yFebruary 2002 Feature Story

John Jackson
1924 - 2002

Requiem for a Smiling Gravedigger

John Jackson, one of the great masters of Piedmont blues, died of cancer on January 20, 2002 at his home in Virginia. He was 77. Jackson had a devoted following in the Northwest due to his many years of teaching and performing at Centrum's Port Townsend Country Blues Festival.

Growing up in rural Rappahannock County, VA, Jackson never got much of a formal education. Instead, he learned hundreds of songs by ear from old 78s, playing on a $3.95 guitar that his sister gave him when he was 5. He never claimed to be strictly a bluesman. His repertoire also included gospel, country, traditional folk ballads, Tin Pan Alley standards, and rhythmic rags and reels. He knew songs by Jimmie Rodgers, Blind Lemon Jefferson, the Carter Family, Mississippi John Hurt, Uncle Dave Macon, Barbecue Bob, Ernest Tubb, Blind Blake, and many other roots musicians. He learned Piedmont finger-picking and slide guitar from a chain-gang worker named Happy, a name that accurately describes Jackson's dominant style and personality.

Discovered by a folklorist in 1964 while teaching guitar in the back of an Amoco gas station-an occupation Jackson loved-he soon recorded the first of his eight albums, Blues and Country Dance Songs From Virginia, for Arhoolie Records. At the time, he was working as a gravedigger-another occupation that he loved because he said it kept him grounded and gave him plenty of healthy exercise.

He began playing at coffeehouses in Washington, DC and eventually came to be recognized as one of the world's foremost finger-style guitarists and songsters. He played and sang at venues from small clubs and large blues festivals, to Carnegie Hall, the White House, and London's Royal Albert Hall. The State Department sent him abroad to represent the finest in American music and, in 1986, he was recognized as a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts. But he always kept his day job. One of his favorite songs was "Graveyard Blues," and in recent years, he taught others how to dig graves. A working man and proud of it, Jackson nevertheless performed in a snappy-looking suit and hat. In this attire, he was featured on one of the best-ever promotional posters for the Centrum/Port Townsend Blues Festival.

Besides being a masterful musician, Jackson was a wonderful storyteller. At the Centrum Festival, he often interspersed his songs with tall tales of farfetched hunting incidents and such, all ladled out in a molasses-thick Virginia accent.It's not hard to imagine John Jackson as a gravedigger in Hamlet, delivering grave truths with a sweet smile and a sly wink, punctuated by a deathless song. He will be deeply missed by the Northwest blues community.
(Mark Hoffman)