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Franko "Washboard" Jackson
August 2008 at Salty Dog Saloon on C 30 A in Walton Co FL . The last HUBBA HUBBA gig before the bar shut down. Again. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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___________________ Washboard Jackson was born in Oklahoma in 1950, moved to Atlanta when he was three, and back to Oklahoma when he was thirteen. He spent his childhood listening to his mother play her hot pink upright piano and her comb and cellophane as a wind instrument. When he was 24, Jackson moved to the Ozarks where he chanced to hear the Jug, Jook, and Washboard Band LP: Music made without formal training on homemade instruments. Just like his Mom used to do. Jackson
took up
the washboard in 1975 and, at 25, moved to New Orleans to find the music.
A few months later he saw an ad in the
Times Picayune: “Washboard
Player Wanted: Non-Professional Only.” He was surprised when he was the only one to show up to audition. Washboard Jackson joined the The Bad Oyster Band that played irregular gigs all over the city and still does. During that time he sat in with Professor Longhair, the single greatest influence on his music. Jackson says Longhair is "an avatar". Playing
the streets in the French Quarter, he met musicians from New York who
formed Washboard Jackson and the Hot Damn Jug Band in 1979. They
were a featured act for the entire run of the New Orleans World’s
Fair of 1984. Every June, Washboard travels to upstate New York for a
reunion with these musicians and many more to play the Ithaca Festival
as the Gourmet Jugband. In 1985 he moved to Florida with
the woman who would eventually persuade him to marry her, Eileen.
He began playing with a pickup band at Docie’s Dock
in Ft Walton Beach. Shortly, Jackson and Bill Garrett formed Willy and the Wahoos,
and played festivals and dive bars, and tourist bars up and down the coast. Check
local listings and hear HUBBA HUBBA on Washboard's CD: ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Guitar Slim" In 2002 Jackson started painting, encouraged and influenced by Billie Gaffrey, Justin Gaffrey, and Woodie Long. He painted narrative images from his life: family, friends, his dog and sometimes his cat, and musicians, he admired. The self-taught musician has become the self-taught visual artist. Click Here to see more of Jackson's art. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Eileen West Gallery P O Box 4715 Seaside Florida 32459 850.231-2133 |
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