Jackie Shane - In My Tenement + Comin' Down, 1963

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, Canada, in the 1960s. 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.
Canadian singles:
"Any Other Way" b/w "Sticks and Stones"
"Money" b/w "Send Me Some Lovin'"
"In My Tenement" b/w "Comin' Down"
"Stand Up Straight and Tall" b/w "You Are My Sunshine"

re Frank Motley:
(December 30, 1923 - May 31, 1998) was an American R&B and jazz musician and bandleader who worked in Canada for much of his career. His main instrument was the trumpet, on which he was known for playing two simultaneously. He also sang. Motley took trumpet lessons when young from Dizzy Gillespie, who was from the same town. He developed a technique of playing two trumpets at the same time, becoming known as "Dual Trumpet" and "Two Horn" Motley.
He married and moved to Toronto in 1955. However, he also continued to perform and record in the US. His biggest commercial success came in 1963, when his version of William Bell's song "Any Other Way", which he recorded with vocalist Jackie Shane for a small label in Boston, became a regional hit, rising to number 2 on the local Toronto pop chart.

Jackie Shane was one of the greatest soul artists of the 1960s. (“The greatest singer who ever lived,” says Skippy White, dean of the Boston soul scene over the last half century or so.) Designated male at birth in Nashville in 1940, she openly began to identify as female as a preadolescent, and quickly established her own fluid identity, evolving into a no-nonsense, fuck-you-pay-me stage presence that remains shocking well over a half century later. It could not have been easy. As she says in the middle of her most famous recorded mid-song monologue, from “Money (That’s What I Want),” recorded at the Saphire Tavern in 1967, “It’s fatiguing being a Jackie Shane.” Throughout her career, Shane was likened to Little Richard, a comparison she dismisses with varying degrees of humor and disgust depending on her mood. In reality, her combination of raw vocal talent, wit, glamor, and overall mystique is without comparison. (“I wasn’t to have siblings. What could you bring forth after me?”)
Shane found a career and relatively safe haven in Toronto. The acceptance she was shown there was a revelation, and Jackie considered the city home. Shane left the business in 1971. She settled first in Los Angeles with her mother, Jessie. They moved to Nashville in the late ’70s or early ’80s, and Shane has lived there since. (Jessie Shane passed in 1997.) Over the years, Jackie’s legend grew and rumors proliferated. Many said she was dead; some said she’d been murdered. All attempts by writers and fans to make contact were met with dismissal until shortly after the CBC ran a radio documentary by Elaine Banks entitled I Got Mine: The Story of Jackie Shane, in 2010. A British listener named Jeremy Pender heard the program and felt inspired to strike up a telephone friendship with Shane, whom he’d seen perform in Toronto in the late ’60s. I learned the gist of her story in 2013, and thanks to Pender managed to wrangle an introduction in early 2014. Although we’ve spoken on the phone at least weekly since then, I still never met Jackie. When I arrived at her doorstep in the summer of 2016 with a contract on behalf of the Numero Group record label based in Chicago, she wouldn’t come to the door or window, and scolded me for the invasion of her privacy. But she did sign, and this most challenging of projects, entitled Any Other Way after Jackie’s biggest hit, came to fruition in late 2017.

Jackie hates interviews but loves to talk. The following interview is condensed and edited from approximately three hours of concentrated discussion, along with another four or so of digression, argument, pleading, and laughter.

With you and Frank, who was the boss?

JS: No boss—Frank was the bandleader, and I would tell him what I thought. Frank wasn’t really into show business. He wanted to be Louis Armstrong, but there already was one. On the weekend, he would drink. And when he drank, he was a monster; he’d go from Jekyll to Hyde. Everyone was trying to get Frank to settle down. He was just a tornado. But when I told him to go sit down, he sat. [Jackie proceeds to tell a series of stories of Frank’s bad behavior, including several incidents of “chasing” Jackie, and Jackie putting Frank in his place.]

DM: So why Frank, why did you work with him? Was he especially talented?

JS: No, it was more of a job. I didn’t know how long I’d be with him, but it was a long time. (They worked together off and on from 1959 to 1971.)