She may be a grandmother but Wanda Jackson can still get down with the kids. Photo / Supplied
She may be a grandmother but Wanda Jackson can still get down with the kids. Photo / Supplied
Rating: 4/5
Verdict: Get down with the coolest grandma.
Last year, a 70-something year-old grandma from Oklahoma jumped on the music charts covering Amy Winehouse. Later, she pulled a sold-out crowd into Auckland's Powerstation and took the opportunity to tell her young audience about the importance of marriage and God. Shesquinted through the bright lights and said the nana-chic and rockabilly outfits in the audience took her right back. Right back to 1959 when she released her first rock'n'roll hit Let's Have a Party. Here's the album her young fans have been waiting for, a collection of covers - including Bob Dylan's Thunder on the Mountain - produced by cool kid Jack White.
Jackson, now 73, was initially a little reticent about going back into the recording studio - especially with such a young fella - but was swayed by White's success with Loretta Lynn's comeback album Van Lear Rose.
She soon found herself singing and recording a rollicking, messy version of Rum and Coca Cola that sounds as if it was fuelled by the the drink. She lets her trademark grunt rip in Nervous Breakdown and gets her yodel on in a cover of Blue Yodel #6. The album also gives Jackson a chance to prove that just because she goes to bed early and wears sensible shoes, she paved the way for the likes of tattooed hipsters such as Amy Winehouse. You can almost imagine her marching the youngster off the stage and waggling her finger in an "I told you so" manner during her rendition of You Know I'm No Good. Her childlike croon may sound a little incongruous on Like A Baby, but hey if a 73-year-old wants to sing about loving like a baby, then go her.
It might be largely due to the band-of-big-names and back-up singers like White's wife Karen Elson that the album packs a punch, but its main purpose is to let Jackson give her trademark raspy-yet-gamine vocals a workout and for White to have some fun injecting his modern take on rock'n'roll into some old classics. The final product is a perfectly packaged piece of nostalgia, that balances quality with the sometimes brash and gritty sound of yesteryear.
