Jackie Shane is an African-American trans singer who achieved great success in Montreal and Toronto during the 1960s before disappearing without a trace at the end of the decade. Her gripping and heartbreaking story of fame and seclusion is the subject of the documentary Live and let live. The voice of Jackie Shaneshowing in theaters from Friday.
For about forty years, Jackie Shane was a legend in Canada. Not a legend in the sense of an icon, but a legend that was told in a small circle of insiders, that of soul and R&B music collectors. Her 45s sold for large sums for the quality of her music and the power of her interpretation. The fact that she was a trans woman of African-American origin who had made a career in Toronto was part of the interest around her records, but was more of an anecdotal fact.
Montrealer Ben Shulman is one of those avid soul 45 collectors. Passionate, if not manic, about the history of soul music, with a particular interest in records produced here, he remembers seeing for the first time an autographed promotional photo of Jackie Shane at a collector friend’s house. “At that time, we only had rumours. We knew she had lived in Montreal, then especially in Toronto. Some said she had died, others said she was maybe in Nashville, that she was a recluse and refused to talk to anyone,” he recalls.
In 2016, Mr. Shulman became obsessed with finding her to learn the full truth and details about her story and her records. “I was searching the web and, believe it or not, I came across a phone number associated with Jackie Shane in the Nashville area. I tried it, thinking it wouldn’t be her. On the other end of the line, I heard a little voice say, ‘Hello ?“I asked if this was indeed THE Jackie Shane. She said yes. We talked for an hour and a half!” He was one of the few and one of the first to find her. She was able to confirm that she had lived in Montreal from 1959 to 1961, at the time when she was performing regularly at the legendary Esquire Show Bar, before leaving for Toronto. She then moved to Los Angeles in 1971, then returned to Nashville in 1978, where she was born and where she was forgotten.
In 2017, the American company Numero Group, specialized in the reissue of musical treasures from the past, launched the compilation Any Other Way which brings together most of M’s recordingsme Shane. They had managed to find her too.
“The Numero Group compilation catapulted her story to a much wider audience, particularly in sync with the social changes that were happening at that time, as people of all diversity began to be more accepted and celebrated. And I can attest to speaking to several people who were around her at that time who were really uncomfortable talking about her story before,” Shulman says of the singer’s gender identity.
Free the treasure
When Canadian filmmaker Michael Mabbot discovered Jackie Shane’s story, he knew it was a fascinating documentary subject. In 2019, he got in touch with the singer through the Numero Group team and began a series of telephone interviews.
While conducting these interviews, Jackie Shane receives some big news: his album Any Other Way gets a Grammy nomination in the Historical Album category, which rewards the best reissues. The singer is delighted. She begins to prepare for a comeback on stage. But fate has other plans… On February 10, 2019, at the Grammy Awards gala, Jackie’s album does not win the statuette. About ten days later, the singer is found dead at home, in her bed, of what appears to be natural causes.
The former Toronto star may have faded, but Michael Mabbot’s documentary project is still relevant. However, he has only his phone interviews and a single musical performance as a video archive. His project would need much more to come to life.
Lucah Rosenberg-Lee joins the production in 2022 as co-director. Jackie Shane’s story particularly resonates with his journey as a trans man. “It’s very inspiring because sometimes trans people can feel like they can’t be who they are, they can’t do the things that they want to do, be creative and follow their dreams. But I think Jackie was the opposite of that. She would get on stage and she would use her true authentic self to inspire and empower others, and that’s something I want to do with my career as well,” says the director.
The duo thus comes into contact with Jackie Shane’s family, looking for testimonies. The latter then gives them access to artifacts of incredible value, preserved by Mme Shane for all those years and locked away in a warehouse by her estate. It is a veritable archival treasure. The artist must have wanted these elements to one day be gathered, preserved and highlighted so that her story could be told, since she had kept dozens and dozens of photos, newspaper clippings, costumes, jewelry… She had even written her autobiography by hand. Mabbott and Rosenberg-Lee’s project was therefore able to be assembled like a puzzle. “We took out the records, the photos, all that. We had everything,” Lucah Rosenberg-Lee still marvels. “As the production of the film progressed, we could decide what we were going to use where.”
After winning the Special Jury Prize at the Hot Docs festival in Toronto last April, the documentary hits theaters Friday in Montreal, and elsewhere in the country in the coming weeks. Rosenberg-Lee hopes audiences will take away “that trans people have always been here, that this is not a new phenomenon. I hope people see that a story with a trans heroine can be inspiring, that they can relate to it, find themselves in it, and that they can take joy from it, that they see that trans people have something to bring to the table, too.”
Live and let live. The voice of Jackie Shane opens in Montreal on August 16. Co-director Michael Mabbott will be present for screenings at the Cinéma du Parc on August 16 and 17.