John (Jack) Jackson grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Woodbury, New Jersey. He graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts in 1974 with a Bachelor of Applied Music Degree in Percussion Performance. Upon graduation, Jack moved to Arizona where he worked as a drummer in hotels and nightclubs. He began playing bass guitar while living in Phoenix and later entered the Air Force Band program as a bass player. When the Air Force moved Jack from his first assignment in Montgomery, Alabama to Anchorage, Alaska, he began focusing on playing piano as an addition to bass and drums. At the Elmendorf AF Band in Anchorage, Jack played drums and xylophone with the Alaska Brass, a brass quintet (plus one), bass, drums, and piano with the Greatlanders, a jazz big band, and bass with Top Cover, a pop/rock group.

    Jack’s credits include performances with Herbie Mann, the Les Elgart Big Band,
Laurindo Almeida, Toots Thielemans, Roberta Sherwood, the Diamonds, and several
Broadway musicals.  Locally he has performed with the Anchorage Symphony,
Anchorage Concert Chorus, and virtually every jazz musician in town.  Jack is also
a composer of his own music, usually in the jazz idiom.

    Since retiring from the Air Force in April 2001 Jack has been an active musician and bandleader in Anchorage and owner of Alaska’s Best Bands, a musician contracting organization. In recent years he’s played piano and bass guitar in a latin band, a Tower of Power tribute band, and worked as a pianist/bandleader at the Captain Cook Hotel, as well as many other formats.

       Jack has played bass guitar on two cruise ship contracts so far, one for Celebrity in the Mediterranean, and another for Holland America in Southeast Alaska and Central America.

    Jack's non-musical activities include woodworking (furniture-making in particular), tennis, bicycling, skiing, hiking, and traveling.  An experienced ballroom dancer, he occasionally teaches dance lessons.  Jack also holds a private pilot's  license and has experience flying both powered airplanes and gliders.