Randy Jackson Randy Jackson Randall Darius Jackson (born June 23, 1956) is an American bassist, singer, record producer, entrepreneur and television personality. Jackson began his career in the 1980s as a session musician playing bass guitar for an array of jazz, pop, rock and R&B performers. He moved on to work in music production and as A&R at Columbia Records and MCA Records. Jackson is best known from his appearances as a judge on "American Idol" and executive producer for MTV's "America's Best Dance Crew". Jackson has won a Grammy Award as a producer. Jackson was born on June 23, 1956, in
Judge Jackson Judge Jackson Judge J. Jackson (March 12, 1883, Montgomery County, Alabama - April 7, 1958, Ozark, Alabama) was an American sacred harp composer, songwriter, and educator. His 1934 publication "The Colored Sacred Harp" was later recognized by scholars such as Doris Dyen and "New Grove" writer Joe Dan Boyd as an important document of early twentieth-century shape note singing practice. Jackson was raised in a family of sharecroppers and obtained little formal education as a child. When he was sixteen years old, he left home and took work as a farmhand in Dale County, Alabama, where he settled and eventually