Review: Wanda Jackson - There's A Party Goin' On (1961)

Tracks: 1) There’s A Party Goin’ On; 2) Lonely Week-Ends; 3) Kansas City; 4) Bye Bye Baby; 5) Fallin’; 6) Hard Headed Woman; 7) Tongue Tied; 8) It Doesn’t Matter Anymore; 9) Tweedlee Dee; 10) Sparkling Brown Eyes; 11) Lost Week-End; 12) Man We Had A Party.

REVIEW

On October 28, 1960, Wanda Jackson entered the Bradley Film and Recording Studio in Nashville, Tennessee, to record what would, somewhat arguably, remain as her single most badass studio performance: a cover of Leiber and Stoller’s ‘Riot In Cell Block #9’, originally a hit for The Robins (soon to be The Coasters) back in 1954 but then largely forgotten until it was revived by Wanda in this blistering version, with some of the lyrics appropriately re-written to put the action inside a women’s penitentiary — which might just make this cover the first ever song to detail (albeit humorously) the daily business of a bunch of female inmates. Backed by Roy Clark, a rising star in both the musical and TV industries, she rocks every bit as hard as usual, but this time, with the added benefit of a little bit of «social relevance», playing the bad girl behind bars rather than merely the mischievous girl at the sock hop ball, which is where that raspy growl really comes in handy — suspending disbelief is easy-peasy under such circumstances.

And it wasn’t just one song, either. The entire five-day Nashville recording session at the end of October, 1960, produced more fire than any other period of such short duration in Wanda’s life. Note the difference from the January 1960 sessions in Hollywood, which were relatively short and only produced a small bunch of pleasant, but easily forgettable country tunes like ‘Please Call Today’. That difference was very clearly triggered by the sudden and unexpected success of ‘Let’s Have A Party’, a song that had already been issued on Wanda’s first LP but, for some reason, was thought of as a potential single by Capitol only two years later. Unlike Wanda’s country singles, this one put her back on the charts — for the first time since ‘I Gotta Know’ — and convinced both the singer and her executives that, despite the overall changing tides, there might still be some demand for Wanda Jackson as the little sister of Elvis Presley, rather than of Patsy Cline.

The happy result, still left behind for us to enjoy, are these five days in Nashville that yielded the entirety of this LP, plus a couple of additional singles, starting with ‘Riot In Cell Block #9’ and ending with the famous ‘Funnel Of Love’ that we shall discuss in connection with her second LP from 1961. The absolute majority of these tracks were rockers, and although there was almost no original songwriting involved, each and every one was ideally molded to reflect Wanda’s personality. The only thing that makes the record bow down to Rockin’ With Wanda is that there are few truly outstanding numbers like ‘Fujiyama Mama’ or ‘Rock Your Baby’ — but then again, Rockin’ With Wanda was really a compilation, with the benefit of choosing the best from an approximately two-year period of successes and failures; There’s A Party Goin’ On is a cohesive album, indeed reflecting a sort of «rock’n’roll party» over a five-day musical bash in a Nashville studio — and it is one of those albums that works better as a whole rather than a sum of the individual parts. Remember, it was the fall of 1960 — Brenda Lee’s ‘I Want To Be Wanted’ was riding all the way to #1, symbolizing «Little Ms. Dynamite» succumbing to the sweet temptations of «Europop» — and not even any boys were rocking as hard as Wanda and her team in Nashville, let alone any girls.

It’s easy enough to poke fun at the fact that the album opens with ‘There’s A Party Goin’ On’ (credited, by the way, to Don Covay of future ‘Mercy Mercy’ and ‘See-Saw’ fame) and closes with ‘Man We Had A Party’ (Jessie Mae Robinson’s sequel to ‘Let’s Have A Party’) — but there’s every reason to pocket the irony when you understand that ‘There’s A Party Goin’ On’ rocks even harder than the song whose formula it was so clearly destined to emulate. It’s louder, it’s tighter, the vocal performance is even raspier, the "yeeeaaahs!" are even dirtier, and Roy Clark’s shrill and sharp lead guitar work is even more aggressive. Admittedly, third time around, ‘Man We Had A Party’ is less of a smash (although there are a few more original high-pitched electric licks to rock your boat), but its past tense makes for a nice finale — it works fine enough in the context of the album.

