Eden Gardens: Point Washington FL

Washboard Jackson: A Short History

 Born in Oklahoma in 1950, Franko  Jackson's family moved to Atlanta GA when he was three. He spent his childhood listening to his mother playing her hot pink upright piano. She also played a comb with cellophane around it as a wind instrument. The family moved back to Oklahoma City and, as soon as he was old enough, Franko moved to the country.

  In the Ozarks he heard the Jug, Jook, and Washboard Band LP: Music made without formal training on homemade instruments. That experience changed his life.He took up the washboard and moved to New Orleans. There he found and ad in the Times Picayune for: 

“Washboard Player Wanted: Non-Professional Only.”

He was surprised when he was the only one to show up. Washboard Jackson joined the The Bad Oyster Band that played irregular gigs all over the crescent city  and still does. During that time he sat in with Professor Longhair, the single greatest influence on his music.

Playing the streets in the French Quarter, he met musicians from New York who formed Washboard Jackson and the Hot Damn Jug Band in 1979. They were a featured act for the entire run of the New Orleans World’s Fair of 1984. Each June, Washboard travels to upstate New York for a reunion with these musicians and many more to play the Ithaca Festival as the Gourmet Jugband.

In 1985 he moved to Florida with his wife, Eileen, to finish raising the children. He began playing with a pickup band at Docie’s Dock in Ft Walton Beach. He and Bill Garrett formed Willy and the Wahoos, and played festivals and bars up and down the coast.

  Moving to South Walton County, FL in 1989, he and Garrett talked Duke Bardwell out of retirement and formed the local favorite electric blues band: HUBBA HUBBA with Doug Dickerson and Greg Guthre. Check local listings and hear Hubba Hubba on Washboard's CD.

 WASHBOARD JACKSON’S GREATEST HITS

Free MP3

Washboard Monster

"HUBBA HUBBA is recognizable by the band member wearing sunglasses and carrying a washboard around his neck."

Pam Mee:  NW Florida Daily News: April 12, 1990

A few years ago, Washboard began painting. He bought an old mahogany paint box at a garage sale and discovered the paints were still good. He painted on anything he could find. These days, he paints on plywood. He paints about what he knows: His family, street musicians, and his dog, Lulu. Sometimes he frames them with copper pipe from his plumbing days.