Me and Wanda Jackson Finally Meet

My Visit With Wanda Jackson
By Bryce Martin

If I find Wanda, it will not be the first time I have seen her in person.

Back in 1963 in my mostly wasted youth, I left my hometown of Galena, Kan., and drove in the direction of the small town of Arma, nine miles north of Pittsburg, to see the greatest singer on the planet perform. I paid at the door. Wanda Jackson, I had trouble believing, was on stage at the Blue Moon Ballroom, a place I had never visited before. It was a large building, resting off the highway about a hundred feet and the only place of any size in the vicinity.

She wore a bare-shouldered gown and looked stunning. Her voice was impossible to describe, accented with trills and lilts, smooth and clear when need be, growly, mean, impudent, and nimbly naughty at intervals. She was wild and raw, her lyrics often wonderfully bizarre and delivered in a frenetic rhapsody of rock and roll the equal of any man. Then she would deliver a soothing country ballad, in as soft and artful a voice as you would imagine from an angel.

There was a closed-off wraparound balcony that some of the boys had sneaked up the stairs to find. They wanted to peer down and get a better view of Wanda’s cleavage. It didn't appear to be a good angle for that, and the small group soon disappeared.

I walked outside when the show bid finale and stood in the gravel driveway. Wanda, with dark hair and eyes, came out and entered a waiting Cadillac. A man assisted her entry and closed her door for her. Someone whispered that it was her husband. She smiled politely, and rather sadly, I thought, as she acknowledged those of us nearest her and waved with a delicate raised hand in a goodbye gesture.

The Cadillac soon disappeared in the dark and the distance and produced a final crunch of gravel before smoothing out on the asphalt. Wanda Jackson. Here. In this place. In my universe. Tonight.

Wow. There goes my 25-year-old, grown-up prom queen.


I arrived at the Baptist church complex in Bakersfield not as early as I would have liked. I found Wanda down the sidewalk from the building where she was about to make an appearance. I introduced myself and told her I would appreciate a short interview. Her husband, Wendell, interrupted.

"I'm Wendell, her husband, and you should have notified us sooner. There is not enough time now as we're heading to where we need to go. Join us if you like."

"Afterward then," I said.

"No, we'll be leaving right after for another appointment," Wendell said. "Like I said, you should have let us know beforehand."

Since Wendell was doing the talking, I aimed my conversation toward him as we walked along, but I wanted to make sure Wanda heard. I mentioned how I had seen her perform with her Party Timers in 1963 at the Blue Moon Ballroom in Arma, Kan. She had toured with her then-boyfriend Elvis Presley while still a teenager and had made hundreds, no thousands, of appearances of the years. Still, I thought it might ring a bell since her manager at the time, Jim Halsey, was based in nearby Independence, Kan., and part of her band was from nearby Pittsburg.

"The only thing I recall, other than Wanda's singing," I said, "was some of her stage patter. In introducing one of her songs, she turned to one of the musicians backing her and said, 'We picked this song up in Russian while we were there from a little Russian boy. What was his name? Ivan Snatchertitsoff?'"

"Things have really changed since then, haven't they?" Wendell said.

I guessed that he meant going from telling bawdy, and bad, jokes in those days to holding church rallies in present day.

Wendell confirmed that the man driving the Cadillac that evening in Kansas would have been him and that the two at the time had not been married long.
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To be continued