Chicago-based acoustic guitarist and singer Fruteland Jackson has worked almost alone to sustain “Blues in the Schools” initiatives across Chicago and much of the Midwest. His efforts appear vividly on the Electro-Fi label’s Blues 2.0, a Toronto release. Equally devoted to studying, chronicling, and teaching the blues as to performing it, Jackson delivers classic Delta blues, traditional Piedmont blues from Virginia and the Carolinas, and his own original material. Identifying himself as a blues activist, he has carried his distinctive approach into classrooms nationwide, where pupils address him as “Mr. Fruteland.” He devised and refined two school programs titled “Bluz in the Hood” and “Trading Handguns for Harmonicas.”
Born June 9, 1953, in Sunflower County, MS, as the fourth of six children, Jackson grew up in a musical, church-centered household. His grandparents Willie and Anne Bradley established the New Jericho M.B. Church in Doddsville, MS, and his grandmother foresaw that he would one day preach. During the 1950s and ’60s the family relocated from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago in pursuit of improved jobs and schooling. Jackson’s father served as an insurance underwriter for the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company, while his mother worked as a nurse at Cook County Hospital. Regular journeys between Chicago and the Delta marked his childhood. At age twelve an uncle, Woodrow “Dick” Chandler, who performed piano and guitar at local parties and jukes near Inverness, MS, gave him his first guitar. Immersed in 1960s Chicago, Jackson absorbed Motown alongside folk music and kept playing guitar. In high school he took up bugle and trombone before enrolling at Columbia College and Roosevelt University.
After marrying and starting a family, Jackson worked first as a licensed private investigator and later for the Illinois Department of Human Rights. A mid-’80s return to Mississippi, where he settled in Biloxi and launched a wholesale seafood business dealing in shrimp and oysters, prompted him to rediscover “the simple yet complex beauty of the blues.” He explored his father’s 78-rpm collection, guided by the example of historian, arts administrator, and professor William Ferris. When a hurricane destroyed the Biloxi enterprise, Jackson devoted himself fully to blues, ranging from field hollers and work songs to the orchestral style of B.B. King. Recognizing the music as longstanding family heritage, he resolved to master it and channel his teaching skills into classrooms across the country. From those 78s he taught himself the repertoire of Robert Johnson, Johnny Shines, Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf, and Muddy Waters. He pursued this new direction energetically, appearing at the Chicago Blues Festival and numerous other major blues festivals throughout the United States and Canada.
On Blues 2.0, Alec Fraser plays bass and boom drum, Chris Whiteley contributes trumpet, harmonica, and guitar, Ken Whiteley handles mandolin, banjo, and washboard, and Mel Brown supplies guitar and piano. Jackson’s second Electro-Fi recording is I Claim Nothing But the Blues. Both albums showcase his assured vocals and his deft guitar and banjo work, while the clarity and enunciation of his singing recall Len Chandler, Josh White Sr., and Paul Robeson. Since turning his passion for the blues into a profession in the mid-’80s, Jackson has achieved much as educator, performer, and activist. He originated the award-winning “All About the Blues” series for the Blues Foundation’s Blues in the Schools program and received the Illinois Arts Council Folk/Ethnic Heritage Award in 1996. He also earned the Blues Foundation’s Keeping the Blues Alive award for blues in education in 1997.
