Milt Jackson 100 years on

Phillip Cant looks at the stellar career of Milt Jackson, born 100 years ago this month

1 January 2023 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Milt Jackson, one of the best-known vibraphone players of the last century. During his lifetime, 65 albums were released under his name as ’band leader’, with another 44 by the Modern Jazz Quartet of whom he was a member with John Lewis (piano).

Born in Detroit, Michigan, he was surrounded by music from an early age, particularly religious. “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, and then on piano at 11.

Jackson was discovered by Dizzy Gillespie, who hired him for his sextet in 1945. Jackson quickly gained experience working with the most important figures in jazz of the era, including Woody Herman, Howard McGhee, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker. Gillespie maintained a swing tradition of a small group within a big band, and for him, this was Jackson, pianist John Lewis, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Kenny Clarke. Around 1950 they decided to become a working group in their own right, forming the Modern Jazz Quartet (MJQ) in 1952.

Known at first for featuring Jackson’s blues-heavy improvisations almost exclusively, in time the group came to include Lewis’s more ambitious musical ideas. Lewis had become the group’s musical director by 1955, the year Clarke departed in favour of Connie Kay, bringing the quartet down to a chamber jazz style. This 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, reforming in 1981, and continuing until 1993. After that, Jackson toured alone, performing in various small combos, although agreeing to periodic MJQ reunions.

A very expressive player, Jackson differentiated himself from other vibraphonists with variations on harmonics and rhythm, and his liking for the twelve-bar blues at slow tempos. He preferred to set his vibraphone’s oscillator to a low 3.3 revolutions per second (as opposed to Lionel Hampton’s speed of 10 revolutions per second) for a more subtle tremolo. On occasion, Jackson also sang and played piano.

Among many collaborations in his musical career, Jackson teamed up with Oscar Peterson in 1981 on the album Ain’t But a Few of Us Left, a selection of jazz standards plus the Jackson-composed title track. His tune Bags’ Groove has become a jazz standard (‘bags’ being the nickname given to him for the bags under his eyes). Compositions like The Late, Late Blues, Bluesology, and Bags & Trane are signature elements of his legacy.

In 1989, Jackson was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from the Berklee College of Music. He was often regarded as a bee-bop player, but played many styles, remembered for his cool swing, and collaborations with hard bop and post-bop musicians. He died in 1999.