jazz musician; vibraphonist
Personal Information
Born Milton Jackson, on January 1, 1923, in Detroit, MI; died of liver cancer in New York, NY, on October 9, 1999. married to Sandy.
Education: Attended public schools in Detroit.
Military/Wartime Service: Served in U.S. Army, 1942-44.
Career
Jazz vibraphonist. Sang in church; took up guitar at age seven and piano at age eleven; played several instruments in high school music classes and took up the vibraphone; joined Dizzy Gillespie band, 1945; recorded with Thelonious Monk band, 1947-52; performed with Woody Herman big band, 1949-50; rejoined Gillespie, 1951-52; formed Milt Jackson Quartet, soon renamed Modern Jazz Quartet, 1952; performed with Modern Jazz Quartet, 1952-74; extensive solo recording career.
Life's Work
The unquestioned master of the vibraphone in modern jazz, Milt Jackson exemplified the true jazz musician's ability to understand the music's duality of group thinking and individualism. While most players would have been proud to be present at even one of jazz's great historical moments, Jackson played in groups that helped forge two innovative jazz styles: bebop and classical-influenced jazz. Versatile and skillful when playing as part of a group, Jackson also compiled an impressive record of accomplishments as a soloist over the course of his 60-year career, and his lyrical, soulful vibraphone style was unmistakable.
Jackson was born on January 1, 1923, in Detroit, a city with a vigorous jazz scene for much of the twentieth century. The second of five brothers, Jackson started out in gospel music under the influence of his very religious mother. By the age of seven, he was accompanying his brother A.J. on the guitar as the two sang gospel hymns. While still a youngster, Jackson had already become an experienced gospel performer, traveling across the Canadian border every Sunday with a Detroit gospel choir to broadcast on the Windsor, Ontario radio station CKLW. He began taking piano lessons at the age of eleven, but stopped two years later when his mother became unable to afford them.
Mastered Vibes in High School
In high school, Jackson quickly outstripped his fellow music students, mastering several instruments and finishing the material for one course before the semester was even half over. Jackson told Down Beat that his teacher, Luis Cabrera, came up with an unusual solution: "Why don't you take up the vibes?" Jackson recalled Cabrera as saying. "That'll give you something to do, plus keep you out of trouble." Never a commonly played instrument, the vibraphone and its larger cousin the vibraharp (which was actually the instrument Jackson played) had just begun to be heard in jazz. The instrument's leading performers were Lionel Hampton and Red Norvo, and Jackson heard Hampton play at Detroit's Graystone Ballroom and Michigan State Fairgrounds.
Jackson took to the vibes immediately. "I was fascinated by the instrument," he told Down Beat. Rather than following Hampton and Norvo, Jackson worked to develop his own style. He experimented with different settings on the instrument's electronic oscillator, eventually settling on a slow speed that produced a trademark vocal-sounding vibrato. Jackson's innovative bent stood him in good stead in the early 1940s, as the angular, revolutionary new jazz style known as bebop took shape. His jazz apprenticeship was interrupted by military service in 1942, but after he returned to Detroit he found work performing in the city's club circuit. His was a round-the-clock existence in those years. From his fellow musicians, Jackson acquired the nickname "Bags" because of the bags that often formed under his eyes.
Jackson's big break came when jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, then making giant strides forward in defining the musical language of bebop, heard him play in Detroit in 1945 and hired him for a series of West Coast dates. Jackson played vibes on some of Gillespie's legendary recordings of the mid-1940s, including "A Night in Tunisia" and "Two Bass Hit." He moved with Gillespie's band to New York, the epicenter of the bebop revolution. The decision was a difficult one for the deeply religious young man, but it put him at the creative vortex of the jazz world. Jackson's parents were leery of the move at first, but he won them over by bringing renowned vocalist Ella Fitzgerald home to dinner one evening. "And my mother went and called up everyone and said her son was playing with Ella Fitzgerald," Jackson recalled to Down Beat.
