White is going to concentrate on that “nice lady with a dirty voice” persona and maybe a pile of rockabilly songs that she’s never recorded.
Here Jackson is in 1958 performing one of her best-known songs, “Hard Headed Woman.”
Here’s a more recent clip of one of her biggest hits, “Let’s Have a Party.”
There’s going to be a lot of excited rockabilly fans because of this news.
UPDATE: It turns out the Jackson had her first date with her future husband at the 66 Bowl 48 years ago. So there’s some sentimental attachment there.