Wanda Jackson (The Queen Of Rockabilly) has enjoyed a very long and for the most part very successful career since the \u201850s.\u00a0 Discovered by Hank Thompson while she was still a teenager, Jackson quickly became an overnight success after her recordings with The Brazos Valley Boys became hits.\u00a0 By the dawn of the \u201860s, Wanda was one of America\u2019s most loved female reformers. Although her roots are firmly in the rockabilly era, she was also a fan of country music and scored many country hits as well as some fine pop songs once the swinging \u201860s caught fire stateside.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
So this year at the urging of Jack White, Jackson was coerced back into the studio to record a new album that would see her covering some of her all time favorite songs.\u00a0 White had worked a small miracle in giving Loretta Lynne a new sound and a Grammy award by producing and recording her seminal Van Lear Rose <\/i>album (from 2004), and I\u2019m sure that was his intention here. Although this album was very well received by critics and her peers and fans upon its release, for me it just lacks something that it should have, but I just can\u2019t articulate what that elusive \u201csomething\u201d is.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Jackson\u2019s iconic voice still packs a punch, but at times here (like on \u201cRip It Up\u201d), it sounds like she took a massive hit of helium before stepping into the booth.\u00a0 \u201cShakin\u2019 All Over\u201d is so heavy on the reverb that it completely kills any chance of enjoying it.\u00a0 White certainly has unleashed his full bag of tricks to keep this thing as retro sounding as possible, but \u201cat what cost?\u201d I say.\u00a0 Not all of these songs are as old as the lady herself, though; there are some contemporary ones thrown into the mix that again fail to ignite my fire, save for a couple.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cThunder On The Mountain\u201d from his highly overrated Modern Times <\/i>album just gets a shuffle run-through that could have been so much more.\u00a0 And on the late Amy Whinehouse\u2019s \u201cYou Know That I\u2019m No Good,\u201d Jackson\u2019s voice is so lost in the mix in parts (her pitch here not helping either) that its hard to decipher anything she\u2019s singing.\u00a0 Much better though are the rousing \u201cBusted\u201d and the superb version of \u201cRum And Coca-Cola,\u201d which both sound exactly like this whole album should have sounded all the way through.\u00a0 \u201cNervous Breakdown\u201d adds some punch and \u201cDust On The Bible\u201d is a nice more traditional country song recalling Jackson\u2019s glory days. <\/p>\n
My favorite track here is the romantic \u201cTeach Me Tonight\u201d which sounds as timeless as a \u201850s classic should, and for once White didn\u2019t do too much with his arrangement here and even dropped a fine solo into the mix.\u00a0 But really, the bad, overcooked elements of this album unfortunately outweigh the good stuff to be found here. If anything, The Party Ain\u2019t Over <\/i>proves that Jackson still has some fire in her belly and I wouldn\u2019t mind hearing more from her in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":30828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8777],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-42502","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-wanda-jackson","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42502"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}