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JACKIE ROSS
SELFISH ONE
(McKinley, Smith)
Chess 1903
No. 31 September 5, 1964
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When she was three, Jackie (b. Jan. 30, 1946, St. Louis) began her singing career on Mom and Dad’s
radio show. Her parents were preachers and ran a church. “All of the big gospel singers at the time
who would come to St. Louis, they would appear on the broadcast,” Ross told Goldmine’s Robert
Pruter. “I’ve been knowing Sam Cooke ever since I was just a little thing. Not only him but all the big
groups. We knew them pretty well, because they would visit my parents’ house for big dinners and
everything.”
Cooke and the family were especially close, and when Jackie’s dad died in 1954, Sam encouraged the
family to move to Chicago, where he could keep an eye on them. In 1962, Cooke, who had taken
notice of Ross’ singing abilities, won her mother’s permission to record her for his Sar label.
“After the record, Sam wanted to take me out to California. But as much as my mother loved him, she
said, ‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t let you take my 15-year-old child and continue to raise her out there.”‘ Her
single, “Hard Time,” failed to sell.
After winning a talent contest at the Trianon Ballroom, Jackie began touring with Syl Johnson’s band.
She was re-discovered at one engagement by Bill Doc Lee, a DJ on a gospel station owned by Leonard
Chess of Chess Records. “Selfish One,” Jackie’s debut disk for Chess, was her only major charting on
either the pop or R & B listings. Surely, her powerful “We Can Do It” and her cover of Evie Sands’
“Take Me For A Little While” should have established her. Early in 1966, Ross left the Chess label after
a royalty dispute.
“It was a big let-down for me after what they told me ‘Selfish One’ did not do. If I had all my old papers,
I could quote you a figure–but the amount of money I had gotten from it, it was just ridiculous.”