Saxophonist Javon Jackson has been playing professionally for decades, starting in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1987. His newest albums include the collaboration “Javon & Nikki Go to the Movies,” released just before Nikki Giovanni’s death in December of 2024, and the score to the documentary “With Peter Bradley,” about the acclaimed abstract painter. He’s highlighting his work with Giovanni at Sculler’s Jazz Club in Boston on March 22nd . Ahead of the show he spoke with Jazz on 89.7 hosts Al Davis and Va Lynda Robinson. The conversation has been lightly edited for length.
Al Davis: Welcome, Mr. Jackson! We love the new release, “Javon & Nikki Go to the Movies.” Tell us a little bit about that.
Javon Jackson: Well Nikki had an idea, as a follow up to our first CD, that she would pick music or love songs from great films, and she would put poetry to those pieces. So “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing” or “Speak Low,” these are songs that come from films that she loved as a young person.
Al Davis: It’s all so well put together!
Va Lynda Robinson: How was it working with Nikki Giovanni? This was your second album with her.
Javon Jackson: I invited Nikki to come to the University of Hartford, where I teach, to speak to students during Black History Month. I’ve invited others: Cornell West, Sonia Sanchez, Angela Davis, Michael Eric Dyson, to come and speak about their experiences and how they lived through what they lived through, to give students firsthand information about the struggle, about America through their eyes. When I first met Nikki, we were in an auditorium, and they were playing a record you probably know Al, called “Steal Away.” It was Hank Jones and Charlie Haden playing spirituals.
And she said, “Wow, I love that! Jazz musicians playing spirituals? I’d love to hear more of that!” Then I got up next morning and I said, “Wow, I wonder if she would pick ten spirituals for me.” And that was my next CD: “The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni.” She didn’t like that title, she felt it was arrogant, so I have to let everyone know: that was my decision! She picked all those spirituals, and then said, “I never sang on any recordings, I don’t know if I can sing,” and I said, “You’re Nikki Giovanni!”
Al Davis: This newest release, “Go to the Movies,” folks will call into the show and say it’s the first time they’ve heard jazz with poetry. Tell us a little bit more about that, that’s pretty interesting.
Javon Jackson: Well she selected her poems, and it’s funny, we get a lot of comments, like “Wow, that’s provocative!!” And I think they’re shocked initially because it isn’t civil rights-type poetry.
We really spent a lot of great times together musically. We met in 2020 and we started touring, let’s say '23, and so we got 10 to 15 concerts in and they were always standing room only. She was famous for what she stood for, not for something that wasn’t real. I mean, she was unapologetic about her love for Black people, her love for the things that she believed in and particularly for Black women.
Va Lynda Robinson: Javon, you’re no stranger to Boston. In fact, you went to Berklee, but I understand you left Berklee to join Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Is that true?
Javon Jackson: That is true. I went to Berklee at the urging of Branford Marsalis, because I met Branford in high school, and I had let him know that I wanted to play with Art Blakey. I basically wanted to have the same kind of career he did because I became aware of Branford through the Jazz Messengers. So he met with me and said, “Go to Berklee and then you can study with the great Billy Pierce.”
And so I did exactly what Branford suggested, and was there a couple of years. Then an opportunity came through faculty there, from Donald Brown, the great jazz pianist, who was playing with Art at the time. He made a way for me to audition, and I got offered the job! I called my mother and father and told them that I got offered the opportunity to play with Art Blakey. And my dad said, “Oh! That’s great. Fantastic!” My father was a huge jazz fan.
Then he puts Mom on the phone: “Hey, how you doing, Mom? I got the gig with Art Blakey!”
“Oh, really? What are you doing in New York? You should have been in Boston! You got to finish your degree!”
“Yeah, but I went to Berklee to get with Art Blakey!”
“I sent you to Berklee to get a degree!”
And so on. Eventually we agreed I could finish in a few years, but she stayed on me. I got my degree after being on the road for about six-seven years. I got the undergraduate degree, and then I was telling the great Ron Carter that story, and he said you should do your Masters. I said, “Why would I do that?” And he said: “One day, you’ll teach.” And I’m teaching now. And I don’t believe that without that second degree, I would have gotten hired. Listen to your elders when they tell you to do something!
Al Davis: So you’re coming into Scullers March 22nd. Tell us a little bit about what we can expect to hear.
Javon Jackson: Well, what we’ve been doing recently is using this tour schedule to acknowledge Nikki. So we’ll be playing music that comes from “The Gospel According to Nikki” album, and then the “Go to the Movies” album. I’ve also been working hard to read some of her poetry. She’s not there, but we still recognize some of her incredible poetry which we fuse with the music.
