Jackie Day (February 8, 1938 - January 4, 2007) was a soul singerand songwriter whose career lasted throughout the 1960s until the death of frequent collaborator and producer Maxwell Davis. In soul histories, Arkansas’ Jackie Day doesn’t even merit a footnote. She was one of thousands of soul music wannabees, singers who dreamed the dream but for whom the break, the luck, the real deal, the right opportunity never came knocking. Like many before (and no doubt still to come) she’s known chiefly for one relatively obscure 60s recording “Naughty Boy” that found its way onto the Northern soul scene.
Jackie Day was born Jacquelene Mary Baldain in Eudora, Arkansas. She grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana . Around 1950, her mother moved to San Francisco with Jackie and her four other children . In 1954, at the age of seventeen, she became an unmarried mother of a son, Richard. In 1959, she met saxophonist Big Jay McNeely, whom she married on April 4, 1960. They performed together and in 1962 she recorded two songs for Music City Records in Berkeley , which were not released. In 1963, she had a daughter, Jacquelene (JayJay). She worked, among other things, as a security officer at the Los Angeles airport and at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, later also with the Los Angeles Police Department.
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| Big Jay McNeely & Jackie |
In 1965 she came under the care of saxophonist and arranger Maxwell Davis , who had played with Fletcher Henderson , among others , and who was also A&R man for Aladdin Records and later for Modern Records. At the Modern Records studios, she recorded the single "I Want Your Love/Naughty Boy", which was released on the obscure Phelectron Records label in 1965 and received little radio play. The record company was new and didn't really know how to promote a record and it immediately disappeared from sight.
That was until UK DJs on the Northern Soul scene picked up on it in the mid 80s and its storming Motownesque beat made it a dancefloor smash in those clubs. During a 2004 record auction, Jackie’s super-rare Phelectron 45 sold for $4,000. At the time, promoters wanted to fly her to the U.K. for a series of concerts, but she turned them down, mainly, it turned out, because she was beginning to battle the emphysema that would eventually take her life.
Jackie and Maxwell Davis formed a partnership and wrote songs for Modern Records' new "1000" series of soul music, and Jackie released three singles on it in 1966 and 1967. "Before It's Too Late/Without A Love" sold reasonably well in 1966, but the follow-ups "Oh, What Heartaches/If I'd Lose You" and "Long As I Got My Baby/What Kind Of Man Are You?" fared less well. Jackie then switched to Specialty Records . For her recording session, she wrote a protest song, "Free at Last"in 1963). Along with "What's The Cost?" was the first single on Specialty in 1968 after a four-year hiatus; the other songs from the session were not released.
After her mother's death in 1968, she began to pay more attention to her family and her day job; she did continue to write songs with Maxwell Davis and in 1970 she recorded a session for Paula Records . However, the collaboration ended abruptly with the death of Maxwell Davis on September 18, 1970. The only single on Paula Records, "Guilty / I Can't Wait", was released around the turn of the year 1970/71 and also marked the end of her recording career.
None of her singles were big sellers, but a couple of them later became popular with Great Britain’s Northern Soul collectors,. All her recordings for Phelectron, Modern, Specialty and Paula Records were released in 2011 on the CD Dig it the most: the complete Jackie Day (Kent CDKEND 359).
(Edited from Wikipedia ,Electric Earl, Soulsource Forum & Soul&Jazz&Funk)
Here’s a clip from 1998 taken from the documentary “The Strange World Of Northern Soul,” and filmed in Los Angeles where she lived. Jackie rerecorded her classic for the mega documentary 'The Strange World of Northern Soul'.