Boogie Woogie Country Girl: Jukebox Pearls

Illustrators: Hans Peter Zdrenka; Diethold Leu; R.A. Andreas; Horst Zimmermann; Bo Berglind.
Photographers: Hans Peter Zdrenka; Diethold Leu; R.A. Andreas; Horst Zimmermann; Bo Berglind.
Jo Ann Campbell was much more than a pretty-faced teen girl pop singer in the 1950s. She not only sang, she wrote songs, good ones, and she was an accomplished dancer, played piano and guitar, and she could belt out songs from the R&B songbook with a lusty, sexual rockabilly growl, then turn smooth and velvety as a jazz singer when she got her hands on a good ballad. She was a minor star in the late '50s and early '60s, but she should have been a bigger one, and even now, in the archival wing of the 21st century, she deserves to be much better known. Campbell's biggest hit was her answer song to Claude King's 1962 country hit "Wolverton Mountain" called "(I'm the Girl From) Wolverton Mountain," which also was a hit that same year, and led many to assume Campbell was a country singer, which she decidedly wasn't. The song isn't included in this set, but it's hardly missed, since the focus here is on her wilder rock & roll side, collecting Campbell's rowdier tracks for the Point, Eldorado, Gone, Rori, and ABC-Paramount labels recorded between 1957 and 1962. It's dynamite stuff. Given her wide-ranging talents, if she were to be active in the 21st century at her prime, Campbell would undoubtedly be a multimedia superstar, a powerful, passionate singer, songwriter, instrumentalist, and dancer with the good looks and talent to stick in anyone's memory. ~ Steve Leggett