Benjamin Boblett Photographs of John Jackson

Blues artist, songster, and storyteller, John Jackson (February 25, 1924 – January 20, 2002) was the most important black Appalachian musician to come to broad public attention during the mid-1960s. He was born on February 25, 1924, the seventh of fourteen children, in Rappahannock County, VA. His father and mother were tenant farmers, whose children grew up helping out with the farming, cutting timber, herding cows, and doing whatever was needed to support their family.

Jackson’s parents and siblings all played some combinations of guitar, banjo, ukulele, mandolin, harmonica, accordion, autoharp, and even homemade penny whistles. Jackson’s father was well known in the area and traveled around the county to parties and dances, playing the blues, old mountain songs, and other regional music. His mother played and sang spiritual songs.

Jackson began playing his father’s guitar when he was four. He learned how to play from his father, by watching the other musicians he saw performing at local gatherings, and from a man known as Happy, in a month-long series of guitar lessons. Jackson’s older sister purchased a guitar for him when he was nine years old. He also learned from phonograph records. He was fond of the music of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, Blind Boy Fuller, Jimmie Rodgers, and Ernest Tubb, as well as a wide range of gospel, ragtime, and country hymns.

Like his father, Jackson performed at house parties, although music was something reserved for evenings and weekends, as he had multiple jobs including working as a cook, butler, chauffeur, general caretaker, and even a gravedigger. Jackson already had a young wife and a family of his own when he left his parents' farm at 25 years old. He moved with his wife and children to Fairfax, Virginia, where he worked on another farm, other occasional jobs such as chopping and hauling firewood and digging graves.

Circumstances led Jackson to give up the house party circuit and retire from public performances for nearly 20 years. But Jackson began his return to playing music in 1962 when he played for children that were playing in his yard, and later when he agreed to giving guitar lessons to his mailman. It was during one of these lessons that took place at the gas station where the mailman worked at night that professor of folklore and English at the University of Virginia, Charles Perdue heard Jackson playing after stopping for gas and asked him to play for him.

Perdue, who was involved with the Folklore Society of Greater Washington, the National Council for the Traditional Arts, and the effort to record and preserve folk music across Virginia introduced Jackson to other blues and folk musicians in the region and across the country. Perdue championed Jackson’s playing to help establish him as a professional musician, and help him become thoroughly successful on the folk circuit both at home and around the world

For the next thirty-plus years he was the Virginia/Washington, D.C. area's most prominent traditional artist. He was a festival favorite who also hosted the musical house parties in the region. Jackson toured widely across the United States and abroad, making numerous recordings, playing his distinctive Piedmont guitar blues, and also performing on the banjo. He is one of the few African American musicians to play the blues on the banjo, which he learned growing up in the rural Piedmont region.

Jackson drew attention to the rich musical traditions of Appalachia and advocated for the quantity and quality of local Virginia artists. However, although Jackson recalled a thriving blues guitar tradition in his home community, few black Virginians were recorded. During the 1920s and 1930s only three musicians produced a significant body of recordings.

John Jackson received the National Heritage Fellowship in 1986 from the National Endowment for the Arts for his role as a teacher and traditional artist, which is America’s highest honor in the folk music world. Jackson performed for Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, the US Congress, many European heads of state, and in Carnegie and Royal Albert Hall. He played with famous musicians such as B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, and Ricky Scaggs.

Jackson survived his wife, Cora, who died in October 1990, three sons, and one daughter. He performed his last show on New Year's Eve 2002 and died on January 20, 2002.

Reference list:

Remembering John Jackson. (2025). Eldon Farms. https://eldonfarms.com/john-jackson/

John Jackson, African-American Songster/Guitarist. (n.d.) National Endowment for the Arts. https://www.arts.gov/honors/heritage/john-jackson

Pearson, B.L. (2024). Rappahannock Blues: John Jackson. Smithsonian Folkways Magazine. https://folkways.si.edu/magazine-summer-2010-rappahannock-blues-john-jackson/african-american-music/article/smithsonian

Bernstein, A. (2002, January 21). Bluesman John Jackson Dies, Gained World Fame. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2002/01/22/bluesman-john-jackson-dies/d67f1f35-a38c-4794-aa1c-a0847ddf1e84/

Pareles, J. (2002, January 29). John Jackson, 77, Guitarist and Singer in Piedmont Style. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/29/arts/john-jackson-77-guitarist-and-singer-in-piedmont-style.html