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.

Originally from Nashville, Tennessee, she was born on May 15, 1940.

She began performing locally in the 1950s wearing long hair, make-up, and jewelry.

Initially a drummer as well as a vocalist, Shane would play drums standing up while singing.

Working in Nashville regularly as a stage performer during the late 1950s, Shane also worked in the studio as a drummer on tracks by Larry Williams, Big Maybelle, Gatemouth Brown, Little Willie John, Joe Tex, and numerous other R&B performers.

Vowing to escape the "Jim Crow South", in the late 1950s, Shane joined a traveling carnival and arrived in Cornwall, Ontario, in 1959, where she said she felt free for the first time.

Shane's drumming talent led to studio session work as a drummer, including on Lillian Offitt's "Miss You So", a track which hit #66 pop and #8 R&B on Billboard's US charts in the summer of 1957.

In 1960, Shane moved to Montreal, Quebec, 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.

Music critic Carl Wilson has speculated that, while Shane had deep and identifiable roots in the traditions of the Southern US Chitlin Circuit, the mythology about a connection to Little Richard 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.

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.

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.

Shane recorded several tracks in 1960, including a cover of Barrett Strong's "Money (That's What I Want)" and a version of Lloyd Price's "I've Really Got the Blues".

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.

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.

Shane's first issued recording was "Any Other Way" (b/w "Sticks and Stones"), recorded and issued in the fall of 1962; the song became her biggest chart hit, reaching #2 on Toronto's CHUM Chart in 1963.

It was also a hit in several US markets (including St. Louis, and Washington, D.C.), allowing it to place at #124 on Billboard's "Bubbling Under" charts in the U.S. A cover of a song previously recorded and released by William Bell in summer 1962, Shane's version of "Any Other Way" 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.

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.

Considered to be a pioneer transgender performer, 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 1963 and a modest national chart hit across Canada in 1967.

However, none of the tracks were issued at the time; they eventually came out in 1965.

In 1965, she made a television appearance in Nashville on WLAC-TV's Night Train, performing Rufus Thomas' "Walking the Dog".

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.

Also in 1965, the tracks from Shane's 1960 recording session were issued -- without Shane's prior knowledge.

Two tracks popped up on a 1965 compilation LP entitled The Original Blues Sound Of Charles Brown & Amos Milburn With Jackie Shane - Bob Marshall & The Crystals, while two others (billed to "Little Jackie Shane") were issued as a single.

Neither the single nor the album (both issued on very small, obscure labels) received much attention.

In 1967, "Any Other Way" was reissued and became a modest hit across Canada, peaking at #68 on the national RPM chart in March.

Shane subsequently returned to recording later that year, issuing the studio single "Stand Up Straight and Tall" b/w "You Are My Sunshine" (which peaked at #87 on RPM), and the live album Jackie Shane Live.

Two singles were also pulled from the live album (covers of "Knock On Wood" and "Don't Play That Song"), but none of the live material charted.

A final studio single ("Cruel Cruel World" b/w "New Way of Lovin'") was released in 1970, which also failed to chart.

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.

Shane faded in prominence after 1970–71, 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.

For a time she was rumoured to have died by suicide or to have been stabbed to death in the 1990s, 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.

She began caring for her mother, Jessie Shane, who lived in Los Angeles, before relocating to Nashville around 1996 after the death of her mother.

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.

According to filmmaker Lucah Rosenberg-Lee, who co-directed a documentary on Shane, “She identified as 'she' behind closed doors and to her mother and herself, but in the public eye there was no opportunity to do that, and no one would have understood.”