No longer overlooked: Cordell Jackson, elder stateswoman of Rock ‘n’ Roll

This article is part of Overlookeda series of obituaries about notable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, were not reported in The Times.

When Cordell Jackson’s long and mostly obscure musical career briefly intersected with American pop culture in the early 1990s (coinciding with her appearance on a popular beer brand) advertisementin which she showed guitarist Brian Setzer a few tricks), it was almost as if she had stepped out of a dream: Grandma, resplendent in a shiny ball gown and bouffant, peeking through her old lady glasses as she furiously rocked a bright red electric guitar, amplifier on 10.

Even though we had never seen or heard Jackson before, she seemed to reside in the dusty trinkets of our country’s collective unconscious: Cordell Jackson, one of rock ‘n’ roll’s forgotten pioneers, had already made more than a six months of music. century.

Cordell Miller was born on July 15, 1923, to William and Stella Miller in Pontotoc, Miss., a small town once known as a hideout for Jesse James’ band of outlaws in the 19th century. She became interested in making music at an early age and learned to play the banjo, piano, double bass and harmonica.

At age 12, she was in her father’s string band, the Pontotoc Ridge Runners. “When I picked up the guitar, I saw it in their eyes: ‘Little girls don’t play guitar’” she later recalled. “I looked straight at them and said, ‘I Doing.'”

Jackson always claimed that she was rocking long before the men who would make rock ‘n’ roll famous. “If what I’m doing now is rock ‘n’ roll or rockabilly or whatever,” she told The Tulsa World newspaper in 1992, “then I did it when Elvis was a year old. That’s just a fact. ”

Or, as she told Cornfed magazine: “Whatever song it was, I always creamed it, so to speak. I play fast. I always turned it up.”

In 1943, she married William Jackson, moved to Memphis and tried to make her way in the male-dominated music scene. She eventually befriended and recorded demos with producer Sam Phillips, who would later found Sun Records. But she grew impatient with Phillips, who saw her gender as an obstacle, and created Moon Records, become one of the first women in America to record and produce their own music (some say the first) and securing its place in history.

“Cordell was immune to ‘no’. It was almost like that was her art,” country singer and songwriter Laura Cantrell said by phone. “A lot of artists are told ‘no’, that what we want to do isn’t possible, but Cordell was absolutely determined to become an artist. That was not typical for a woman, especially in the South.”

Recording sessions for Moon Records were held in Jackson’s living room, where she engineered, produced and released music by regional artists such as Allen Page, Earl Patterson and Johnny Tate. Although Jackson initially focused mainly on production, she would eventually release some of her own performances, including 1958’s “Rock and Roll Christmas” and “Beboppers’ Christmas.”

But neither she nor her group of artists made much of an impression, and in the 1960s and 1970s Jackson went through an itinerant series of other types of work: at a printing house; as an interior designer at a real estate agency; as a DJ on the all-female Memphis station WHER; operating a thrift store. It wasn’t until the early 1980s, when she chanced upon musician, performance artist and filmmaker Tav Falco, that things really changed for her.

The two first met at a Western Sizzlin steakhouse in Memphis, at a benefit for longtime Sun Records gofer Don Ezell. “Every guitar player in Memphis was there,” Falco said in a video interview. This included Jackson, who approached him after starting his band, the Panther Burns (featuring Alex Chilton), cover one of her original songs, ‘Dateless Night’. The two became fast friends. He invited her to appear on bills with him and his band, and she accepted, despite the fact that at almost 60 years old she had yet to play her first professional live performance.

This marked the beginning of the surprising second act of Jackson’s musical career, as she became – of one group – an elder stateswoman of grungy thrash guitar. During a 1988 appearance on the WFMU radio program “The Hound,” Jackson plugged in her guitar and let it rip; the result sounds less like a performance than like a wild animal unleashed in the studio. In an interview, Jim Marshall, the show’s host, described Jackson’s playing as “some of the meanest, filthiest rock ‘n’ roll guitars I’ve ever heard in my life.”

She headlined colorful, now-defunct New York City rock clubs such as CBGB, the Lone Star and the Lakeside Lounge, as well as Maxwell’s in Hoboken, NJ. She usually played solo, but occasionally local musicians supported her, including Brooklyn band The A-Bones. “There were no rehearsals,” Miriam Linna, the band’s drummer, recalled in an interview. “It was just, ‘Let’s go!’”

Susan M. Clarke, editor and publisher of Cornfed magazine, added, “I can’t imagine anyone knew what to do with her. I’m surprised they didn’t have her committed.’

Offstage, Jackson was down-to-earth, but correct and deeply religious. She didn’t swear, and she drank nothing but milk or water told Roctober magazine in 1993. Falco recalled saying that doctors had put her on an “all-meat diet,” and Kenn Goodman – whose Pravda Records released her album “Live in Chicagoin 1997 – said in an interview that when Jackson traveled (always in her yellow Cadillac; she didn’t like airplanes), it was with “her own steak, her own milk and giant jugs of tap water from Memphis” because she didn’t . I don’t trust any other species.

Nancy Apple, a close friend and acolyte, said that when Jackson went grocery shopping, “she wore white old lady gloves—not for fashion; she always said, ‘I don’t want to touch any of that money!’” When she got home, Jackson took all the bills she received in change, washed them in the sink and hung them on clothespins to dry.

Eccentricities aside, what Jackson did on stage was truly astonishing. Watching archive footage of her performances is a harrowing experience. During a 1995 concert in Memphis, Jackson described her music from the stage as “from barnyard disaster to classical.”

There was an unbridled ferocity to Jackson’s playing, almost as if she was fighting with her guitar to give her what she wanted. Her compositions – mostly instrumentals – may not be terribly unusual, but what she did with them, in her urgent, raw and unapologetically abrasive way, was. Jackson didn’t just break guitar strings when she played. She broke pickaxes.

Intonation didn’t seem to matter to her. Neither does keeping time: In one interview, she said, “I’ve found that the faster I play, the more accurate I become.” Form and melody also seemed largely beside the point. Instead it was all attitude, attack, rhythm, speed and noise.

She “felt comfortable,” said Marcus Natale, a bassist who worked with her — she made no impression, made no concessions and never seemed to have been anything less (or more) than exactly who she was. , her performances are a testament to the electrifying power of ragged, unmanicured music.

“This isn’t a masterpiece,” she wrote on the sleeve of one of her records, “but it might be bad enough that you’ll like it.”

Jackson died of pancreatic cancer on October 14, 2004 in Memphis. She was 81.

In her music, and in everything she set her mind to, Jackson was nothing but determined. “I was never confused about what to do while I was here,” she said in 1999. “If I think about it, I do it.”

Howard Fishman is a musician and composer and the author of “To anyone who ever asks: the life, music and mystery of Connie Converse.”