Joined Thelonious Monk Band
Jackson made other valuable contacts in New York, and when he was ready to leave Gillespie's group in 1947, he moved on to another ensemble that was both cutting-edge and top-flight: that of pianist Thelonious Monk. Jackson's precise style suited Monk's terse, minimalist musical landscapes well, and once again he was heard on recordings that became jazz classics: Monk's "Misterioso," "Epistrophy," and others. Recording with Monk for the Blue Note label, Jackson impressed more and more jazz enthusiasts with his instantly identifiable sound.
Though identified with bebop, Jackson could adapt his talents to more traditional styles. In 1949 he joined bandleader Woody Herman's big band, touring Cuba with an associated small ensemble, the Woodchoppers. Nourished by the Afro-Cuban rhythms within many of Gillespie's crucial innovations, Jackson reunited with Gillespie in 1951, recording on Gillespie's Dee Gee label with such future jazz superstars as John Coltrane and Kenny Burrell. With Gillespie's rhythm section, he also cut a few sides under the name of the Milt Jackson Quartet.
Three members of this rhythm section--Jackson, pianist John Lewis, and drummer Kenny Clarke--went on, with new bassist Percy Heath, to form the Modern Jazz Quartet in 1952. This group, with its unique mixture of styles, brought a new level of sophistication to jazz in the 1950s. Lewis's cool playing, influenced by European classical technique and sometimes even drawing on classical compositions, provided the perfect foil for Jackson's essentially bluesy style. Jackson remained with the Modern Jazz Quartet until the breakup of the group in 1974.
Collaborated with Ray Charles
Jackson's versatility kept leading him into other collaborations as well, with musicians of the most diverse styles and aspirations. Jackson played on Miles Davis's Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants album of 1954, rejoined Coltrane for the album Bags and Trane, and, on an entirely different note, recorded two albums with jazz-pop pianist and vocalist Ray Charles. On one of those albums, Soul Brothers, Jackson returned for the only time in his recording career to his first instrument, the guitar. Jackson's 1961 duet album with guitarist Wes Montgomery was termed "a stunner" by Ron Wynn of the All Music Guide to Jazz.
Jackson's solo career flourished in the 1960s, and continued unabated for the rest of the twentieth century. He remained active as a musician until just before his death. Recording for Pablo and other labels in a great variety of styles, Jackson's albums maintained a remarkable consistency. He essayed vocals on the 1978 Original Jazz Classics album Soul Believer, which ventured into modern jazz-pop territory with its synthesizer accompaniments, and toured and recorded in the 1980s with the reunited Modern Jazz Quartet.
Even in the 1990s, half a century after his first recording dates, Jackson released several widely acclaimed albums, notably 1994's The Prophet Speaks. "The Prophet" had been a more serious nickname that had flourished alongside the familiar "Bags." Jackson's last album, a collaboration with pianist Oscar Peterson and bassist Ray Brown entitled The Very Tall Band, was released on the Telarc label in 1999. On October 9, 1999, Jackson died of liver cancer in New York.
Works
Selected discography
- Bluesology, Savoy, 1949.
- The First Q, Savoy, 1952.
- Opus de Jazz, Savoy, 1955.
- Plenty Plenty Soul, Atlantic, 1957.
- Soul Brothers, Atlantic, 1957 (with Ray Charles).
- Bean Bags, Atlantic, 1958.
- Bags and Trane, Atlantic, 1959 (with John Coltrane).
- Bags Meets Wes, Original Jazz Classics, 1961 (with Wes Montgomery).
- Live at the Village Gate, Original Jazz Classics, 1963.
- Sunflower, CTI, 1973.
- Soul Believer, Original Jazz Classics, 1978.
- Night Mist, Pablo, 1980.
- Mostly Duke, Pablo, 1982.
- Reverence and Compassion, Qwest, 1993.
- The Prophet Speaks, Qwest, 1994.
- The Very Tall Band, Telarc, 1999.
Further Reading
Books
- Contemporary Musicians, volume 15, Gale, 1996.
- Erlewine, Michael, et al., eds., The All Music Guide to Jazz, Miller Freeman, 1998.
- Kernfeld, Barry, ed. The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Macmillan, 1988.
- Lyons, Len, and Don Perlo, Jazz Portraits, Morrow, 1989.
- Down Beat, November 1999, p. 24.
— James M. Manheim
