Trailblazing Black Trans Singer Jackie Shane Honored In Nashville

Shane's story was immortalized in her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, through a historical marker which was unveiled on Sept. 20.

Jackie Shane, a trailblazing Black trans singer from Nashville, almost lost her story to history before it was unearthed after her music was rediscovered in the 2000s by a group of Canadian music lovers. A short time after this, Shane’s career received a boost, culminating in a Grammy nomination in 2018, which was to precede her first new album in decades.

According to NBC News, Shane’s story was immortalized in her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, through a historical marker unveiled on Sept. 20.

Sarah Calise, the founder of Nashville Queer History, told the outlet that it is potentially the first marker dedicated to a trans person in the State of Tennessee.

“To my knowledge, it’s the first official trans marker in the state of Tennessee,” Calise said. Calise and Shane’s family were instrumental in lobbying the Nashville Metropolitan Historical Commission for the recognition. Additionally, Calise chose its location along Jefferson Street in the northern area of Nashville, the heart of Black Nashville.

Calise continued, contextualizing the long history of gender diversity. “I think this is really important because there’s this common misconception that transgender identity is recent, that it’s something of the 21st century,” Calise said. “When we take a look at history and at people like Jackie Shane, we realize this is an identity and a gender diversity that’s existed for decades — and if we look even further, we could say centuries. But here in Nashville, we can point to someone born in 1940 who felt this way about their gender identity.”

Shane was a talented Nashville soul singer who did not receive many opportunities in Nashville due to her race and gender identity. As a result, she joined a traveling carnival, which exposed her to Canada’s beauty, leading to her settling in Toronto. There, she operated a successful nightclub and had a solid recording career, peaking in 1963 when she hit No. 2 on Canada’s pop music charts with a cover of William Bell’s song “Any Other Way.”

Audiences loved Shane’s performances, which were similar to Little Richard’s shows in the United States. Shane artfully blended the high energy of rock and roll with soulful rhythm and blues. However, Shane moved to Los Angeles in the 1970s and basically disappeared from public life, which prompted rumors that she might have been murdered. Contrary to those rumors, Shane was alive and well in Nashville and outside the public eye.

Following her Grammy nomination, Shane planned to release a new album and return to the stage, but sadly, she died in 2019, almost two weeks after she lost the Grammy. She died in her Nashville home at 78.

According to Shane’s friend and the curator of the Jefferson Street Sound Museum, Lorenzo Washington, the death of her mother weighed heavily on Shane.

“Jackie said once her mother died, that just took all of that performance thing out of her, and she didn’t want to see another stage,” Washington told NBC News.

Washington continued, “She did want to get back into performing again right at the end, especially after she got the Grammy nomination. She knew I had a recording studio here, so she was writing a song for us to record.”

A documentary about Shane, “Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story,” directed by Luchah Roseberg-Lee and Michael Mabbott and executive produced by trans actor Elliot Page, was also in the works when Shane died.

“I just couldn’t believe that this extraordinary music had been made in my hometown of Toronto by a Black trans woman in the 1960s, and I hadn’t heard it before,” Mabbott told NBC News regarding his inspiration for the documentary. “I needed to know more about this incredible artist, and I needed to understand more about how her history could’ve been all but erased.”

Mabbott continued, “The idea [for the film] was that we’d come down [to Nashville] with a crew to interview her, but tragically, she passed away a month later. If not for those phone recordings, we wouldn’t have been able to have her tell her story in her own words.”

According to Mabbott, the death of Shane and the various states targeting trans people, including Tennessee, lit a fire under everyone working on the documentary.

“It didn’t change how we told the story — our guide and North Star for that was always Jackie herself, her voice and her words. But it certainly added to the urgency everyone involved, including our executive producer, Elliot Page, and his company, PageBoy Productions, had to bringing her voice to life and amplifying it and doing everything we can to get her story out in the world.”

The documentary premiered at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on Sept. 21 in conjunction with the marker. According to Michael Gray, the vice president of Museum Services, Shane’s story is an integral part of the city’s musical tapestry.

“The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum has a responsibility to educate people about how Nashville became known across the world as ‘Music City,’” Gray told NBC News.

Gray continued, “Black music flourished here before the city became known as the capital of country music. So we’re honored that the Nashville premiere of the film will take place at the museum, giving us a chance to share Jackie’s important story, a life that includes bravery, mystique, discovery, talent, and more.”