J.J. Jackson came to WBCN in the fall of 1968, about six months after the new underground rock station had shrugged off its classical past and programmed free-form music 24/7. Once slotted into the midday shift, he would achieve industry notoriety as the earliest radio proponent of an unknown new band named Led Zeppelin and later, as one of MTV’s first group of video jocks.
Jackson held down a computer technology job, but was a novice deejay on WTUF when he was going to Tufts. While there, one night he tuned into ‘BCN at 104.1 and was blown away. “I really flipped out over it,” he told Record World in June 1978. “I went up to visit Peter [Wolf] while he was on the air, and I just fell in love with the station and everyone I met.” Looking back on the meeting, Wolf says a case of mistaken identity led to him being surprised when Jackson came to introduce himself. “I knew ‘J.J. Jackson’ to be a 300-pound R&B singer,” Wolf recalled. “So he called me and I said, ‘Yeah, come on by.’ I opened the door and there was this thin cat there, wearing the whole Superfly outfit. I realized, ‘This is not the R&B singer.’ He says, ‘I love your show. Can I come up?’ He seemed genuinely into the station, so I said, ‘Sure!’”
“Early on we wanted to hire a Black guy,” “BCN Program Director Sam Kopper explained, “plus, J.J. Jackson was just a sweet human being. The racial irony of [it] was that out of all of us, he probably played the least Motown and soul, and the most Led Zeppelin and Yardbirds.” Jackson’s most memorable moments included bringing Zeppelin, The Who and Jimi Hendrix on stage as well as hosting Pete Townshend in the ‘BCN studio to debut the band’s latest album, Tommy.
Jackson left ‘BCN in November 1970 to accept an offer from KLOS-FM in Los Angeles and 10 years later he joined MTV. He died in March 2004 at age 62 from a heart attack.
(by Carter Alan)
Carter Alan is a former WBCN deejay now heard on WZLX-FM in Boston. He is the author of Radio Free Boston: The Rise and Fall of WBCN (University Press of New England, 2013).
