Tommy Jackson

If there was a Jimi Hendrix of country fiddlers, it was Tommy Jackson. And if square dance music had its Eric Clapton, then it was Tommy Jackson. Would-be stars on the country fiddle snapped up his records as fast as he could release them during the late '50s and early '60s. This makes it a special tragedy that Jackson isn't very well remembered today, except by his fellow musicians. In his time, from the end of the 1940s until the beginning of the 1960s, he was the first important session fiddle player in Nashville, and the best and busiest violinist in country music, working on records by Hank Williams, Bill Monroe, and George Jones, among numerous others. One of the sad ironies of his career was that his influence led to Jackson's own forced retirement -- so many younger players followed in his footsteps that he found precious little work during the final decade of his life and died in relative obscurity. Thomas Lee Jackson was born in Birmingham, AL, but his family moved to Nashville before he was a year old, and he grew up there listening all of the best country music that local radio and the Grand Ole Opry had to offer. Among his favorite groups growing up were George Wilkerson and the Fruit Jar Drinkers and Arthur Smith's Dixieliners. His father was a barber, not a musician, but he encouraged the boy -- by age seven, Tommy was playing fiddle tunes at local bars for nickels and dimes, and at 12 he was going on tour with John Wright and Kitty Wells. He formed a group called the Tennessee Mountaineers and became a regular guest on Nashville's WSIX. By 17, he was playing on the Opry with Curly Williams and His Georgia Peach Pickers. A year later, however, his budding musical career was interrupted when Jackson joined the U.S. Army Air Force -- he spent 1944 and 1945...