Rappahannock Blues:

John Jackson

By Barry Lee Pearson

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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. The so-called Folk Revival of that decade witnessed the rediscovery of artists such as Mississippi John Hurt and Son House, who had recorded earlier and then disappeared into obscurity. After years in musical retirement such artists found themselves performing for avid new audiences. Although Jackson had no previous recording experience, he could play in the style of these earlier recording artists and knew their songs from long-lost 78 rpm recordings, and from family and friends. Moreover, he, too, was coming off a self-imposed twenty-year period of musical inactivity; no one beyond his family circle knew the extent of his skills—and even they did not imagine the interest his music would generate. Jackson recorded ninety songs during his first recording session. It was as if a musical time machine had been uncovered. The Washington-area folk song community had found its most able practitioner.

Equally important, Jackson drew attention to the rich musical traditions of Appalachia, one of America's most significant, though often overlooked, musical stories. Although black Appalachian music never received the attention given to the transition from Delta blues to Chicago blues, and to rock and roll, in the mountains a shared black and white string band tradition served as the basis for various forms of American roots music, ranging from bluegrass to regional rockabilly. Moreover, there was a southeastern blues tradition influenced by ragtime and old time string band music that remained largely acoustic, and boasted such luminaries as Blind Blake and Blind Boy Fuller, Jackson's two most prominent influences.

Because he alternated blues with country, gospel, old time, and even rock, Jackson was referred to as a "songster." The term, which comes from black vernacular, refers to singer/instrumentalists with large repertoires. Among scholars it also denotes artists whose repertoires span the 19th and 20th centuries, including such Folkways luminaries as Lead Belly, Mississippi John Hurt, or Pink Anderson. From another perspective it designates blues singers who also know a wide range of non-blues songs, including spirituals, ballads, reels, or country dance songs, generally considered older than blues. Jackson was by no means the only artist who shared in this regional tradition, although he was one of the best. But he was also proud to be thought of as a "bluesman."

For the next thirty-plus years he was the Virginia/Washington, D.C. area's most prominent traditional artist, a festival favorite who reciprocated by throwing the best musical house parties in the region. Yet, coming from a generation that embraced hard work, he never thought of music as a job and always worked some form of day job, including as a gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. He respected his work and he respected the musicians from whom he learned, often downplaying his own skill in comparison to those artists whose names and music he carried on. His other passion was the discovery and collection of Civil War artifacts. Armed with his metal detector, he scoured nearby historical sites for relics. Some he donated to local historical societies, and other pieces he kept at his home, a veritable museum of Civil War lore.

John's father and mother, Suttie and Hattie Jackson, were tenant farmers. Typically, farm families needed to be large, and John was the seventh of fourteen children. As he recalled, they also tended to move around:

I was born in a little town of Woodville, Virginia, and my parents lived there about two years and then they moved from there over to Harlen, Virginia. I guess that was another, maybe five miles away; my father went to work for another farmer. Then they lived two years there, and then they moved from there up into Rappahannock County, the F.T. Valley. The F.T. Valley got its name after a big man came in there, called Francis Thorn[ton], and he owned all that land at one time. And that's where I grew up. I was about four years old when they moved there, and I was twenty-five years old when I left there and came to Fairfax, and have been in Fairfax ever since.

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