Conference napalm::guitar

2449.0. "You're pretty good....NOT!" by SAHQ::ROSENKRANZ (Less is More) Mon Feb 24 1992 09:58

                Guitar Granny in TV ad really rocks

                        by  Jennifer Biggs


     Memphis- Cordell Jackson is about what you would expect
from  a  demure  grandmother:  She's a soft-spoken, retiring
sort; a homebody who likes to play bridge,  fry  chicken  on
Sundays, shell peas and pick posies from her Garden.

     NOT!

     She's the 68 year old guitar granny who looks like Min-
nie  Pearl,  talks  like Wayne and Garth and stars in a sur-
realistic beer commercial in which she shows Brian Setzer of
the Stray Cats how to do his thing.

     "Crunch that last chord!" she shouts to  the  wide-eyed
guitarist.  Then  after  jamming  with  the hard-rocking Mr.
Setzer, Ms. Jackson tells him: "You're pretty good....NOT!"

     And the craziest thing about the commercial is that Ms.
Jackson knows of what she speaks. She's a big-time, get-down
guitar picker who ranked 19th in Spin Magazine's "35  Guitar
Gods"  rating,  following  Jeff Beck and well ahead of Jerry
Garcia of the Grateful Dead.

     She spends more time flying on airplanes, talking on TV
shows  and  picking  her electric Hagstrom on stage than she
does in her own kitchen.

     The Budweiser commercial  made  its  debut  during  the
world  series. And Ms. Jackson has been on "The Arsenio Hall
Show," "Late Night  with  David  Letterman,"  "Entertainment
Tonight"  and "Regis and Kathie Lee." She's also featured on
a line  of  Cordell  Jackson/Budweiser  T-shirts  that  say,
"You're pretty good.....NOT!"

     In fact, however, she's pretty good....period.

     In 1989, New York filmmaker Dan Rose  saw  Ms.  Jackson
perform  in  Hobeken,  N.J.,  and  offered  to film her. The
resulting video, "The Split," won him an award at the Inter-
national Film and TV Festival of New York in 1990.

     Peter McCarty, a St. Louis ad man, first saw Ms.  Jack-
son  on  TV. "I was in the next room and I heard the riff of
the guitar. I thought it was a catchy little tune and ran in
the  room.  When  I  saw  who  was playing it my jaw hit the
floor."

     He later saw her perform in St. Louis  and  "became  an
instant  fan,"  he  said.   "Once  this  project came up for
Budweiser,  it  seemed  pretty  easy  to  put  two  and  two
together."

     An overnight success?

     "Yeah, I'm an overnight success," she  said.  "After  a
42-year night.

     Ms. Jackson started picking as a 12 year old in  Ponto-
toc, Miss. when her father, an accomplished violinist bought
her first guitar.

     People told her that little girls don't play  the  gui-
tar,  she  said.  "But  I  would  just look at them and say,
'Well, I do.'"

     Six months after she got the guitar, she  started  per-
forming with her father's band.

     "When he would go on concert,"  Ms.  Jackson  said,  "I
would  come in and just play and sing one all by myself, and
I'd steal the show. But that was because there were no  lit-
tle girls playing the guitar. I had no competition then. And
I don't have too much now."

     Still, acceptance didn't come easily for a girl who not
only played the guitar, but made it smoke.

     "I have played high-energy since I was 12. I would  rip
up  'Red  river  valley'  and my daddy caught me one day. He
said, 'Young lady, what are you doing?' I  said,  `I'm  just
monkeying  around.'  And  he  said,  'Well,  I'll monkey you
around, because that's now how that music goes.'"

     Ms. Jackson moved to Memphis in 1943 to try to make  it
big  in  the  music  business.  She later hooked up with Sam
Phillips and Memphis Recording Service, later Sun Studio.

     "I tease him [Mr. Phillips], saying he made it  because
I spent so much money down there making demos. I don't think
anybody made more demos than I did."

     Ms. Jackson said Mr. Phillips offered her a contract in
1954  but  wanted to wait a year for financial reasons. "But
then when next year came, Jerry Lee [Lewis] had done  'Crazy
Arms'  and Phillips didn't have time. Now, he wasn't blowing
me off insincerely, you know. He was just small back then."

