An American vocalist who stood at the forefront of Toronto’s 1960s soul and R&B circles, Jackie Shane earned lasting recognition for a commanding stage persona that evoked Little Richard and James Brown, as well as for the 1962 single “Any Other Way,” which achieved modest national airplay throughout Canada. An early trailblazer within Toronto’s transgender and LGBTQ circles, Shane first appeared onstage in male attire while wearing women’s clothing; only later did she publicly identify as a transgender woman, an ambiguous presentation that the restrictive climate of the period rendered the least perilous option. Born in Nashville in 1940, she relocated to Canada in 1960 and was spotted performing at a Montreal venue by fellow American expatriate musician Frank Motley. Enlisting as lead vocalist in Motley’s ensemble, she settled in Toronto, quickly integrated into the local circuit, and made periodic return trips to the United States for live dates. Her debut solo release, a rendition of the Motown favorite “Money (That’s What I Want),” appeared in 1962 and was soon followed by “Any Other Way,” which climbed to number two on Toronto’s CHUM Chart. The track was later given a nationwide re-release in 1967, reaching number 67 on Canada’s RPM Chart. During those formative Toronto years she maintained a steady residency at the Sapphire Tavern, and the resulting live tapes—captured in 1963—surfaced in 1967 as Jackie Shane Live, timed to capitalize on the single’s renewed national profile.
By the opening years of the 1970s, Shane had largely withdrawn from Toronto’s stages and, after settling in Los Angeles, appeared to step away from music entirely. By the early 1980s she had returned to Nashville. Interest resurfaced in 2010 when CBC Radio broadcast an episode of its Inside the Music series titled I Got Mine: The Story of Jackie Shane; at that juncture the producers could not confirm whether she was still alive. That uncertainty ended once she was located, still residing in Nashville. Additional exposure arrived in 2011 through archival footage included in Bruce McDonald’s television documentary Yonge Street: Toronto Rock & Roll Stories. In 2017 a volume of essays on Toronto’s LGBT past appeared under the title Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer and contained a dedicated chapter on Shane. The same year she collaborated with the Numero Group on the two-disc anthology Any Other Way, the first collection of her recordings issued with her authorization. Shane died on February 21, 2019 at the age of 78.
