Trans R&B Singer Jackie Shane Shines Again in Painterly Doc Portrait Any Other Way

JACKIE SHANE: ANY OTHER WAY 

(Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee, Canada, 2024, 99 minutes) 

"I was born, but never lived."

--Jackie Shane (1940-2019)

A conventional documentary wouldn't have suited R&B performer Jackie Shane. 

A coproduction of Telefilm Canada and the Canadian Film Board, Any Other Way isn't the first film about a musician of whom little performance footage exists, but unlike most, it doesn't rely strictly on still images, but on painterly recreations of her life at home and on the stage. In other words, it's a cross between a traditional documentary and an animated biopic. 

Though Jackie was making music associated with the Deep South in the 1960s, from the likes of Georgia-born Little Richard and Alabama-born Wilson Pickett, she was a visible trans performer at a time when that was anything but the norm in either Canada or the United States.  

When historians look back at the Toronto music scene of that era, it's all about Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and Gordon Lightfoot, all of whom deserve the attention, but Jackie was right there in the mix, and yet completely set apart from the rock scene. While all three of these artists continued to ply their trade in the 1970s and beyond, Jackie completely disappeared. 

Co-directors Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee, alongside animators Luca Tarantini and Jared Raab, fill in the blanks, while further contextualizing the Numero Group's 2017 collection of her work. I'm pretty sure that's how I first heard about her, and it was love at first listen. 

As it turns out, Jackie had a whole life in the US, since it's where she was born, where she spent most of her life, and where she died. 

Tennessee natives Vonnie Crawford-Moore and Andrenee Majors-Douglas, a niece and a cousin, didn't find out--until she bequeathed them her modest estate--that she had lived in the same area for 40 years. All of a sudden, the two women found themselves in possession of a museum's-worth of stage apparel, costume jewelry, faded photographs, reel-to-reel tapes, and other remnants of a life about which they hadn't known a thing. Because they didn't even know she existed. Significantly, they also found a hand-written autobiography with the perfectly pulpy title Let "God" Be My Judge.

In the film, trans performers Sandra Caldwell and Makayla Walker read passages from the unpublished manuscript, sometimes as themselves, sometimes as rotoscoped versions of Jackie in her various elements. Had she not written down her story, the directorial duo would have to recreate it by sifting through the clues, but she made sure she would get to reconstruct it herself--the late Anita Pallenberg did much the same, since Catching Fire, Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill's 2024 documentary about the model and actress, also relies on a manuscript left behind after her passing. 

The Any Other Way filmmakers, who knew about Jackie before Vonnie and Andrenee, also recorded their conversations with their subject during her final year, but always over the phone, and never in person. She had become a recluse. A combination of voices, including Jackie and her admiring heirs, describes her background. She inherited a love of singing from the grandmother who raised her, and pursued it from youth as a member of the church choir. From early on, she was also drawn to all things feminine. 

In young adulthood, her music career took off just as she was becoming more feminine in her affect. 

She revealed an affinity for the drums, purchased a kit, and plunged into the blues and soul scene, backing up stars, like Joe Tex, when they came through town. She was earning her keep, having fun, and relishing her independence. She even befriended Little Richard with whom she would hang out while he was living in Nashville. 

It was Tex who encouraged Jackie to leave the Jim Crow South for greener climes, so she literally joined the circus in the form of a carnival, which traveled to Canada, and with which she fell in love, starting with Cornwall where she decamped, and then Montreal, where she set down roots as a singer, still not yet fully trans, but more feminine-looking than ever before. 

Abundant photos track every stage of Jackie's transition, from lipstick and penciled eyebrows to more elaborate makeup combined with men's suits. I mean no disrespect, but her brows were pretty crazy, though I wouldn't say it was a specifically trans thing. Sophia Loren and Giulietta Masina also had swooping eyebrows at the time--at least she was in excellent company. 

By the time Jackie made her way to Toronto, she looked more like a woman with a preference for suits, like Marlene Dietrich in Morocco, than a man who liked to wear makeup, like Little Richard or Liberace. Nonetheless, she preferred to use male pronouns, though she refused to take off her makeup or to play for segregated audiences, even if it meant missing out on star-making opportunities, like The Ed Sullivan Show and American Bandstand. She was making the rules up as she went along, which may not play well with some viewers, but nowadays there are more resources for young trans people.

