Milt Jackson


Milton "Bags" Jackson was an American jazz vibraphonist, usually thought of as a bebop player, although he performed in several jazz idioms. He is especially remembered for his cool swinging solos as a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet and his penchant for collaborating with several hard bop and post-bop players.
A very expressive player, Jackson differentiated himself from other vibraphonists in his attention to variations on harmonics and rhythm. He was particularly fond of the twelve-bar blues at slow tempos. He preferred to set the vibraphone's oscillator to a low 3.3 revolutions per second for a more subtle tremolo. On occasion, Jackson sang and played piano professionally.

Biography

Jackson was born on January 1, 1923 in Detroit, Michigan, United States, the son of Manley Jackson and Lillie Beaty Jackson. Like many, he was surrounded by music from an early age, particularly that of religious meetings: "Everyone wants to know where I got that funky style. Well, it came from church. The music I heard was open, relaxed, impromptu soul music". He started on guitar when he was seven, then on piano at 11.
While attending Miller High School, he played drums in addition to timpani and violin and also sang in the choir. At 16, he sang professionally in a local touring gospel quartet called the Evangelist Singers. He took up the vibraphone at 16 after hearing Lionel Hampton play the instrument in Benny Goodman's band. Jackson was discovered by Dizzy Gillespie, who hired him for his sextet in 1945, then his larger ensembles. Jackson quickly acquired experience working with the most important figures in jazz of the era, including Woody Herman, Howard McGhee, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker.
In the Gillespie big band, Jackson fell into a pattern that led to the founding of the Modern Jazz Quartet: Gillespie maintained a former swing tradition of a small group within a big band, and his included Jackson, pianist John Lewis, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Kenny Clarke while the brass and reeds took breaks. When they decided to become a working group in their own right, around 1950, the foursome was known at first as the Milt Jackson Quartet, becoming the Modern Jazz Quartet in 1952. By that time Percy Heath had replaced Ray Brown.
Known at first for featuring Jackson's blues-heavy improvisations almost exclusively, in time the group came to split the difference between these and Lewis's more ambitious musical ideas, boiling the quartet down to a chamber jazz style that highlighted the lyrical tension between Lewis's mannered, but roomy, compositions and Jackson's unapologetic swing.
The MJQ had a long independent career of some two decades until disbanding in 1974, when Jackson split with Lewis. The group reformed in 1981, however, and continued until 1993, after which Jackson toured alone, performing in various small combos, although agreeing to periodic MJQ reunions. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, Jackson recorded for Norman Granz's Pablo Records, including Jackson, Johnson, Brown & Company, featuring Jackson with J. J. Johnson on trombone, Ray Brown on bass, backed by Tom Ranier on piano, guitarist John Collins, and drummer Roy McCurdy.
In 1989, Jackson was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music.
His composition "Bags' Groove" is a jazz standard. He was featured on the NPR radio program Jazz Profiles. Some of his other signature compositions include "The Late, Late Blues", "Bluesology", and "Bags & Trane".
Jackson died of liver cancer in Manhattan, New York, at the age of 76. He was married to Sandra Whittington from 1959 until his death; the couple had a daughter.
On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Milt Jackson among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.

Discography

With the Modern Jazz Quartet
With Cannonball Adderley
With Count Basie
With Benny Carter
With Kenny Clarke
With Miles Davis
With Roy Eldridge
With Dizzy Gillespie
With Quincy Jones
  • I/We Had a Ball
With Hank Mobley
  • Hank Mobley and His All Stars
With Oscar Peterson
  • Reunion Blues
  • The Oscar Peterson Big 6 at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1975
With Don Sebesky
  • Giant Box
With Stanley Turrentine
  • Cherry
With Dinah Washington'