>> >>ANGELA: The first thing you see is his piano, from the early 1900s and Jackson bought
it for a hundred dollars.
The piano is getting tuned when we arrive.
>> >>GUEST SPEAKER: It's not great, but it won't disgrace you.
>> >>ANGELA: Jackson picks up his first and ever lasting love, the sacks o phone, to sacks
to help tune the piano.
Jackson is 76.
He lives in the house he grew up in which was built in 1902.
In fact, it was here in this front room that Jackson heard the tenor SAXOPHONE for the
first time.
>> >>GUEST SPEAKER: I thought it was marvelous when he was playing.
I heard the tenor SAXophone and was like that's where I want to be for the rest of my life
is on that sound.
>> >>ANGELA: Jackson credits his mother with helping him stay on that sound.
Right above his piano is a black and white photograph of her sitting straight and proud.
>> >>GUEST SPEAKER: She was a strong woman.
I have a wealth of respect for any woman in her situation is really something.
But she came through like a champion.
>> >>ANGELA: Johnny Jackson livered with her husband and three children in the quarters,
an area of La Jolla where black domestic workers lived.
She was a maid, and her husband a chauffeur.
After her husband died of throat cancer, Johnny moved her three kids to this house in south
east San Diego.
>> >>GUEST SPEAKER: She had a great job in front of her, that was to raise three children,
uneducated, a black woman in white America, it was not easy.
>> >>ANGELA: For many years, she managed to pay for Jackson's SAXophone lessons on a maid's
salary.
Today Jackson is consider ad local legend, one of the founding fathers of San Diego's
jazz scene.
But Jackson di did leave San Diego for short stints.
In the late 60s he toured Europe with the ray Charles band.
└ └ >> >>GUEST SPEAKER: You can look for my clothes.
>> >>ANGELA: Jackson says many don't know it but Charles was a brilliant SAXOphone.
>> >>GUEST SPEAKER: The SAXophone looked so hot, it was steam, heat was rising in it,
and it was melting into these golden globes of toap tone tirks.
>> >>ANGELA: Making a living as a musician has always been a struggle.
Jackson taught himself to play piano and got himself playing six nights a week at the hotel
del Coronado. Jackson still plays piano at Croche's downtown.
He's been there for 30 years.
As a young musician, one of Jackson's idols was the great James moody, who died in 2010.
>> >>GUEST SPEAKER: He's my idol so much that these guys around here in the neighborhood
give all these neighbors and buddies and everybody nicknames.
So they were calling me young moody.
>> >>ANGELA: Many years later moody showed up to watch Jackson play.
The next day they spent an afternoon hanging out at moody's house in San Diego.
At one point, moody went up stares and came back down with two grocery bags full of SAXOphone
mouth pieces from the all the years he had been playing.
>> >>GUEST SPEAKER: That mouth piece right there was in one of those bags.
I found that mouth piece.
It was a good mouth piece for me.
>> >>ANGELA: It was later that Jackson discovered that moody's name is etched into the brases
mouth piece.
>> >>GUEST SPEAKER: I tolled told his wife that.
James is always with me wherever I go.
>> >>ANGELA: Jackson says he'll keep on playing music until he can't any longer.
In his words, it's a labor of love, and a quest to experience some part of divinity.
Angela Carone, KPBS news.