In between the party-goin’ and the party-endin’ anthems, you get rocker after rocker after rocker, almost as if the «soft revolution» of 1960 never happened. Probably the most famous of those LP-only tracks is ‘Hard Headed Woman’, another Elvis-inherited chestnut that Wanda used to introduce in concert as "one of the most beautiful love songs that’s ever been written", proving to the world that Okie girls can have a Hollywood diva-level sense of irony. The double irony is, of course, that Wanda acknowledges and owns the song’s allegedly misogynistic lyrics — switching the message from "girls are nothing but trouble" to "us girls are trouble, and you’d better know it!" In Elvis’ hands, the song was just a fast and furious rock’n’roll number (and you probably didn’t pay as much attention to the lyrics anyway as you did to Elvis’ breathtaking light-speed delivery of them); Wanda, with her naughty girl rasp, gives it an aura of playful mischief, making you really root for Eve, Jezebel, and Delilah deep down in your heart. It’s also a somewhat rawer version, without the mildly Vegas-y horns of Elvis’ original and full emphasis on the pumpin’ rhythm section and interlocking guitar/piano lead lines — the toughest rock’n’roll sound you’re going to hear from 1960.

Even when Wanda decides to cover LaVern Baker’s classic novelty number ‘Tweedle Dee’, her rasp and growling are no slouch compared to LaVern’s imposing «Big African Mama» presence — and Clark, once again, manages to make the song sound more dynamic and aggressive with his no-funny-business soloing. Then there’s ‘Kansas City’, also convincingly gender-inverted ("got some crazy little fellows and I’m a-gonna get me one") and every bit as fun as every male version ever played, though you probably won’t help noticing how Wanda finishes the song with her little disclaimer: "...just one!", she purrs in her sexiest tone, letting you and your parents know that she does have her lady standards for playing around. However, she does not edit out the line about a "bottle of Kansas City wine", despite any implied risks of promoting female alcoholism. Good for you, Wanda.

Most of the other songs are covers of country and pop artists, from Charlie Rich to Neil Sedaka, but pretty much all of them are toughened up significantly. Fast tempos, deep bass, heavy drums, sharp guitar solos are the norm here for all the rearrangements; a song like ‘Fallin’, for instance, is downright superior to Connie Francis’ original hit from 1958, fully preserving the «love-is-dangerous-magic» spirit of the original and further enhancing it through the collected effort of the rhythm section, Clark’s solo, and Wanda’s wolf-howl. Or take ‘Sparkling Brown Eyes’, made into a country hit earlier that year by George Jones: George’s version is a fast-paced, but starry-eyed (and perhaps slightly drunk) serenade — Wanda and Roy Clark introduce a whiff of menace, as if it weren’t really the "wings of a beautiful dove" the singer was pining for, but more like the "fins of a ravenous shark" (hey, too bad I wasn’t even alive at the time when such a lyrical amendment could have been offered to make perfect sense).

Overall, even if not every song has its share of truly memorable moments, the session as a whole is a total gas. Really, there is no special kind of ambition here — just a desire to quickly capitalize on a brief moment of triumph while the iron is still hot — but everybody is having so much fun that the thirty minutes fly by in a flash. This is precisely the kind of album that loyal old school fans must have been waiting for from Elvis in 1960, losing faith in the man when they were presented with Elvis Is Back! instead — too bad most of them were probably too snub-nosed to agree to place the same faith in an «Elvis in a skirt». Of course, the album did not chart, and neither did all those sequels to ‘Let’s Have A Party’, and this is probably why Wanda Jackson would never have this kind of energetic recording session ever again.

But in retrospect, one thing is probably true: because of her sex, Wanda Jackson may have been one of the last performers to jump on the original rockabilly bandwagon — forfeiting any claims to «laying down the foundations» of rock’n’roll — but she was also one of the last performers to jump off it, keeping on rockin’ for quite a while after the original founding fathers had all succumbed to the Fifties’ Curse (well, «a while» meaning about one year, at most, but time did move on pretty fast in 1960 — not as fast as in 1967, for sure, yet one year did make quite a bit of difference). If, in January 1961, you wanted yourself a nice fresh slab of crunchy rock’n’roll, who could you turn to? Kudos to the crazy little girl-fellow from Oklahoma for keeping that flame alive for at least a few more months.

• Only Solitaire reviews: Wanda Jackson