Today is the day....

that yours truly gets inducted into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame in a ceremony tonight in downtown Portland.

When others would hear about the honor and offer their kudos, I would always say thanks (of course) and the only quip/retort that would come to my mind was that I hope the next 47 years would be as interesting as the last...
and maybe I would get it right this time!! (drummers are so self-effacing at times)....

Believe you me, I have thought long and hard about the ramifications of this honor and those who have fed into this vessel, who just happens to be a musician.

Those people are many, and there are still those who in present day who continue to shape and guide my sensitivities to the making of music.

One person that I should really name and get into the lexicon of things is my first real mentor, Bob Brewer, who really was the first guy who taught me the joy of being inside of the music, whatever it is, and to respect and go forward with the experience.
Bob would to travel to my house to pick me up for events that were "off the clock" for his time, but to expose me to different things was indeed a joy for him. His skills as a trombone/low brass player were of legend, and he left more friends than enemies, I would offer.
I still think of him as one of the leaders of the "Lewis & Clark College Music Mafia" during his school tenure there in the 50s.
Some great Portland musicians came from that group of players, and this also included my high school band teacher and later mentor Larry Morrell, who also continued my learning curve in this world of being a player, by interjecting me into the professional world by getting my view together of the music and what it required constantly. Another early champion of my cause was Chic Colburn, who I took a early drum lesson from, and who basically said that I needed to just go out into the world and "play"...

Another person I will take with me into the Hall Of Fame is Bruce Carter.
He honorably lives in the pages of this blog elsewhere.

This mighty drummer from NE Portland was another big influence on my young life (and others) as a highly accomplished and stylized player, and he did it with such groove and verve that we all were constantly floored whenever he took the chair with The Soulmasters, and then later, Pleasure.
One part Billy Cobham, another part Dennis Chambers (which he and Bruce were contemporaries) and all the rest pure groove.

Bruce knew where a quarter note began and stopped.

As always, Mel Brown and Ronnie Steen were constants in my life, and continued to be so in present-day. Their friendship and musical compass-pointing continue to keep me spirited in the best of ways. Generous to a fault, and always encouraging to me over the years, I could have never asked for a better couple of guys to give me perspective on things in the professional musician world.
Let's put it this way, in regards to these two people...

Carlton Jackson really doesn't exist without the two of these men, doing what they do best...
enabling and emboldening others with the true spirit of what good music making is.



Moreover, I am more than happy and fully honored to be inducted with the likes of the great (now local!!) Jazz piano player and lyricist Dave Frishberg, composer, conductor Norman Leyden (34 years conducting the Oregon Symphony Orchestra Pops, and whom I have worked with a few years into now present day), Terry Currier of Music Millennium Records (whom I shared lots of time in their aisles buying music over the years), David Leiken (who managed the aforementioned band Pleasure in their heyday). Curtis Salgado who still is the killer-diller, with regards to blues vocalists...

The beautiful,freaky Holy Modal Rounders (with whom I know Roger North, a great local drummer and light who invented the infamous North Drums) and also the local funk band Shock (vocalist Malcolm Noble is a good friend, along with drummer Billy Bradford)

Also Thara Memory, Uber-educator, mentor and good friend.

Gary Ogan,who I always thought that music literally poured from this man. Gary is always a person who I look at to see what he is up to and still enjoy listening to his output.


I will post more of my thoughts later, as they come to me.

thanks for reading,
cj