Va Lynda Robinson: You know, you mentioned your father, and I understand that both of your parents were huge jazz fans. And so I’m assuming that they nurtured your talents by exposing you to Ahmad Jamal, Sonny Stitt, Dexter Gordon and Charlie Parker...
Javon Jackson: Well, you know, like I said, my parents, they lived vicariously through me, particularly my dad, but they didn’t put any pressure on me. They just allowed me to do whatever it was that I wanted to do. So if I wanted to go see Modern Jazz Quartet, they would take me. We weren’t rich, but we weren’t poor, we were extremely modest. And they made a big sacrifice: they got me a world class instrument, a Selmer saxophone, when I was 13 or 14. My father was a truck driver. and I don’t believe in his life he made more than $75 a day. But he decided to support me and he believed in his child. And he did the best for his children, both myself and my brothers. My parents were both like that. But yes, in my house, we cleaned to “Ahmad Jamal Live at the Pershing.” You know, we cleaned the house to “Steamin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet.” That’s what we heard.
Al Davis: Whew!
Va Lynda Robinson: Oh, yeah!
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Javon Jackson: In addition to other things, I heard Bobby Womack, I heard Al Green, I heard Curtis Mayfield, you know, Smokey Robinson and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. We heard all of that kind of music, in a phrase, “Black music.” That was what was played on the stations that they were listening to. So I didn’t know anything about Chicago or the Beatles or Pink Floyd. I was upstairs one day, I vividly remember this, and I was just practicing some of the songs that your music teachers would give you, and playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and all these different melodies. My dad knocked on the door and he said, “hey, see if you can play this,” and it was Gene Ammons! And, you know, that was my beginning and how I learned solos. I just remember ruining all of his records, and I’d have to run to the store and try to buy the record again, because I had ruined his records trying to go back and forth with the needle.
Al Davis: Yeah, I remember those days! A lot of jazz was being played on the air, a lot of good soul music. It was good stuff, man.
Va Lynda Robinson: You’ve also dipped your toe into films.
Javon Jackson: Right! Well, going back some years ago, I was commissioned to write a film score to a silent film at the Syracuse International Film Festival, and you would select a silent film with the artistic director, and then they would strip the music, and you would write a score to that film and perform it live. And so I selected a film called “The Lodger,” which is Alfred Hitchcock, from 1929. He was still in London at the time, and it’s based on the hunt for Jack the Ripper. Now, we know that in a film without words, the music can really serve as dialog. Well, you don’t get to talk to the director because there’s no Alfred Hitchcock. So I had to, to the best of my ability, try to use what I felt would best convey a melody for the various characters. And so for my lead voice that I had in the film, was French Horn. I love French Horn. Then after that I really got the bug that I wanted to do this again.
Fast forward to what you’re alluding to, which is a CD I did called “With Peter Bradley.” He’s an abstract painter, and I was friends with him for a long time. He never talked about his career, so I had no idea that he had this really important career, a great career as an abstract painter. We stayed in contact over the years, and I went to visit him and I saw his space and his painting. I said, “You never told me!” and he was like, “It never came up!” At the same time they were doing a documentary on him and he and the family asked if I’d be willing to write for the film. That was really meaningful to get a chance to do that.
Va Lynda Robinson: Just one more question. I’d like to know how you feel about teaching young minds.
Javon Jackson: Well, it’s an honor, number one, it’s a pleasure, and it’s an obligation that I feel we have as musicians to kind of support the younger musicians the same way that the Art Blakeys of the world supported me. I want to run the race as long as I can run it, and then I want to pass it on to the next generation. But if I’m not there to give them the information and try to be a support system, I can’t complain. It’s an oral tradition, so we have to be there and we have to show up.
When I got this opportunity, at the Jack Mclean Institute of Jazz Studies, I called Mr. Sonny Rollins and I said, “Sonny, I don’t, you know, quite know what I want to do.” He said, “We need more guys on the inside.”
And also, he said, “You know, they wouldn’t have let me in there as a young man.” Think about it. Sonny was born 1930. So in 1956, 57, 58… well, what college would he have been able to go to to play jazz? The opportunity is now, to get in there and do the work and be the right example. We want them to understand the incredible ability and commitment and level of genius that... Duke Ellington has. So we got to get in there and talk about that every day.
Javon Jackson performs at Sculler’s Jazz Club on Friday March 22nd. His latest album, with the late Nikki Giovanni, is “Javon & Nikki Go to the Movies.”
