Hmm, choosing a first LP to review for the new year after putting away the decorations and all the lights that have hitherto been holding the slough of despond at bay, is not so easy. I need something smooth, gentle, classy and smoochy … damn, can’t find a single one of those so I’ll just have to go with the one where the lady compares the power of her orgasm to an atom bomb and a volcano instead. Go Wanda!
I've been to Nagasaki, Hiroshima too
The same I did to them baby I can do to you
Cause I'm a Fujiyama mama and I'm just about to blow my top
Fujiyama-yama, Fujiyama
And when I start erupting ain't nobody gonna make me stop
We certainly are Rockin’ With Wanda tonight. Wanda Jackson that is still Maud, Oklahoma’s finest daughter at the age of 87. Rockin’ With Wanda issued in 1960 is by far her best compilation of rockabilly recordings*.
Jackson started out as a country singer and then veered into the excitement of rockabilly influenced by, touring with (and briefly dating) a young Elvis Aaron P. After a slew of sometimes incendiary singles she shifted back into country mode and some less exciting stuff, but this is what really counts.
I drink a quart of sake
Smoke dynamite
I chase it with tobaccy** and then shoot out the light
Cause I'm a Fujiyama mama and I'm just about to blow my top
Wanda Jackson was the third artist to record ‘Fujiyama Mama’ but she just owns it with her unbridled, slightly crazed, throaty voice. It’s astonishing for 1957, hell its still a bit out there for 2025. Twelve years on from Little Boy and Fat Man this crazy chick is comparing the power of her orgasm to them.
Well you can talk about me
Say that I'm mean
I'll blow your head off baby with Nitroglycerine
Cause I'm a Fujiyama mama and I'm just about to blow my top
That it received almost no airplay is not at all a shock, that it was a #1 single in Japan for 6 MONTHS SOLID is! Those cats were just real gone.
Okay so this is a typically lop-sided review from me, but lets look at the other goodies on Rockin’ With Wanda:
Mean Mean Man – real low down fun, that voice just does things for me. Great guitar too.
I Gotta Know – really primitive country rockabilly bop.
Honey Bop – a borderline Elvis impersonation. I question whether the dance in question was actually a dance, or something more anatomically-based.
You’re The One For Me – more polished but rather slinky as a result; see also ‘Did You Miss Me’.
Yup there are a couple of comparative clunkers in there, but that’s not what I’m here for. my copy of Rockin’ With Wanda is a Wax Time reissue and loaded with four additional bangers, all of which are excellent – particularly ‘Funnel Of Love’ and ‘Riot In Cell Block #9’.
I have really enjoyed Rockin’ With Wanda this week, every week. It has been a great way to kick down the doors to 2025 and has made me all nostalgic for a 1950’s adolescence I still feel that I am owed somehow; and by that I obviously mean a 1950’s adolescence shorn of all the bits that would be repugnant to a 21st century pinko like myself.
Rockabilly Wanda is a brilliant and powerful thing, it must have been so exhilarating and shocking to hear her at the time too. I also like the way that she broke into the boys’ club of that genre and time, sure she was managed like every star turn was back then but that untutored wildness in her voice? its as primal and real as it gets.
Anyway I’m off to do a certain dance, see you down at the sock hop.
Well, once they had a dance they called the bunny-hop
Now the cats are in a trance, all they wanna do is bop
1262 Down.
*missing only ‘Hard-headed Woman’ to be perfecto.
**use of the word ‘tobaccy’ merits the immediate award of 2,000,000 bonus points to Ms Jackson. She may have just won music, for ever.
