Jackie Shane

Jackie Shane (May 15, 1940 – February 21, 2019) was an American soul and rhythm and blues singer, who was most prominent in the local music scene of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in the 1960s. Considered to be a pioneer transgender performer,[1] she was a contributor to the Toronto Sound and is best known for the single Any Other Way, which was a regional Top 10 hit in Toronto in 1962 and a modest national chart hit across Canada in 1967.[2]

Jackie Shane
Born(1940-05-15)May 15, 1940
Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
DiedFebruary 21, 2019(2019-02-21) (aged 78)
Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
GenresR&B, soul
Occupation(s)Singer
External video
Jackie Shane - Walking The Dog - 1965 R&B

Background

Originally from Nashville, Tennessee,[3] she was born on May 15, 1940. She began performing locally in the 1950s wearing long hair, make-up, and jewellery. Vowing to escape the "Jim Crow South",[4] in the late 1950s, she joined a travelling carnival and arrived in Cornwall, Ontario, in 1959, where she said she felt free for the first time.[5]

In 1960, Shane moved to Montreal, Quebec,[3] where saxophonist "King" Herbert Whitaker invited her along to watch the popular band Frank Motley and his Motley Crew at the Esquire Show Bar. Shane showed up and sat down near the front. When Motley said, "Get that kid up here and let's see what he can do," pianist Curley Bridges invited Shane, then still presenting as a man, onstage for the next set, where she performed songs by Ray Charles and Bobby "Blue" Bland.[4]

She was soon the band's lead vocalist, and relocated to Toronto with them in late 1961. She returned several times to the United States, on tour with the Motley Crew (to Boston, for example, where they recorded), to New York to record, to visit her family and old friends and perform on a TV show in Nashville, or to live and work in Los Angeles where she played drums in recording sessions.[3][5] A fan mythology linked her to Little Richard, including claims that she had been Richard's backing vocalist before moving to Canada or even that she was Richard's cousin, although no verification of either claim has ever been found and no evidence exists that Shane ever made either claim herself.[6] Music critic Carl Wilson has concluded that, while in reality Shane had deep and identifiable roots in the traditions of the Southern US Chitlin Circuit, the mythology emerged because that scene's traditions were not known to Torontonians in the 1960s, and thus Little Richard was the only antecedent for Shane's performing style that most of her local fan base could identify.[6]

Throughout her active musical career and for many years thereafter, Shane was written about by nearly all sources as a man who performed in ambiguous clothing that strongly suggested femininity, with some sources even directly labeling her as a drag queen.[7] The few sources that actually sought out her own words on the matter of her own gender identification were more ambiguous, however; she identified herself as male in two early quotes to the Toronto Star, but more often appeared to simply dodge questions about her gender altogether.[8] Her identity as a trans woman was not confirmed on the record by a media outlet until music journalist Elio Iannacci interviewed her for The Globe and Mail in 2017.[9]

Recording career

She released her first single, a cover of Barrett Strong's "Money (That's What I Want)", in 1962. "I've Really Got the Blues" was the single's B-side. Shortly thereafter, the same label released an alternate version of the single on which "Money" was relegated to the B-side, while a different recording of "I've Really Got the Blues", with a few revised lyrics and the alternate title "Have You Ever Had the Blues?", became the A-side.[10]

She followed up with "Any Other Way" (b/w "Sticks and Stones") later the same year, in the fall of 1962; the song became her biggest chart hit, reaching #2 on Toronto's CHUM Chart in 1963.[8] A cover of a song previously recorded and released by William Bell in summer 1962, Shane's version was noted for adding a different spin to the lyric "Tell her that I'm happy/tell her that I'm gay"; while the original lyric intended the word "gay" in its older meaning as a synonym of "happy", Shane played on the word's double meaning, which was not yet in mainstream usage.[3]

The follow-up single to "Any Other Way" was "In My Tenement" b/w "Comin' Down." It received some airplay in upstate New York, but did not chart elsewhere in the US or Canada, and Shane did not record again for several years.

