Cordell Jackson: the first woman in America to start her own record label
In recent years, significant and vital strides have been taken to address the institutionalised gender imbalance within the music industry. Since the very beginning, the industry has been a boy’s club that has refused to take female artists or industry executives seriously. The situation might be improving today, albeit still with a long way to go, but back in the 1950s, there was little hope for women in music. It was down to individual women like Cordell Jackson to make a name for themselves.
Rock and roll music blossomed during the mid-1950s all across the United States of America, with young audiences everywhere transfixed by this rebellious new sound. For the most part, though, this exciting new scene was dominated by male artists – the likes of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, or Fats Domino. There were certainly female artists adopting a rockabilly sound, but these artists often struggled to make a name for themselves, given the fact that the entire music industry was owned and operated by other men.
The sad reality was that if a woman wanted to break into the music industry itself, she could only do so in a clerical role, as an assistant or secretary. Mississippi-born Cordell Jackson, on the other hand, set her sights much higher than that. Growing up in a musical family, Jackson had been able to play guitar and piano since her early years. What’s more, she had a fascination with technology, so when Jackson and her husband settled in Memphis during the 1940s, they installed recording equipment in their home.
It was through this recording equipment that Jackson created demos for Sam Phillips, who would later find fame as the founder of Sun Records, the label that discovered Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash, among various others. So, when the rock and roll explosion happened during the mid-1950s, Jackson called upon Phillips to help her release some of her own material through Sun Records. However, the male-dominated roster of the label seemingly had no place for her.
Undeterred, Jackson chose instead to form her own record label, Moon Records, in 1956. With guidance from RCA’s Chet Atkins, Jackson began to record and release her own records from her home in Tennessee in an eerily similar fashion to labels like Rough Trade or Factory, which would dominate the indie label scene of the 1970s and 1980s. In addition to Jackson’s work, Moon also released music by the likes of Allen Page, Barney Burcham, and Joe Wallace.
Among the most interesting grassroots labels of the rockabilly age, Moon offered an alternative to the mainstream sounds of Sun Records. Sure, Jackson’s home recordings weren’t quite as polished, and they were never at risk of troubling the mainstream music charts, but they were imbued with the kind of passion and honesty that can only come from an independent record label.
Between 1956 and 1960, Moon Records released a handful of seven-inch singles, almost all of which are now like gold dust to dedicated collectors of rockabilly vinyl. The very first release, Jackson’s ‘Rock and Roll Christmas’ is a particular favourite among the cult followers of obscure rockabilly.
During the 1980s, Jackson reactivated Moon Records to release some more of her own material. This time around, the tireless songwriter and queen of DIY music found a little more mainstream success, thanks to the support of figures like Alex Chilton and Tev Falco. Moon remained active in some capacity until the songwriter’s death in 2004, making it Memphis’ longest-running label at the time of her passing.
Not only did Jackson manage to record and release some of the most inventive and obscure rockabilly records of the 1950s, but she also proved that rock and roll was genderless. Rejected by the mainstream, she never gave up on her hopes or aspirations, choosing instead to do it all herself. It is that same inherent attitude which has fostered some of music’s most important artists and movements, but it all started with Cordell Jackson, the very first woman to start a record label in America.
