Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 26, 1993 TAG: 9302260470
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"PLAYING IS PLAYING"
Led by John Jackson, tonight promises to be a very special evening of music\ at the Henry Street Music Center.Jackson and five of the foremost early folk and blues performers in the country will perform together at the center as the Piedmont Guitarists Tour comes to Roanoke.
The tour, sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, is designed to showcase a tradition of acoustic folk and blues music unique to America - and particularly to Virginia.
And with such a prominent lineup, it should be a rare treat indeed. Along with Jackson will be Roanoker Daniel Womack, John Cephas, Phil Wiggins and the father-son duo Turner and Lynn Foddrell. All of them are Virginians.
Jackson, 68, perhaps is the most notable among the ensemble. A 1986 National Heritage Fellow, Jackson is considered a master of finger-style guitar picking, and he has been carrying on the Piedmont tradition for nearly 30 years.
His is a remarkable story.
One of 14 children who grew up on a family farm in Rappahannock County, Jackson had music an integral part of his upbringing. His mother played accordion and harmonica, though she would play only spirituals. His father played guitar, banjo, ukulele and mandolin.
But his parents didn't affect him musically as much as a chain-gang prisoner named Happy, who was working on the first paved road through the county.
Happy would fetch water at the Jacksons' spring and eventually ended up teaching the young Jackson the finger-picking he still uses today.
Jackson said in a telephone interview from his home in Fairfax that he never knew Happy's last name. Nor did he know what Happy was serving time for.
"He always swore he didn't do nothing, but we knew he did something."
From the radio, Jackson learned everything from blues to ragtime to jazz and gospel.
Through his teens, Jackson played at parties and dances, but when a brawl broke out at one such gathering, he quit playing.
From 1946 to 1964, Jackson didn't pick up a guitar. He moved to Fairfax in 1948 to work on a large dairy farm. When the farm was sold, he became a gravedigger.
Then one day, a group of neighborhood kids coaxed him into getting the guitar out again and playing a few songs.
"I was rusty, I sure was."
While serenading them on his front porch, his mailman came by with the daily mail. He talked Jackson into teaching him some technique.
This led Jackson to a gas station where the mailman moonlighted.
There, Jackson was heard by Charles Perdue, a folklorist at the University of Virginia.
Perdue befriended Jackson, and the next thing he knew a record producer was at his house recording him - from 11 in the morning to 11 that night, 90 songs in all.
The record came out in 1965 on a small California label dedicated to preserving American folk music, and Jackson has been traveling and playing the blues ever since.
He now has six albums and has played from Carnegie Hall in New York to the Chicago Blues Festival to London's Royal Albert Hall and the White House.
His press kit includes copies of two letters from United States presidents.
Not that the world's premier musical venues impress Jackson. "I mean, playing is playing," he said. "I enjoy playing anywhere I get a job."
His list of musical friends and acquaintances is no less impressive. They include B.B. King, Son House, Taj Mahal, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Eric Clapton, Doc Watson and Ricky Skaggs.
Even Mr. Rogers visited him once to film a segment for "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood."
Jackson said it has been an honor to meet so many prominent people - something he never dreamed of doing. He doesn't seem to fully acknowledge his own place among this company.
"I just tell you I fool around with it some," he said of his music.
In fact, throughout the past 30 years, Jackson has kept working as a gravedigger in and around Fairfax. "I play music part-time and work when I'm home," he explained.
"I just like to work."
He did, however, long ago treat himself to a backhoe, after laboring with just a shovel for 17 years.
But his life hasn't been completely charmed. In 1979, one of his seven children died of leukemia. A year later, one of his sons was fatally shot by Fairfax County police who mistook him for a burglar at the school where he worked as a custodian.
Reason to play the blues, sure enough. Few, though, play them as well as John Jackson.
VA. PIEDMONT GUITARISTS TOUR: Tonight, 7 p.m., Henry Street Music Center, First Street, downtown Roanoke. $5. 345-4818.
Also on the bill . . .\ \ John Jackson is not the only folk and blues virtuoso on the Piedmont Guitarists Tour. He shares the bill with four other noteworthy Virginia musicians.
Daniel Womack of Roanoke was born in Pittsylvania County in 1904 and became blind by the time he was a teen-ager. For years, he played guitar at dances and socials in Pittsylvania before joining the church and denouncing the blues. He now plays only spirituals and early gospel.
John Cephas, 62, cut his teeth playing at "country breakdowns" in rural Caroline County where he spent a good portion of his youth. He won a National Heritage Fellowship in 1989 and plays now with Phil Wiggins, considered one of the best blues harmonica players.
Father-son duo Turner and Lynn Foddrell play the mountain blues that Turner Foddrell grew up with in Patrick County at dances and community tobacco-curing parties.
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