Jackie King

After holding a full-time staff position teaching at the Music Institute (then GIT) Jackie King created and owned the Southwest Guitar Conservatory, which drew students from around the world and was featured in Guitar Player Magazine. He received an honorary Master’s degree from San Francisco State University and served on the board of the Music Teachers’ Association of California. Jackie King’s educational products have continued to be in print for almost 20 years: REH-Warner Bros. Hotlines book & cassette, Contemporary Guitar Improvisation on Hotlicks Videos. King’s first book for the Mel Bay Company, Getting Into Jazz Guitar, is currently available worldwide. Jackie taught clinics/seminars and lectured throughout the US at prestigious music schools such as Berklee College of Music and the University of the Arts (Philadelphia), and served on a music industry panel at the International Association for Jazz Education convention in Los Angeles. Jackie King’s wealth of musical and improvisational knowledge and his ability to communicate this knowledge in a highly accessible manner to students of all ages and playing levels made him one of the most respected and sought after clinicians in the U.S. and abroad. He was able to convey concepts of musical theory as easily as he imparted his knowledge of the entertainment industry. Jackie served as an Artist in Residence at the revolutionary Indaba Music. Indaba Music (http://www.indabamusic.com) is a social network and web application that enables musicians from all over the world to collaborate together online. Members can connect with an international community of over one million musicians from almost every country on Earth to create online recording sessions - editing and mixing tracks recorded in different parts of the world using an online digital audio work station. The Indaba Artist in Residence program is designed for experts in a particular field of music to share their unique knowledge with the Indaba community. As an author Jackie King’s articles and lessons have appeared in Jazz Times, All About Jazz, and Just Jazz Guitar. As a composer, one of his compositions, "The Great Divide," is the title track for Willie Nelson’s CD which was nominated for Album of the Year (Grammy) and garnered the superstar a gold record. The title track to Jackie’s unreleased CD, I Remember the Stars, is another original composition and features legendary jazz pianist Marian McPartland of NPR‘s Piano Jazz, the longest running jazz radio program in history. This was the first and only time McPartland consented to record a duo CD with any artist.

As an artist Jackie King was reviewed and featured in prominent media such as the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Vintage Guitar, Jazz Times, Downbeat, Guitar Player, 20th Century Guitar, Jazziz, All About Jazz, and NPR’s Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland. The quarterly, Just Jazz Guitar, ran an excerpt from Jackie’s Getting Into Jazz Guitar book and a review of this highly acclaimed book. King performed throughout the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan, and performed on The Jazz Cruise (sponsored by Jazz Times magazine), traveling to the East Caribbean. He performed extensively with Chet Baker, Ray Charles, Richie Cole, Willie Nelson, the Boston Pops, and the Joffrey Ballet. King shared the stage and taught clinics with most of the legendary jazz guitarists: Barney Kessell, Pat Martino, Lenny Breau, Tal Farlow, and Herb Ellis, as well as blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughn rock-fusion guitarist Eric Johnson, and the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, and served as a touring artist/ clinician for the California Arts Council. King appeared as a featured guest on numerous TV shows/specials including Austin City Limits, HBO, CBS, PBS, and on TV stations throughout Europe and Japan, and is on numerous performance videos. Jackie King’s recordings include releases on Columbia Records, Mercury Records, his own Indigo Moon Records, Concord Records, NPR, Augie Meyers’ Texas Re-Cord Company, and numerous other labels. King was honored on NPR’s Marian McPartland and Friends Jazz Christmas CD as it featured a duet with King and Marian McPartland, and also on an NPR live CD titled Willie Nelson featuring Jackie King on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz. He has been featured on many CDs, DVDs and television shows with Willie Nelson; too numerous to list. These were followed by the release of Phone Call for Charlie Parker, a live recording featuring alto saxophonist, Richie Cole, from one of King’s sold out East coast tours. At New York's historic venue Birdland, Jackie King joined a line-up of legendary jazz legends such as Clark Terry, Tony Bennett, Phil Woods, Jim Hall, and other artists such as Norah Jones, Bill Charlap and Jason Moran, in a celebration of Marian McPartland's birthday. This resulted in the 2-disc, live recording: 85 Candles - Live in New York. In the years prior to his death, King was working on his classical guitar repertoire, including Bach’s Chaconne, with plans to record it for his first solo classical CD, Ramblings of Madmen. In the works, also, was an acoustic guitar recording, What Child Is This.