Rockabilly pioneer Wanda Jackson faced an SRO crowd of punks, suburbanites, grandparents and hipsters at FitzGerald’s late Saturday and leveled them with sass.
Accompanied by the Cadillac Angels the sixtyish Jackson occasionally dropped a beat or lost a melody on ballads, but flirted, belted and growled her way through a hit parade of 1950s rockers that shone as brightly as her rhinestones.
Crowd favorites were her hit songs “Let’s Have A Party,” “Fujiyama Mama” and “I Gotta Know,” whose pure country sound belied the tangled history of her career. “Carl (Perkins) and Elvis and Jerry Lee and me were just hillbillies trying to do blues. They called it rockabilly,” she explained to the crowd. When she was just out of high school, Jackson toured three years with Elvis. “Thank you, Elvis,” she said, for encouraging her to try rock ‘n’ roll. Following a hilarious depiction of the King’s pre-show warmups, she launched into her favorite Elvis swooner: “One Night.”
Among covers ranging from Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Whole Lotta Shakin”‘ to Connie Francis’ “Stupid Cupid,” Jackson’s rendition of Hank Williams’ “I Saw the Light” stood out only for the sincerity with which she sang it, and the temerity with which she introduced it as a tribute to the day in 1971 when she “invited Jesus Christ into her life.” At that time, she retired from secular music until three years ago when she toured briefly with Rosie Flores.
Earlier in the evening, Kim Richey, who usually plays with a full band, performed a set of mostly new songs with only an electric guitar and bass as backup. The stripped-down arrangement helped push the three-part country harmony to the fore and allowed the listener to bask in Richey’s pure tone and fluent phrasing.
On bass was James Intveld, to whom Richey gave the microphone for a midset interlude that included his tune “Crying Over You,” a country hit for Flores. Eddie Perez filled in on guitar throughout, showing in the closing song what a rock band this could have been if he led it more.
Richey’s new material has the clear-eyed, openhearted, down-to-earth spirit established on her eponymous debut and last year’s “Bittersweet.” The crowd-pleaser from that album was “I’m Alright”; she played it at Al Gore’s 50th birthday party, but its chorus is more apropos of his boss: “Shot down but I’m still standing. . .A little banged up from the fall. . .Still shaky from the landing. . .I’m alright after all.”
Richey performed solo acoustic on “So It Goes,” inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five,” and also on “You Can’t Lose Them All,” which offered an guardedly optimistic outlook on getting shot down in romance.
