Alternative country meets the rockabilly revival meets California guitar virtuosity in the music of Rosie Flores. Since the late '70s, guitarist, singer, and songwriter Flores has been an important figure on the roots music scene in both Austin, Texas and Los Angeles. She's a hard-working, independently minded artist who's well-respected for her gritty, energetic vocals and fiery guitar solos. First making her name in bands like Rosie & the Screamers and the Screaming Sirens who played punk rock with a twangy touch, Flores showed off her knack for Bakersfield-style retro-country with her self-titled 1987 album. While capable of playing slick enough for any Nashville producer, Flores devoted most of her subsequent recording career to music that celebrated the sounds of the honky tonk (1992's After the Farm and 1999's Dance Hall Dreams), dug deep into her passion for rockabilly (1995's Rockabilly Filly, which included guest appearances from Wanda Jackson and Janis Martin, and 1997's A Little Bit of Heartache, a duet set with Ray Campi), or mixed up her myriad influences in rock, country, and even jazz (2001's Speed of Sound and 2012's Working Girl's Guitar).

A native of San Antonio, Flores moved to San Diego with her family when she was 12. Her family encouraged her singing and guitar playing, and as a girl she soaked up the sounds of southern California -- surf guitar, country and country-rock, blues, and rockabilly-flavored garage rock. By the time she was in her teens, Flores was playing in a band called Penelope's Children. During the first explosion of punk rock in the late '70s Flores formed Rosie & the Screamers, an otherwise all-male band that played hard country and rockabilly material, much of it written by Flores herself. She worked as a solo acoustic artist for a time but then formed an all-female punk band, the Screaming Sirens, who recorded the album Fiesta in 1984.

In 1987 Flores recorded her first solo album, Rosie Flores, produced by Pete Anderson (Dwight Yoakam's producer and guitarist) and released by Warner Bros.. The album gained critical acclaim, and among music-industry folk a Flores concert remains a strong draw to this day. But it was only modestly successful commercially, and Flores was dropped by Warner Bros.. She signed with the California independent label Hightone and in 1992 she released her second solo album, After the Farm, followed by Once More with Feeling a year later. These albums featured original songs by Flores, her own sharp guitar leads, and crackerjack session work from a variety of Los Angeles veterans. Flores then spent the better part of 1994 playing lead guitar in Butch Hancock's band.

In 1995 Flores recorded Rockabilly Filly, a spirited tribute to the music she grew up with. The album featured duets with her longtime idols Wanda Jackson and Janis Martin, both of whom Flores brought out of retirement for the project. The album led to a cross-country tour with Jackson, who hadn't played in nightclubs in over 20 years. In 1997, Rounder re-released her Warner Bros. debut along with six new bonus tracks under the title Honky Tonk Reprise, helping to sustain the momentum of her career. That same year, the Austin label Watermelon released her duet project with Ray Campi, entitled A Little Bit of Heartache. In the late '90s, Flores moved to the folk-oriented Massachusetts label Rounder, pushing the stylistic mix of her music slightly in the direction of rockabilly but not really changing course. The 1999 live album Dance Hall Dreams was recorded at a San Antonio country club and featured several of the top session players Flores has always been able to attract, among them Texas steel guitar stalwart Cyndi Cashdollar. Flores released Speed of Sound on the Eminent label two years later, offering yet more original songs as well as a scorching cover of Buck Owens' rockabilly classic "Hot Dog." Flores offered her fans an intimate perspective on her music with the solo acoustic live set Single Rose in 2004, and an album of country- and rockabilly-styled holiday favorites, Christmasville, followed in 2005.

After a short hiatus, in 2009, Flores celebrated over two decades of recording with Girl of the Century, an album recorded with the Mekons' Jon Langford and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts for Bloodshot Records. Her raucous 11th album, Working Girl's Guitar, which appeared in 2012, was the first in which she handled all the production and guitar leads herself. With 2019's Simple Case of the Blues, Flores put the focus on her love of blues and vintage R&B, covering classic tunes by Wilson Pickett and Roy Brown along with a fresh batch of originals steeped in the classic styles. When not on the road, Flores gigs regularly in Austin, Texas with the Blue Moon Jazz Quartet as well as her more roots-oriented project the Rhythm Rockers. ~ James Manheim

Janis Martin was a unique figure in the history of rockabilly -- there were other women working in that male-dominated field (Lorrie Collins for one), but Martin was the one dubbed "the Female Elvis Presley" by RCA, reportedly with the approval of Colonel Tom Parker. This was probably the kiss of death, evoking images so contradictory that no one could really hold it properly in their mind. The fact that she was signed to RCA probably didn't hurt, but as a hot-rocking female in a field where men's libidinal gyrations weren't approved, she had too many strikes against her for a lasting career. She was good, though, and she left behind the records to prove it.

