[2] Jackson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, and moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1917, but did not pick up trombone until 1920;[1] within nine months he began playing professionally.

In the 1920s, he played with Tig Chambers, Al Simone, Eli Rice, and Art Sims, and recorded with Bernie Young and his Creole Jazz Band at the Marsh Laboratories (1923) and Richard M. Jones.

[3] In the 1930s, he played with Dave Peyton (1930), Erskine Tate, Louis Armstrong (1931–32), Half Pint Jaxon (1933), Carroll Dickerson, Jimmie Noone, Roy Eldridge, Walter Barnes, Johnny Long (1939), and Zilner Randolph's W.P.A.

[1] Moving back to his childhood home of New Orleans in the 1960s, he began playing at Preservation Hall where he would continue to be featured for the rest of his life.

He played with Little Brother Montgomery in 1969 and with Kid Thomas's New Orleans Joymakers in Europe in 1973-74.