If Jackie was packing Toronto's Saphire club and even drawing fans from across the border, the city's big pop station, CHUM, ignored her music, including signature 1963 single "Any Other Way." They just weren't interested in Black artists, but Jackie's fans forced their hand, and they eventually relented, sending the song to #2 on the local singles chart.

With the release of the Red Hot Organization's 46-track compilation Transa on November 22 of this year, it's possible the song will hit the airwaves again--or for the very first time, depending on your station of choice. 

As Jim Farber noted in a New York Times preview from earlier this month, "Another historic reference point comes from a cover of the song 'Any Other Way,' which became an improbable Canadian hit in the '60s for the soul singer and early trans performer Jackie Shane. The Americana singer and banjo player Allison Russell recorded Shane's song for the project several months ago at Mexican Summer studios in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in a stripped-down version, joined by the harpist Ahya Simone.” (The Canadian-born Russell, who identifies as queer, is cisgender, while the Detroit-based Simone is trans.) 

In 1971, Jackie returned to the States with her common-law husband Dan--a strikingly handsome man--changed her name, and settled in Pasadena where she lived fully as a woman. No more suits, no more male pronouns. She traded a public career for a private life, but it wasn't built to last. 

At this point, I was reminded of Lili Elbe, the real-life trans artist who inspired The Danish Girl, a fundamentally dishonest 2015 film that warps the circumstances that led to her death. Suffice to say her life was more fulfilling than the dismal one Tom Hooper depicts, except it wasn't enough. Just as Jackie longed to be a suburban housewife, Lili longed to have a baby. Neither woman got her wish--but at least Jackie's dream didn't kill her.

In the late-1970s, she returned to Nashville to take care of her ailing mother and stepfather. She also reclaimed the name Jackie Shane. After her parents passed, she went into seclusion. She maintained contact with a few friends, but it was mostly just her and her little black cat, and since cats only live so long—I lost my 19-year-old Lola in January—there are times she may have been completely alone. 

The filmmakers make space for Sandra Caldwell and Makayla Walker to share their thoughts about Jackie's journey, and also about their own lives. Caldwell, who is especially forthcoming, found a way to reconcile her personal and professional selves, but Jackie chose one over the other. Sad as it may seem now, it's possible she made the best choice, because she may not have been able to hold on to her career if she had fully transitioned in the public eye, but we lost all the music she might have made. 

Fortunately, we didn't lose the music she did make. Just as Light in the Attic brought the work of Betty Davis, another trailblazer-turned-recluse, to a new audience, the Numero Group did the same when they tracked Jackie down and arranged to package her life's work in a box set filled with singles, live tracks, and an 80-page biography. After the set received a Grammy nomination for Best Historical Album, she started to make plans that fate did not allow her to bring to fruition, but she was thrilled to speak with the press about her music and to receive messages of praise from fans old and new.

So, it's a sort of happy ending. Some artists, like Nick Drake and Arthur Russell, don't get their flowers until long after they're gone, but Jackie lived long enough to get hers. Other than the fact that I was never certain how she made a living once her music career had come to an end--a problem with too many documentaries about long-forgotten or newly-rediscovered artists--Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee did right by their subject. 

Beyond the participants mentioned above, they also spoke with music historian Michael Gray, gender studies professor Marisa Richmond, singer and dancer James Baley, choreographer Rodney Diverlus, writer Elaine Gaber-Katz, and biographer Rob Bowman. Further, they tapped some notable Canadian talent as producers: Oscar-nominated actor Elliot Page and Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen, the directors behind several fine hard rock documentaries.

In her life, Jackie didn't get everything she wanted, but she lived her truth, and Any Other Way honors a woman of color who refused to let racism, homophobia, and transphobia define or destroy her, even as that same toxic brew led her to leave the wider world behind for an intimate space filled with glittering mementos of that brief, shining moment she was a sexy, sassy, singing star. A Sylvester before Sylvester, a Prince before Prince. A groundbreaker and a path-maker for more new and exciting performers.

12/17/24 update: the film opens at Northwest Film Forum on Feb 21. 

 

Jackie Shane: Any Other Way, which has received theatrical play in Canada, is currently making the festival rounds in the US. I'll update this post once it becomes possible to see in Seattle, whether in-person or online. Images from Image Amplified (Jackie on the bed), Spotify ("Any Other Way" single), Hot Docs (Jackie and Little Richard), Vintage Everyday (Jackie with swooping brows), Ahya Simone Live, and Vogue (Jackie in the suburbs).