Oliver Jackson born 28 April 1933

Oliver Jackson (April 28, 1933 – May 29, 1994), also known as Bops Junior, was an American jazz drummer.

Jackson was born in Detroit, Michigan, and started taking drum lessons when he was 11. Why drums,   as opposed to any other instrument? “The school system provided music classes. I didn’t have any money to buy an instrument, so I started taking drum lessons because you only needed a practice pad to take the lessons,” Jackson explains. “I used to go to the Paradise Theater all the time, from the time I was nine years old on up. I saw all the big  bands there and all the drummers that were playing. I saw Big  Sid  Catlett with Louis Armstrong; I saw Gene Krupa, Lionel Hampton, and Cozy Cole. I saw Jo Jones when he came through with the Basie Band,  and I  saw Andy Kirk’s Band. “I knew right away, after about a year of  studying, that I wanted to  become a professional musician. At that  time, Detroit, where I grew up,  was like a southern town up north.

                  Here's "Jackson is Wigging" from above album

                                   

By the 1940's Jackson was playing with Thad Jones and Tommy Flanagan. He visited New York as drummer with the pianists Dorothy Donegan and Ivory Joe Hunter but each time returned to Detroit until 1948 when he formed a variety act with Eddie Locke called Bop & Locke, and they continued performing together until 1953, spending two of those years sharing the apartment of the legendary Count Basie drummer Jo Jones. After spending two years with Yusef Lateef (1954-1956) he moved to New York, where he worked as a freelance.

Jackson with Earl Hines

 He substituted for Zutty Singleton at the Metropole (1957-8) and played at the Embers with Teddy Wilson. He toured with Charlie Shaver's quartet (1959-61), Buck Clayton (Europe, 1961), Benny Goodman's big band and small groups (1962), and Lionel Hampton's big band (1962-4). He then worked with Kenny Burrell. He was a member of a quartet led by Earl Hines (1964-70) and he also played with larger groups that Hines occasionally assembled together during that period. 

Jackson was a listening drummer, always careful to fit his playing to the work of other musicians rather than try, as some drummers do, to dominate a band. When he toured Britain in 1967 with a mainstream all-star group called Jazz From a Swinging Era, he had to accompany the grandiose Earl Hines and another pianist, the comparatively self-effacing Sir Charles Thompson, as well as the trumpeters Buck Clayton and Roy Eldridge and tenor sax men Bud Freeman and Budd Johnson. All Jackson's great talent was called upon as he had to switch his accompanying style so often. In 1969 he formed the JPJ Quartet with Budd Johnson, Bill Pemberton, and Dill Jones.

From 1975 to 1980 he played in Sy Oliver's nine-piece band, and in the late 1970's he performed as a freelance with Hampton (1977, 1978) and Oscar Peterson, among others. He also belonged to George Wein's Newport Jazz Festival All-Stars, with which he recorded in 1984. As a bandleader, Jackson led a 1961 date in Switzerland, and recorded at least five albums for Black & Blue Records between 1977 and 1984.

Jackson played at 18 of the Nice Jazz Festivals, and he was the first choice for musicians as widely spread as Buck Clayton, Benny Goodman, Earl Hines and Zoot Sims. Jackson toured Europe in 1994 with George Wein's Festival All Starts as by this time the two men were close friends and Wein was responsible for most of Jackson's later work. Jackson died from heart failure in New York City at Manhattan's Lenox Hill Hospital. He was 61. His brother, bassist Ali Jackson, performed with him both at the beginning and towards the end of their careers. His nephew, Ali Jackson Jr., is a jazz drummer.

(Edited from The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Michigan History & The Independent)

Here's a clip of Buck Clayton -  Emmett Berry - Earle Warren - Buddy Tate - Sir Charles Thompson - Gene Ramey and Oliver Jackson from the archives of Andreas Lüscher in Mexico - Recorded in Belgium, 1961.