Millie Jackson: “I’m doing it for you!”

How did you get started in music?
There was a club in Harlem that everybody used to hang out in. Somebody dared me to go on stage and sing. Somebody saw me, liked me, and I ended up with a contract. I didn’t quit my day gig until my second album. I sang on the weekend and worked at Schraftt’s, the candy people. I was the first black waitress at 61 Fifth Avenue. 

You kept working, even though you had a record contract?
Yeah, cos I knew it wasn’t going to last. I ain’t had no training or nothing. I just got this accidental record deal, so I’m gonna keep working. I had my first gold record before I quit my day gig. That was many a moon ago. Now, I’m always listening to country music. There was this song called “Buy Dirt” [by Jordan Davis]. Every time I got a cheque I bought dirt. I don’t have to sing. I got dirt. And guess what? When I bought my first dirt, it was 29 acres, and I said to myself, it’s supposed to be 40 acres and a mule. I kept adding to my dirt.

Did you ever get the mule? 
I had mules, but I sold them when I was still in New Jersey and had to pay somebody. The thing is, I’ve been blessed. I’m up to 53 acres. Whenever we had to work the South, we just stayed out at the farm. We’d barbecue and raise hell, drink home brew and whiskey and have a ball until it was time to go back to work. Now they’re building a mall in front of my 53 acres. A tornado came and set the trailer in the pond. I was going to go down there and get a picture of me on top of the trailer in the dried-up pond.

How were you so confident on stage?
Maybe because it wasn’t like I needed to sing. I had a day job. My kids was going to eat, whether I sang or not. And I knew it wasn’t going to last. I’m 81 now, and every now and then somebody will ask me, ‘Are you still trying?’

You did a lot of talking in your performances. How did that develop?
I was on stage and somebody would say something, and I’d tell them off. One thing led to another. 

Watching videos of your shows, the guys in the front row had to put up with a lot.
Please tell me I wasn’t singing “Something You Can Feel”…

You were! 
Haha. I would just do whatever I felt like doing, and if the audience liked it, I’d do it next time too. 

Probably these days you wouldn’t be able to touch your audience in intimate places anymore. 
Yeah. I noticed that the women were always slapping my hands. I loved it. It wasn’t that I loved feeling it, or that there was something I could feel. I just liked the fact that whoever the guy was with was slapping my hands. They didn’t want me to feel it. [I thought] But I’m doing it for you. When you get home, think how great it’s going to be. 

You mentioned your love of country music. Where does that come from?
My father was a sharecropper. He made a living behind a mule, plying and planting cotton, then we picked the cotton and sent it off. You weigh the cotton and see how much you made that year. My father also made corn liquor. He ploughed five days a week, and we partied Friday night, Saturday night. Sunday morning we went to church. Well, sometimes I went to church if I was with my mother’s father, the minister. While I was with my father Sunday morning, we just went to sleep because we’d been up two days. 

The 1974 album Caught Up was ahead of its time. It has such a sophisticated understanding of relationships. 
Caught Up was more like a story to me. I was telling the story, and the story was long, so you just add another song to keep the story going. 

It presents an affair from both women’s point of view. 
I was doing it the way I felt about it. My biological mother died before I was two years old. My father would not let my mother’s father, the minister, have me. My father insisted upon keeping me and I was with my father, who was running the farm. In the summertime, I’d go visit my mother’s parents. So that’s quite a mixed-up life.

Child of God is a bold song. It’s almost questioning gospel music. 
Well, due to the fact that I had the Minister for the grandfather, yeah, and my father making corn liquor and ploughing. That’s why I put in parenthesis on that title, “It’s hard to believe”.  

Some people have compared your act to Richard Pryor. 
I could see that. Richard was funny. I admired him. But when I worked with him I noticed he was very insecure about  me. If I had to guess, he was not a friend of mine. The point is, he’s the one responsible for me going to Hell, because I found out the audience liked him because he was cussing. That’s how cussing got added to my show. I used to say, if it came up, it came out. 

Are you still performing live?
I did one performance this year, and it really wasn’t a performance. Tyler Perry was doing a movie and persuaded me to do it. They had set up a situation like a small club. I went on stage and sang one song, case closed. I had about six lines. He said, “Say something to me. I’ll answer.” And I said, huh? “Anything you want to, just say something to me.” I looked at that white wig he had on, and I thought to tell him, “Could you pull the stupid ass white wig off?”

There will be an all-analog version of Millie Jackson’s Caught Up album released by Spring/Ace Records in 2026. Acid Jazz will release the Spring Revisited compilation, featuring Jackson, on October 24