In 1962, Shane was performing at Toronto's Saphire Tavern, specializing in covers of songs by Ray Charles and Bobby Bland.[11] In 1965, she made a television appearance in Nashville on WLAC-TV's Night Train, performing Rufus Thomas' "Walking the Dog".[8] Around the same time, she was offered an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, but refused as the booking was made conditional on her presenting as male.[12]

In 1967, "Any Other Way" was reissued and became a modest hit across Canada, peaking at #68 on the national RPM chart in March.[6] Shane subsequently returned to recording later that year, issuing the single "Stand Up Straight and Tall" b/w "You Are My Sunshine", and the live album Jackie Shane Live.[10] A final single, "Cruel Cruel World" b/w "New Way of Lovin'", was released in 1969.[3]

In addition to her own recordings, Shane also appeared on Motley's album Honkin' at Midnight, performing live versions of some of the singles she had released under her own name.[13]

Shane faded in prominence after 1970–71,[3] with even her own former bandmates losing touch with her; soon after returning to Los Angeles, she turned down an offer to be a part of George Clinton's band Funkadelic.[14] She began caring for her mother, Jessie Shane,[5] who lived in Los Angeles, before relocating to Nashville around 1996 after the death of her mother.[15]

For a time she was rumoured to have committed suicide or to have been stabbed to death in the 1990s,[6] but in fact she had retired from music, and moved home to Nashville from Los Angeles. She kept in touch with Frank Motley, who put a Toronto record collector in touch with her in the mid 1990s. This news was relayed to a small number of her old musician friends, a couple of whom contacted her. One, Steve Kennedy, discussed with Shane the possibility of organizing and staging a reunion concert, but this never materialized — the next time Kennedy called the same phone number, it had been reassigned to somebody else who had never heard of Shane.[3]

Post-career attention

CBC Radio's Inside the Music aired a documentary feature, "I Got Mine: The Story of Jackie Shane", in 2010.[3] At the time, nobody involved in the documentary, the executive producer of which was Steve Kennedy's wife, had been able to determine whether Shane was still alive;[3] but she was subsequently found, still living in Nashville.[13]

Footage of Shane in performance also appeared in Bruce McDonald's 2011 documentary television series Yonge Street: Toronto Rock & Roll Stories.[16]

Jackie Shane Live was reissued as a bootleg in 2011 on Vintage Music as Live at the Saphire Tavern, although the reissue was inaccurately labelled as being from 1963. Several of the original songs covered in the set list were release much later in the 1960's.[17][10] A compilation bootleg of the studio singles and rarities, Soul Singles Classics, was released the same year.[10] OPM subsequently reissued the album under its original title.

In 2015, the Polaris Music Prize committee shortlisted Jackie Shane Live as one of the nominees for the 1960s–1970s component of its inaugural Heritage Award to honour classic Canadian albums.[18] It did not win, but has been renominated in subsequent years.

In 2017, a group of Toronto writers published the essay anthology Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer, a history of LGBT culture in Toronto; in addition to taking its title from Shane's 1962 single, the book includes an essay devoted specifically to Shane.[9]

In the summer of 2017, the reissue label Numero Group announced that they would be releasing a double-LP/CD compilation of Shane's music, Any Other Way, on October 20, 2017.[19] The album marked the first time since her final single in 1969 that Shane was directly involved in the production and release of a reissue of her music.[9] The album was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Historical Album category.[20] In a revealing interview with Elio Iannacci of The Globe and Mail,[21] Shane stated she was planning to return to Toronto to perform live for the first time in nearly five decades.[22]

In 2019, Shane granted a broadcast interview to CBC Radio One's Q. The interview was conducted by Elaine Banks, who had been the producer and host of "I Got Mine", and was Shane's first broadcast interview since the end of her performing career.[15] In the interview, she confirmed that she returned home to the United States to take care of her ailing mother, but stated that she regretted not having chosen to bring her mother to Toronto instead.[15]

Death

Shane died in her sleep, at her home in Nashville, on February 21, 2019.[1][23] Her death was reported to media the following day.[24]

