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Jo Ann Campbell occupies a special niche in rock & roll. For starters, she wrote songs, and they were good enough to get released as singles, not buried on her albums. Her most successful records were clearly in a mainstream pop music vein, anticipating the work of teen girl pop singers such as Shelley Fabares, but she could also rock out like Wanda Jackson. A surprising number of her recordings were rough and tough, their obvious "cute" quotient balanced by Campbell's occasional raspy-throated delivery, which betrayed lust, or at least a healthy female libido in need of stroking. And the song that remains the best known today, "Mama, Can I Go Out?" (which never charted but was featured in Alan Freed's jukebox movie Go Johnny Go), is a great tribute to healthy female interest in the opposite sex -- which, as we know, was at least half of what rock & roll was ultimately supposed to be about. Campbell took music and dance lessons as a child, and was drum majorette at Fletcher High Scho...