John Jackson (1924-2002) Interview

John Jackson is more of a songster than a bluesman. His repertory of rags and reels, blues ballads, early country blues, and country and gospel music reflects the diverse kinds of music that was made by his family and friends in rural Rappahannock County, where he was born in 1924.

Nearly everyone in John's large family played music: aunts, uncles, and older brothers; his mother played harmonica and accordion but sang only spirituals and hymns. John's father played banjo, mandolin, ukulele, and guitar, and played for the house parties that were a weekly event among the local black residents. His father even built a platform stage at their farm, making the Jackson home a magnet for area musicians and for many who were just passing through. William Moore, one of the few Virginia bluesmen recorded by Paramount Records in the late '20s, and Willie Walker from South Carolina, reportedly one of the very best Piedmont guitarists, are two of the more notable musicians to have visited the Jackson farm.

John learned a few songs from his father, but not much about guitar-playing, because his father played the guitar left-handed -- fretting the reverse-order strings with his right hand. John picked up songs here and there from several other musicians in the vicinity, but the guitarist who influenced him the most was a young convict, known only as "Happy" -- the water boy for a chain-gang building Rt. 29-211, the county's first paved road.

Happy would fill his water cans at the Jackson's spring, and young John, who was chopping wood, wondered why the man made so much noise when he walked. When John went to meet him, he saw the ball and chain the man was wearing. They talked, and when Happy learned that John's father played guitar, he said, "If you bring your father's guitar down here, I'll play you a song."

After that, John wouldn't leave his father's guitar alone. His lessons with Happy at the spring went on for about six months, then Happy was made a trustee and spent his evenings at the Jackson's' house, playing music and teaching John chords, tunings, finger-picking, and slide technique.

In his teens, John played often for local parties and dances. Because of the violence that broke out a one dance, however, when he was about 21 years old, John gave up music altogether, and didn't play again until about 1964, shortly before he was "discovered," by folklorist Charles Perdue.

Perdue was amazed that a guitarist of John's talent remained unrecorded, and helped introduce Jackson to the folk music scene. Since then, John has recorded six record albums, played every major blues and folk festival in the U.S. -- several times -- and performed his music for audiences in more than 60 countries around the world.

In 1986, John received the National Heritage Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, in recognition of his talent and his dedication to promoting the appreciation of traditional American music. Despite his success, John says he "ain't changed one bit and never will." (He's even kept his day job on a part-time basis.) And he remembers that the real value of his music was what it did for his family and neighbors in rural Rappahannock County: "If we didn't have this music along with the gospel, I just don't know what would've happened. . . . 'Cause we didn't have anything, and it made everybody happy."

JJ: People used to come from miles around. One [musician] would play awhile and then the other... it would go on all weekend. Sometimes there’d be 200 people at a house, dancing, pitching horseshoes… something for everybody to do.

You grew up on a farm.
JJ: There was 14 of us, nine boys and five girls.

Was everyone musical?
JJ: We’d play on the weekend. I mean, you had to work during the week Sometimes we’d sing songs before bedtime or have a game of checkers.

Did you learn guitar from your father?
JJ: [Laughs.] I couldn’t learn nothing from him, he played the guitar upside down, left handed. [I learned] his songs. He played something they called ‘Blues and Mountain Hoedown.’ I learned songs like "Railroad Bill" …

"Railroad Bill" is on your latest CD. So is "The Devil He Wore a Hickory Shoe."
JJ: I learned [that] from my mom, an old spiritual. She sang that in church, that’s all I ever knowed her to sing was spirituals.

What did your mom think of the blues?
JJ: Well, it was in the family. My father, aunts and uncles all played too.

How would you characterize Virginia blues?
JJ: I think some of the earliest blues players there was come from Virginia. I mean, the first slaves settled here. Lots of Virginia artists recorded in the ‘20s. Carter Family, Luke Jordan.

Luke Jordan is a mysterious figure.
JJ: I never did meet Luke Jordan. I seen him one time. It was about 1942. I wasn’t in Lynchburg, I was in a little place up in the country and he [had] come back from Christiansburg, at a college somewhere, and stopped in this little place called the Pine Knot Inn…he played one song.

Another early Virginia bluesman was William Moore.
JJ: I never knowed…until my mama told me in her last years who the man was that used to come around to play with my father. A lot of people used to come. There used to be a man who (would) bring people to the farm for 10 cents a head.

You learned to play from 78s. Where did you get your records?
JJ: Two furniture dealers used to come around, selling the wind-up record player. They’d have records for sale. Ten or 15 cents, maybe a quarter.

Charles Perdue discovered you in Fairfax. How did that happen?
JJ: There was a bunch of kids playing in my yard and when they got tired of playing ball, they wanted to do this whip dance like Elvis Presley started, the hula dance, and they asked me to get out my guitar. I hadn’t touched a guitar since 1946. This mailman came by and asked me if I could teach him to play. He said he had a part-time job at the Amoco and I could get into the back room of the station and learn him the guitar when he wasn’t pumping gas. So I went down there and [Perdue] came in to get some gas and heard me.

Many older Virginia musicians just weren’t documented.
JJ: That’s right. Some of the people back where I was growing up was fantastic blues people. I could just name a whole bunch. All dead now.

--- Originally published in 64 Magazine, Jan.-Feb. 2001.

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