Discography

Singles
  • "Money (That's What I Want)" b/w "I've Really Got the Blues" (1962)
  • "Have You Ever Had the Blues?" b/w "Money (That's What I Want)" (1962)
  • "Any Other Way" b/w "Sticks and Stones" (1962)
  • "In My Tenement" b/w "Comin' Down" (1963)
  • "Stand Up Straight and Tall" b/w "You Are My Sunshine" (1967)
  • "Cruel Cruel World" b/w "New Way of Lovin'" (1969)

Albums
  • Jackie Shane Live (Caravan Records, 1967)
  • Honkin' at Midnight (2000, bootleg, with Frank Motley and his Motley Crew)
  • Live at the Saphire Tavern (2011, bootleg)
  • Soul Singles Classics (2011, bootleg)
  • Jackie Shane Live (2015, reissue)

Compilations
  • "Slave for You Baby" and "Chickadee" on The Original Blues Sound of Charles Brown & Amos Milburn with Jackie Shane-Bob Marshall & The Crystals (Grand Prix/Pickwick, 1965)
  • Any Other Way (Numero Group, 2017)

References
  1. "Jackie Shane, pioneering transgender soul singer, dies at 78". CBC News, February 22, 2019.
  2. "A brief history of queer music in Toronto". BlogTO, November 29, 2014.
  3. "I Got Mine: The Story of Jackie Shane". CBC Radio, February 28, 2010. Archived August 8, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
  4. "Jackie Shane, A Force Of Nature Who Disappeared, Has A Story All Her Own". NPR. October 25, 2017. Retrieved March 2, 2019.
  5. "Toronto soul musician Jackie Shane returns to spotlight with Grammy nomination". rabble.ca. January 3, 2019. Retrieved March 2, 2019.
  6. Carl Wilson, "I Bet Your Mama Was a Tent Show Queen". Hazlitt, April 22, 2013.
  7. "Toronto Historical Jukebox Plays the Sounds of Our Past". Torontoist, January 29, 2014.
  8. Steven Maynard, "A New Way of Lovin': Queer Toronto Gets Schooled by Jackie Shane". Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer. Coach House Books, 2017. ISBN 9781552453483. pp. 11–20.
  9. "Searching for Jackie Shane, R&B’s lost transgender superstar". The Globe and Mail, May 19, 2017.
  10. Jackie Shane at CanadianBands.com.
  11. Martin Aston (October 13, 2016). Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache: How Music Came Out. Little, Brown Book Group. p. 104. ISBN 978-1-4721-2245-2.
  12. "Jackie Shane: remembering the groundbreaking trans soul singer". The Guardian, February 25, 2019.
  13. Jackie Shane at Queer Music Heritage.
  14. Mertens, Max (August 13, 2017). "Jackie Shane "Any Other Way" Review". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on August 17, 2017.
  15. "Jackie Shane in her own words: A rare interview with a living legend". Q, February 8, 2019.
  16. "The Strip's musical heyday; Documentary 'Yonge Street – Toronto Rock &Roll Stories' uncovers an era when 'truth was stranger than the publicity'". The Telegraph-Journal, March 21, 2011.
  17. discogs.com
  18. "Polaris Music Prize Announces Heritage Prize Nominees". Exclaim!, September 18, 2015.
  19. "Jackie Shane, Soul Singer and Trans Rights Pioneer, Announces Numero Group Compilation". Pitchfork. August 2, 2017. Retrieved August 3, 2017.
  20. "Drake, Shawn Mendes, Diana Krall among Canadians up for Grammys". CBC News, December 7, 2018.
  21. Iannacci, Elio (October 27, 2017). "Jackie Shane's Coming Home". The Globe and Mail.
  22. "Jackie Shane's coming home". Retrieved 2020-02-07.
  23. "Jackie Shane, Soul Singer and Transgender Pioneer, Dead at 78". Pitchfork. February 22, 2019.
  24. Liam Stack, "Jackie Shane, Transgender Pioneer of 1960s Soul Music, Dies at 78". The New York Times, February 22, 2019.
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