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arts&sciences | Fall 2011
From his WGBH studio, Eric Jackson brings his listening fans the sounds and stories of jazz artists.
Photo by ©WGBH/Anthony Tieuli
Taking a Listen with Eric
The "Dean of Boston Jazz Radio" celebrates 30 years as WGBH radio host.
By Jean Hennelly Keith
The wavy, melodic strains of "Blue Monk" fill Eric Jackson's studio while he talks with arts&sciences. It's deftly performed by contemporary pianist Eric Reed, in tribute to jazz giant Thelonious Monk. Jackson follows this up with a CD of Monk's band paying homage to another legendary composer and piano player, Duke Ellington. Speaking into his mic, Jackson gives listeners his signature greeting in a familiar mellow baritone: "My name is Eric. Let's take a listen."
For 30 years now, as host of Jazz with Eric in the Evening (recently renamed Jazz on WGBH with Eric Jackson), the "Dean of Boston Jazz Radio," as Jackson is widely regarded, has presented listeners with a seamless mix of the well-established with the newest jazz talent. He has aired some 3,000 interviews with most of the biggest names in jazz, from Dizzy Gillespie to the Marsalis family.
He thinks ahead about only the first recording he'll play on any given night, Jackson says. He then works with "the flow," putting his show together as it's happening "by sound." He chooses a series of tunes based on "moods, feelings, colors, emotions, rhythms—more than style labels." With the spontaneity of a jazz soloist, he improvises his set list. "I hope I've learned from the musicians I play; I hope there's a flow to the sets and the whole program."
Music permeates his life. When he's not on the air eight to midnight, Monday through Thursday, he's listening to music "pretty much all the time," he acknowledges. "I'm always reading and learning something that turns me to the CD player. All day long, I listen to music; it's a physical process—some people would go nuts! But it's part of me—I grow with it." A teacher of "The African-American Experience Through Music" at Northeastern University and a frequent lecturer and author, he also has developed exhibits for the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City.
Raised in a music-loving family (his father, Samuel, was a "huge jazz fan" and became the first African American radio announcer in New England), Jackson segued from the popular Motown music of his teens to the innovative jazz of "Miles" and "Trane" (Jackson calls Miles Davis and John Coltrane "the pillars of their time") as a college student. In his freshman year at the College of Liberal Arts (as the College of Arts & Sciences was then called), he applied to the student radio station WTBU—"no experience necessary" the ad read—and got his start as an announcer in 1969. His first show was R&B, which he soon expanded to three shows, adding jazz and mixed music. When he asked his program director why he was on the air more than anyone else, Jackson found the reply significant: "Because when you're on the radio, I get quality radio."
Although Jackson came to BU planning to go to medical school to become a psychiatrist, he "fell more and more in love with the music and just decided to do something around the music." During his next two years at the University, he took on more radio gigs, including a jazz program at WBUR. He left BU and worked at Harvard's WHRB for the academic year 1971–1972, then ventured into commercial radio, hosting a Sunday afternoon jazz program at WILD, "sunup to sundown," Jackson recalls. The next five years announcing at WBCN were key in exposing Jackson to a wide variety of music—"a ton of it," he says.
Jackson joined WGBH in 1977 where, in addition to playing mixed music, he took over hosting a weekly chronology of African American musical history, Essays in Black Music. In 1981, when an evening shift announcer went on the road to play bass for a couple of weeks, Jackson filled in. When the host didn't return, WGBH offered Jackson a spot and he began what has become the jazz radio program in Boston, for thirty years and counting.
Early last May, Boston's jazz community, including BU alums impresario Fred Taylor (CAS'51) and radio personality Ron Della Chiesa (CGS'57, COM'59), along with musicians and many enthusiastic fans, gathered for "Eric in Two Evenings," hosted by JazzBoston to honor their esteemed jazz dean, Eric Jackson.