Sounds interesting. I liked Jack White’s collaboration with Loretta Lynn from a few years ago too
In the years since, [Wanda Jackson] has swung from rock to country to gospel, earning a cult following as the Queen of Rockabilly. Now, like Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and Mavis Staples before her, she is the latest veteran artist to work with a devoted younger producer, in the hopes of a third-act career shift.
On Tuesday, Third Man and Nonesuch Records will release “The Party Ain’t Over,” Ms. Jackson’s first studio album in eight years and the first produced by a paragon of contemporary rock: Jack White. The collaboration, with Mr. White playing guitar, is largely retro, a collection of covers recorded live with a 12-piece band. But everyone involved hopes it will introduce Ms. Jackson to a new audience, affording her a level of attention that’s closer to her more famous contemporaries like Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash, all of whom she performed with. “She’s influential to every modern female singer, whether they know about her or not,” Mr. White said. “She broke down those walls in the beginning, when it was the hardest to do.”
Since she was discovered at 15 in Oklahoma City, Ms. Jackson’s career has been etched by men: Hank Thompson, the country star who got her signed after hearing her on local radio; Elvis, who encouraged her to wield her singular voice — a graveled purr — in rock instead of country; Wendell Goodman, her husband of 50 years, her tour manager and constant companion; and now Mr. White. But through it all she has become a shimmying emblem of female independence in a male-dominated industry, testing boundaries with her forward style and lyrics about mean men and hard-headed women (and those are the love songs). As she allowed, winkingly, at the Knitting Factory show, “No wonder I have a bad-girl reputation.”
(click to continue reading Wanda Jackson, Rockabilly Queen, Prolongs Her Party – NYTimes.com.)
Jack White and Ms. Jackson seemed to have gotten along:
Initially Ms. Jackson and her husband hoped to make a Sinatra-and-friends-style duet record. “I think those kind of albums should be made illegal, they are such a bad idea,” Mr. White wrote in an e-mail. Instead he preferred to get Ms. Jackson in the studio at his home in Nashville, recording an album of her own.
She was reluctant at first. “I was nervous about it because I didn’t know what he was going to expect,” she said. And she worried that her rockabilly fans would rebel at more contemporary stuff. “Wendell kind of had to drag me into the studio kicking and screaming,” she added.
Mr. White, who first heard “Let’s Have a Party” as a teenager in a cover by the 5678s, an all-girl Japanese garage-rock group, put her at ease quickly, helped by the familiar songs he selected: the Andrews Sisters’ “Rum and Coca-Cola,” Bob Dylan’s “Thunder on the Mountain” and the country staple “Dust on the Bible.” Ms. Jackson suggested an Elvis tune, “Like a Baby,” and they both loved “Teach Me Tonight,” recorded by the Cuban-born De Castro Sisters.
One song that Mr. White offered made his singer balk — Amy Winehouse’s “You Know That I’m No Good.” Some of the raunchy lyrics were too much for Ms. Jackson, a born-again Christian since 1971. So Mr. White rewrote them. “He sang in my headphones with me to teach me the melody,” Ms. Jackson said, “and then once I got it I said, ‘Oh yeah, this is a great song.’ ”
But he was a demanding producer. “I’m not really used to that,” she said.
In the studio Ms. Jackson likened his approach to a “velvet brick,” which he said was one of the best compliments he’s ever received. (“It’s got me wondering about coating my tombstone in red velvet flocking,” Mr. White said. “I’m looking into that.”)
They played with the song selection to achieve the right mix of inspiration and believability. “Making an album of rockabilly covers would’ve been too easy and boring,” he said. “The idea was this woman has an attitude in her that can work in calypso, funk and yodeling, just like it can in rockabilly. Wanda and I wanted to get someplace further out there and see what she could pull off at this stage in her career.”