Monday October 18, 2004

Cordell Jackson 1923-2004

I was sad to hear that Cordell Jackson passed away last week. Her funeral is being held today in Memphis. She was 81.

While Jackson was best known as the “Rock ‘N’ Roll Granny” who schooled Brian Setzer in a 1991 Budweiser commercial, that’s just the tip of her biography. As a young rockabilly babe (the early publicity still to the left confirms the last part), she launched Moon Records as a response to Sam Phillips’ Sun label, and she continued to operate the company off and on for more than four decades. The ’80s saw a revival of Jackson’s music — spearheaded by local musicians like Alex Chilton and Tav Falco, whose band Panther Burns covered the early Moon side “Dateless Night” — which eventually set the stage for her fame-making appearance with Setzer.

I visited her once at her lemon yellow house in North Memphis — she had a lemon yellow Cadillac to match — which she had turned into a museum of sorts. She gave tours of her home every August, as long as you called ahead first. She played a song while I was there — “Midnight Rodeo” from Live in Chicago — and she was one of those performers who seemed entirely transformed by her music. She was sweet and devoutly religious, but musically she was raw and fierce. A true original.