[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 64 (Thursday, April 6, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E807]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       IN TRIBUTE TO MILT JACKSON

                                 ______


                         HON. JOHN CONYERS, JR.

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, April 5, 1995
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the Congressional Black 
Caucus to bring to the attention of my colleagues the distinguished 
cultural achievements of Milt Jackson.
  Milt Jackson was born in Detroit, MI, in 1923. Milt started playing 
the guitar when he was 7 and by the time he was in high school he was 
proficient in a number of instruments, including drums. He played in 
both the marching band and symphony orchestra.
  As a young man in 1941, Milt Jackson heard Lionel Hampton at the 
Michigan State Fair and decided he wanted to play the vibraharp. Milt 
started playing with Clarence Ringo and the George E. Lee band. In 
1942, he met Dizzy Gillespie. Through Dizzy, he got an opportunity to 
join Earl Hines' big band, with whom Gillespie was playing. Later, Milt 
was drafted and served in the Air Corps.
  Milt returned to Detroit in 1944 and organized a group called ``The 
Four Sharps.'' The Four Sharps performed for about a year until Dizzy 
came to Detroit, sat in one night, and persuaded Milt to go to New 
York.
  Explaining why Jackson has such a fine sense of rhythm, Gillespie 
once exclaimed, ``Why man he's sanctified!'' Ironically, like 
Gillespie, Milt had grown up in a sanctified church.
  In 1952, he joined John Lewis, Percy Heath, and Kenny Clarke, all 
members of the Gillespie band, to form the modern Jazz Quartet, a group 
with a unique collective sound which, in the words of Whitney Balliett, 
``recused jazz from the banality of the endless solo and the rigidity 
of conventional arrangements.''
  Milt Jackson is the perennial winner of practically every popular 
poll taken by jazz fans and critics--he has gotten used to being 
described in superlatives. Because he has performed in so many 
contexts, both within and without the Modern Jazz Quartet, he is now 
among the five most recorded artists in jazz history.
  Milt's unique sound on the vibraharp gave it an entirely new 
direction and style--distinct from the contributions of other players 
such as Red Norvo and Lionel Hampton. He also became one of the 
principal proponents of bebop almost from its inception, and was one of 
the fathers of modern jazz while working with the famous sextet which 
included Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, pianist Al Haig, bassist Ray 
Brown, and drummer Stan Levy.
  Mr. Speaker, during the 100th Congress, the House passed a resolution 
I authored, House Concurrent Resolution 57, which declared jazz ``a 
rare and valuable national American treasure.'' On the occasion of the 
Detroit Symphony Orchestra's Tribute Concert to Milt Jackson on April 
8, 1995, I am honored to call to the attention of the Members of the 
104th Congress, a living testament of this national treasure, Milt 
Jackson.


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