Martin was born in Sutherlin, VA, in 1940 and had a stage mother on one side and a father and uncle who were amateur musicians on the other, a mix that practically made her predestined for a performing career. She was playing and singing before age five. By six, she'd mastered chords on her junior-sized guitar and was singing in a style influenced by Eddy Arnold and Hank Williams. She became a fixture in local talent contests and won all of them. Martin was playing and singing on the WDVA Barndance out of Virginia by age 11. By her mid-teens, she'd appeared alongside the likes of Ernest Tubb, the Carter Family, Sonny James, and Jean Shepard.

Her amazing amount of experience for one so young helped push her into rock & roll. It turned out that Martin had tired of country music by her mid-teens, especially the slow ballads, having been doing them for a decade. Her timing was perfect, for she discovered R&B in the mid-'50s and was soon bringing that material into her own song lists. RCA A&R chief Steve Sholes heard one of her demos and Martin was signed to the label at age 15, only two months after Elvis was signed up.

"Drugstore Rock 'n Roll," a Martin original, was her debut record and her biggest hit, selling some 750,000 copies. By the middle of 1956, she was making the rounds of the Today Show, The Tonight Show, and other variety programs, as well as appearing on the Grand Ole Opry, and was voted Most Promising Female Vocalist in Billboard, the record industry's bible.

Some of the "Female Elvis" publicity rebounded fairly early, as fans felt she was hooking herself and her style of singing to him as a means of exploitation. Ironically, for all of the publicity that seemed to link them, and her recording of the single "My Boy Elvis" at the insistence of her management, plus the fact that they used the same session musicians and shared the same country-cum-R&B interests, Martin never saw the Memphis Flash perform until he made it to national television. By that time her own performing style -- amazingly similar to his, but developed independently -- was established and locked down. Additionally, she only met Elvis twice, both times very briefly, with hardly a word exchanged. The two found themselves converging on a similar point.

For all of her early success, Martin was never able to sustain a rock & roll career, mostly because of her gender and the changing times. Her stage moves and lusty delivery appeared unseemly (or so people said, especially on the country circuit) in a girl, once the initial furor and enthusiasm for rock & roll quieted down. Additionally, the country shows on which she was booked usually put her on bills and in front of audiences that weren't overly enamored of rock & roll to begin with, and Martin found herself caught between conflicting currents. Her record company and management wanted her to keep pushing rockabilly in her stage act, while promoters doing the bookings preferred that she do straight country.

Martin might have finessed it all but for a personal situation that came up in 1958. She'd been secretly married since 1956, and her husband was stationed overseas in the army; she went on a European tour and got to see him in 1958. The result was that the 17-year-old rockabilly star became pregnant and was dropped by the label in short order.

Martin tried to keep a music career going and was courted by both King Records and Decca Records before signing with a Belgian-owned label called Palette, for which she cut four sides in 1960. She was on her second marriage by then, and husband number two (whom she later divorced) didn't take well to her career. She withdrew from music except for appearances near her home in Virginia and then in the 1970s, on her own again, formed her own band, the Variations, and toured Europe, where she encountered strikingly enthusiastic audiences, ready to embrace her as though it were still 1958.

She continued to figure in some Elvis-related discographies, thanks to "My Boy Elvis" and also as a result of a 1959 South African album called Janis and Elvis, a 2,000 dollar collectible that was heavily bootlegged in the late '70s. Martin's RCA records, however, were forgotten and neglected by the company (which, in those days, could hardly reissue an Elvis recording without screwing it up in some way). In the 1980s, Bear Family Records finally gathered together Martin's complete recorded history on one CD, entitled, appropriately enough, The Female Elvis, making her ultra-rare sides easily available for the first time in decades. ~ Bruce Eder

Wanda Jackson enjoyed a long and successful career singing country and gospel material, but her most ardent fans celebrate her as the Queen of Rockabilly, one of the first women who found fame singing rock & roll and among the most powerful voices the music ever produced. Jackson sang with a passion, fire, and spirit that set her apart from most female vocalists of the day, and tunes like "Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad," "Fujiyama Mama," and "Let's Have a Party" showed she was as forceful as any of rock & roll's male stars. She would enjoy more lasting success when she shifted to country sounds in the early 1960s, and her C&W and later gospel sides would reveal a warmth and emotional depth that left no doubt she was a major talent. 1960's Rockin' with Wanda! is a superb set of rockabilly and early rock performances, 2006's The Very Best of the Country Years is a well-curated sampling of her C&W period, 1972's Praise the Lord was one of the first and strongest of her spiritual efforts, and 2021's Encore showed that she was still full of fire at the age of 83.

