Jackie Shane, A Force Of Nature Who Disappeared, Has A Story All Her Own
For years, if you were the kind of curious record hound or obscure soul fan that got a hold of Jackie Shane's phone number and called it, this is what would happen to you: The first unsolicited call got a hang-up. If you called right back, the Nashville-born rhythm and blues singer would be less polite; she'd take a whistle that she apparently kept handy, and blow it into the receiver, loud.
"It's happened to me when I don't speak up immediately," said Douglas Mcgowan, the Numero Group producer who convinced Shane to work with him on Any Other Way the first official boxed-set collection of her recordings, released this month. "Jackie will say hello and if I don't say, 'Hi Jackie it's me Douglas!'" — he said the words running together in a rush — "so that she gets that it's me right away, she'll hang up. I got the whistle blown at me once."
That kind of aggressive reclusiveness might not be what audiences would expect from a performer who had been, particularly for her time, radically visible. From her earliest adolescence Shane had known she was transgender and, blessed with a supportive and loving mom, Jessie Shane (who
