Pistol Annies member Angaleena Presley, Candi Carpenter, Elle King, and Joan Jett will join rockabilly country icon Wanda Jackson for Encore, her 32nd and final studio album, due for release on Aug. 20. The 83-year-old vocalist and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member with roots entrenched alongside Roy Clark, Buck Owens, and Elvis Presley announced her retirement from touring in 2019 and is now ending a magnificent recording career with an eight-track release recorded in 2019 that was co-produced by the previously-mentioned rock pioneer Jett.
Jett appears on tracks including “Treat Me Like a Lady” and “Two Shots.” The latter includes a guest appearance by Elle King. “Good Girl Down” — originally recorded by Angaleena Presley — now features Presley, Candi Carpenter, and Jackson. The album’s first single is Jackson’s cover of Johnny Tillotson’s 1962 hit “It Keeps Right On a Hurtin’,” which is described by Rolling Stone as featuring a “’Pig’ Robbins-style piano and an abundance of backing oohs and ahhs.” Encore’s abundance of star power is not unlike her two most recent releases: 2010’s The Party Ain’t Over, which was produced by Jack White, and 2012’s Unfinished Business, produced by the late Justin Townes Earle.
In August 2019, Jackson said of working with Jett that she’d “never done a show with her or anything.” Continuing, she added that she “made a trip from Oklahoma to New York City to meet her,” and after talking, she decided to release a Jackson album on her label, Blackheart Records. “From there, we got the ball rolling,” Jackson noted.
