Wanda Jackson, Kansas 1963
by Bryce Martin


I drove in the direction of the small town of Arma, nine miles north of Pittsburg, to see the greatest singer on the planet perform. You paid at the door. Wanda Jackson, I had trouble believing, was on stage at the Blue Moon ballroom. She wore a strapless cocktail dress 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.

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, acknowledging those nearest her who waved and shouted with a delicate raised hand as 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. She was 25-years-old, too, a grown-up prom queen.

Before the summer ended, I came this way again. Another ballroom, the Trianon, sat off the highway in Croweburg, two miles east of Arma. A local band played some decent rock ‘n’ roll. I went once and once was plenty. I don’t pay a cover charge for just anything.

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