     Mr Phillips said he doesn't recall offering her a  con-
tract  but that he certainly encouraged her. "I admired Cor-
dell because she was so persistent," he  said.  "This  woman
was a ambitious as anyone you've ever seen in your life."

     Her ambition impressed his as much as  her  music,  she
said.  "For  that  reason,  I probably listened to her music
more than any other person who was  writing  songs  back  in
that era."

     When it became obvious she wasn't going to  be  signed,
Ms.  Jackson  did the unthinkable for a woman in the 1950s -
she started her own label, Moon records.

     "When I went in business producing records, I  guess  I
got  laughed at far more than Jimmy Durante ever got laughed
at for his nose," she said.

     She recorded "Rock & Roll Christmas," the label's first
cut, in 1956.  By the end of the '50s, she had released sin-
gles by other artists, including "Dateless Night"  by  Allen
Page, which hit big on the Florida charts in 1958. "Dateless
Night" has since been recorded  by  five  other  labels,  in
Memphis and abroad.

     She says she wasn't influenced by anyone  except  maybe
Chuck  Berry.  "I like the sound that Chuck Berry would tune
in when he played, and I was attracted by his energy."

     Her own sound  is  simply  extraordinary.  An  upcoming
instrumental  release,  "Three Point Play," is rockabilly at
its wildest -an explosive mix of surf music, twangy  country
and a Monkees-style chase sequence.

     "Kind of like classical to a  barnyard  disaster,"  she
says.

     Ms. Jackson, the 1991 Memphis  Musician  of  the  Year,
still lives in the lemon-yellow ranch house she and her hus-
band built in the 1950s, and she drives  a  matching  lemon-
yellow  Cadillac.  She  allows she doesn't need anything she
doesn't already have.

     "The only thing that's changed  about  me  is  my  bank
account," she says.

     But success may have affected her memory a  bit.  She's
been reported to have 10 granchildren - but actually has 11.

     "Well, I've been telling the media 10," she said. "Dana
[her  son]  came  here  in  the  office one day and he says,
'Well, Mother you keep telling

     The teetotaling Ms. Jackson isn't sure if there will be
another Budweiser commercial, but said she loved filming the
first one.

     Her immediate future holds the release of a  new  video
and  a  new  album.  And she has a role in a new movie, "The
Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag."

     "I got the fun part in it," she  said.  "I've  got  one
scene where I get caught in the restroom and Betty Lou comes
in and shoots the mirrors out. I come out screaming and lose
my drawers."

     I'm gonna write some script, and they'll probably  make
me  do  it  over, but I'm going to try to keep 'em off while
I'm running.  That's me for ya - the unexpected."


[re-produced without permission The Atlanta Journal/Constitution 2/23/92]












































                     February 24, 1992

        Nice story  -  is  anyone  else  getting overdosed on the "NOT"
        thing that's becoming incessant?
        

    Doesn't really bother me ... 8^)

    I think this woman is TOO COOL!
    
    ...and the not thing isn't so bad, either. 

I died laughing when I saw that ad not only because the granny was
hilarious, but I hadn't heard anybody say that since I was
in High School in Chapel Hill, NC (back in 1972-3-therabouts). 
We used to say that all the time (without the pause before the
"NOT"). And (i kid you NOT) we'd also say the double negative:
   Hey, that's not funny NOT! (which sounds pretty stupid 
in retrospect but seemed hilarious at the time).

You were a captive audience so I thought I'd relate this.
I knew you'd be interested...


                              ...NOT!
(but what the h*%#??)

    
    re: .1 
    
    NOT! ;-)
    
    guy

        Oh well  - hard to soar with eagles when you're earthbound with
        turkeys! ;*)
        
        Andy
        

    Wasn't this lady in Guitar Player about 6 months ago (can't remember
    the issue, and I've probably pitched it by now...) ?
    
    Jim

    That blows me away, I thought she was just an actress!
    
    HAHAHAHA!!!!
    
    I love it!
    
    Greg