From:  Waxowilko@a... 
Date:  Tue Oct 19, 2004  4:25 pm 
Subject:  Cordell Jackson RIP

Sad news, another Memphis music pioneer has gone. I spent half a day once
at her house, a most interesting lady.

- Tony Wilkinson

Rock-and-roller Cordell Jackson acclaimed late in life
By Bill Dries

October 15, 2004

Cordell Jackson, who started her own record label in Memphis in the 1950s
and re-emerged later in life as the guitar chord-crunching "Rock-and-Roll
Granny," died Thursday evening, according to her family. She was 81.

She had been ill for nine months, said family members who were making
funeral arrangements late Thursday.

Mrs. Jackson was a rock-and-roll pioneer in a business dominated by men.
Like most musicians, she hesitated to define her style.

"Lord, I don't know what my music is. It's just Cordell music," she said in
a 1994 interview.

Born in Pontotoc, Miss., Mrs. Jackson got her first guitar when she was 12,
ordered by her father out of a mail order catalog for $8.13 a month.

Living in Memphis in the 1950s, Mrs. Jackson began showing up at Sam
Phillips's Memphis Recording Service to make recordings for herself.

When two of her Christmas recordings didn't make the cut as records on
Phillips's Sun Records label, Mrs. Jackson started her own label and called it
Moon Records.

Nashville guitar legend and producer Chet Atkins mastered all of the Memphis
record label's music and the records were pressed by RCA Victor. Atkins took
on the job after Mrs. Jackson called RCA's Nashville office and Atkins
answered the phone.

The agreement ended in 1965 as Beatlemania and the British rock invasion
eclipsed rock and roll's early American pioneers.

Mrs. Jackson happened to hear Tav Falco, the frontman of the Memphis punk
band Panther Burns, performing one of her songs in the 1980s.

Her first-ever paying gig followed shortly thereafter when Mrs. Jackson,
then 62, was paid $50 to play at the Antenna Club on Madison Avenue, the
epicenter of the city's punk rock scene.

In 1991, an advertising agency teamed her with Stray Cats guitarist Brian
Setzer for a Budweiser beer television commercial in which Mrs. Jackson
instructed the '50s revivalist how to properly crunch a guitar chord.

Appearances followed on national television that featured her
straightforward personality and music.

Last year, Mrs. Jackson was honored with a brass note on Beale Street. Mrs.
Jackson saw the note while she was walking in the entertainment district
before a ceremony could be planned to unveil it.

--Bill Dries