His father was from County Limerick, of a Cork family; his mother was the singer Charmian Jenkinson.
Other recordings on which Jackson featured include Camouflage by Sonny Condell, and Taylormaid by Rosemarie Taylor—both released on Mulligan in 1977.
He subsequently appeared as a guest musician on albums by The Chieftains, Midnight Well, Christy Moore, Terry and Gay Woods, and also reunited with Doyle who, by then, had created the music-theatre company Operating Theatre with Irish actress Olwen Fouéré.
Jackson was an early adopter of home-recording, buying an eight-track recorder and setting up a studio at his home in Dún Laoghaire, where he recorded the seminal album Hidden Ground (Tara 1980) with fiddle player Paddy Glackin, on which he arranged the music and also played all the instruments surrounding the fiddle.
Compositions for television include the RTÉ series Hands, Visions of Transport and To the Waters and the Wild.