Wanda Jackson was born in Maud, Oklahoma on October 20, 1937. Her father Tom -- himself a country singer who quit when the Depression derailed his career -- moved the family to California in 1941. He bought Wanda her first guitar two years later, gave her lessons, and encouraged her to play piano as well. In addition, Tom took her to see such acts as Tex Williams, Spade Cooley, and Bob Wills, which left a lasting impression on her young mind. Tom moved the family back to Oklahoma City when his daughter was 12 years old. In 1952, she won a local talent contest and was given a 15-minute daily show on KLPR. The program, soon upped to 30 minutes, lasted throughout Jackson's teenage years. She was only halfway through high school when, in 1954, country singer Hank Thompson heard her on an Oklahoma City radio show and asked her to record with his band, the Brazos Valley Boys. Jackson recorded several songs with the combo, including "You Can't Have My Love," a duet with Thompson's bandleader, Billy Gray. The song, on the Decca label, became a national hit, and Jackson's career was off and running. She had wanted to sign with Capitol, Thompson's label, but was turned down, so she signed with Decca instead.

Jackson insisted on finishing high school before hitting the road, and when she did, her father came with her. Her mother sewed and helped design her stage outfits, and she would later say, "I was the first one to put some glamour in the country music -- fringe dresses, high heels, long earrings." When Jackson began touring in earnest in 1955 and 1956, she was placed on a bill with Elvis Presley, and the two hit it off almost immediately. Jackson said it was Presley, along with her father, who encouraged her to sing rockabilly; she and Elvis also dated for a while, and it's said that he asked her to marry him, but she turned him down.

In 1956, Jackson finally signed with Capitol, a relationship that lasted until the early '70s. Her recording career bounced back and forth between country and rockabilly; she did this by often putting one song in each style on either side of a single. Jackson cut the rockabilly hit "Fujiyama Mama" in 1958, which became a major success in Japan. Her version of "Let's Have a Party," which Elvis had cut earlier, was a U.S. Top 40 pop hit for her in 1960, after which she began calling her band the Party Timers. A year later, she was back in the country Top Ten with "Right or Wrong" and "In the Middle of a Heartache." In 1965, she topped the German charts with "Santa Domingo," sung in German. In 1966, she hit the U.S. Top 20 with "The Box It Came In" and "Tears Will Be the Chaser for Your Wine." Her popularity continued through the end of the decade.

Jackson toured regularly, was twice nominated for a Grammy, and was a major attraction in Las Vegas from the mid-'50s into the '70s. She married IBM programmer Wendell Goodman in 1961, and instead of quitting the business -- as many female singers had done at the time -- Goodman gave up his job in order to manage his wife's career. He also packaged her syndicated TV show, Music Village. In 1971, Jackson and her husband became Christians, which she says guided their marriage through a rough patch. She released her first gospel album, 1972's Praise the Lord, on Capitol before shifting to the Christian-oriented Myrrh label for three more spiritual albums. In 1977, she switched labels again, this time to another gospel imprint, Word Records, and released two more Christian-themed LPs.

In the early '80s, Jackson was invited to Europe to play rockabilly and country festivals, where plenty of early rock artists found enthusiastic audiences still eager to hear their 1950s hits. Jackson's performances were well received by her fans, and she began playing regularly in Europe and the United Kingdom while still performing her gospel show in the United States. Around the same time, several American country artists, including Pam Tillis, Jann Browne, and Rosie Flores, acknowledged Jackson as a major influence. In 1995, Flores released a rockabilly album, Rockabilly Filly, and invited Jackson, her longtime idol, to sing two duets with her. Jackson embarked on a major U.S. tour with Flores later that year; it was her first secular tour in the United States since the '70s, and put her back into nightclubs. 2003's Live and Still Kickin' documented a pair of 2002 shows in New York City with the revitalized Jackson back in the spotlight. 2003 also saw the release of a new studio album, Heart Trouble, with Jackson joined in the studio by illustrious fans including Elvis Costello, Dave Alvin, and the Cramps. 2006's I Remember Elvis found her interpreting a set of songs made famous by her old friend, as well as sharing her memories of him.

Jackson returned to the studio in 2010 to begin work on an album produced by Jack White. Featuring a band including the White Stripes frontman, his wife Karen Elson, various Raconteurs, My Morning Jacket's Carl Broemel, and a host of others, The Party Ain't Over arrived in early 2011. Jackson's 31st studio album, 2012's Unfinished Business, was produced by Justin Townes Earle and featured original material as well as covers of songs by Woody Guthrie, Etta James, Bobby Womack, and others. Another groundbreaking female rocker, Joan Jett, paid her own tribute to Jackson by producing 2021's Encore, which featured several new songs written by Jackson, as well as a cover of the Johnny Tillotson classic "It Keeps Right on A-Hurtin'." ~ Kurt Wolff & Mark Deming