Lawrence Jackson was a band director for 38 years, beginning at Clinton High School, and ending his career as director of Southern University’s Human Jukebox. Now he’s a member of Grambling State University’s band Hall of Fame.
Baton Rouge nightlife promoter/entrepreneur Terral C. ‘T.J.’ Jackson Jr.’s career direction began when he promoted his 1995 McKinley High graduation party as a citywide event.
Lawrence Jackson, left, was a tuba player in the Human Jukebox during his college days at Southern. Here, he and a fellow band member meet with then- Gov. Edwin W. Edwards.
Lawrence Jackson was a band director for 38 years, beginning at Clinton High School, and ending his career as director of Southern University’s Human Jukebox. Now he’s a member of Grambling State University’s band Hall of Fame.
Baton Rouge nightlife promoter/entrepreneur Terral C. ‘T.J.’ Jackson Jr.’s career direction began when he promoted his 1995 McKinley High graduation party as a citywide event.
Lawrence Jackson, left, was a tuba player in the Human Jukebox during his college days at Southern. Here, he and a fellow band member meet with then- Gov. Edwin W. Edwards.
When T.J. Jackson was a child, some of his friends dressed up like Superman. Others chose Batman. But all Jackson needed to live out his dreams was a plastic trumpet and a blue “S” emblazoned across his chest.
Jackson’s idols were not characters from comic books, nor were they the athletes he watched on the field or the court.
He wanted to be a drum major. More specifically, the drum major of Southern University’s acclaimed marching band, the Human Jukebox.
His father, Terral Jackson Sr., was one of the band’s assistant directors in the 1970s and ’80s.
He dreamt of the places the Jukebox could take a kid from from Baton Rouge who attended McKinley High School. Southern’s marching band has performed in six Super Bowls, four Sugar Bowls, three presidential inaugurations, the Rose Bowl Parade, Radio City Music Hall and the Special Olympics, among so many other highlights.
But the band has never dazzled the crowd at Tiger Stadium. Until Saturday.
Saturday night’s game between LSU and Southern will be the first the two schools, separated by fewer than 10 miles, have faced off in football. And it’ll only be the second time that the Golden Band from Tigerland and the Human Jukebox have played in the same place at the same time.
The first time was in January 2004, when both bands marched in Baton Rouge’s “Parade of Champions” to celebrate each school’s national championship in football.
“It seems like those eight miles divided us culturally, historically,” Jackson said. “This should have happened a long time ago.”
Lawrence Jackson turned on his television, clicked to the news and screamed.
It was the summer of 2020, and Jackson had learned that LSU football will host Southern for a game on Sept. 10, 2022. His mind raced. The man who directed the Human Jukebox from 2005-14 daydreamed, imagining the songs, the drills, the choreography he would’ve woven into one special show.
“I’ve been playing it in my mind for two years,” he said with a laugh.
Jackson left the Jukebox eight years ago, but the Jukebox has yet to leave him. The music is still a part of him, its power coursing through his veins, spinning the gears that turn in his head as he dreams up halftime shows and recalls memories of his time with the band.
“It’s gonna be a history-making moment,” Jackson said. “I won’t be there, but I tell you what: I’m gonna be smiling and happy for both schools, both bands.”
The Jukebox first gripped Jackson, a native of Crowley, in 1971, when he was a senior in high school. He enrolled at Southern that year and played in the band all four years of college, earning a role as section leader along the way.
Jackson then moved to Clinton, where he directed the Clinton High marching band. In 1996, he got a call from Isaac Greggs, the legendary director of the Jukebox, who offered him a job as assistant director. The two worked together for nearly a decade. In 2005, Greggs retired, and Jackson was named director.
Succeeding Greggs, who died in 2014, was no small task. The late director managed the Jukebox for 36 years. He built it into a national power, sculpted its unique identity and spread its gospel across the nation. Jackson, though, never felt much pressure.
“What I wanted to do was make sure I continue the legacy that was started decades ago,” Jackson said. “That’s all I had to do was follow the blueprint, and we were always going to be successful. Adding on to the legacy — that was my job.”
Under Jackson, the band grew to more than 200 musicians. They represented the U.S. abroad, won several competitions and played the 2013 Super Bowl. The NCAA ranked the Jukebox second in the country that same year, behind only Ohio State.
“They were actually paying me to have fun,” he said. “It was the toughest job I ever loved.”
But Jackson made sure not to mess with the band’s core principles. Greggs built the house. Jackson needed only to add a tinge of his own style, his personal flair: paint the walls, replace the drapes. And he only wishes his mentor could have seen how the Jukebox will perform 18 years after he retired, playing at LSU for the first time.
What would Greggs have thought about the LSU-Southern game?
“He would say, it was a long time coming,” Jackson said, “and I’m gonna seize the moment, and I’m gonna give them a show they will never forget. He would be laughing, and he would say, ‘Ain’t no business like show business.’ ”
It was a crisp, cool day, the wind funneled through the tall buildings of downtown Baton Rouge and crowds filled the streets. Darryl Augustine remembers Jan. 24, 2004, well.
It was the first and only time the Tiger Band and the Human Jukebox played together. The two bands marched with their football teams before meeting on the steps of the State Capitol and playing in unison. At the time, Augustine was a Jukebox assistant director under Greggs and alongside Jackson.
“To put both of those bands (together),” Augustine said, “it’s just something that I’ll always be able to take with me, tell my kids’ kids, it was an experience that I can’t say much about. It was just beautiful.”
Augustine is a native of New Orleans. He grew up in Tremé and attended St. Augustine High School, where he marched in the school’s own famous band, the Marching 100. His older brother, Byron, played trombone in the Human Jukebox. When Augustine was in 10th grade, he watched his brother perform in the Bayou Classic. There, he decided he wanted to follow in his footsteps.
“When you’re from New Orleans, music is a way of life,” Augustine said. “It was just a dream, to have that ‘S’ on your chest. You’re not Superman, but you felt like that.”
Like his brother, Augustine played the trombone, and he worked his way up to section leader once he arrived at Southern. One day in 1988, his phone rang. It was Greggs, making a similar call to the one he made to Jackson. He offered Augustine a job as assistant band director.
“And I couldn’t refuse that,” he said. “That was like a lifelong dream. Just to be a part of that band.”
By 2004, Augustine’s role had grown into an administrative capacity — travel budgets, room and board, tuition — all in addition to working directly with students. The Parade of Champions was one of his last performances with the Jukebox.
One of his students that year was a trumpet player named Kedric Taylor. He was named trumpet section leader in 2005, and after he graduated, directed several high school bands before returning to Southern. Today, Taylor is the director of the Human Jukebox.
Taylor blew his horn next to the LSU band in 2004. Now, 18 years later, he’ll lead the Jukebox into Tiger Stadium.
“(Taylor) can handle it,” Augustine said. “He was one of the ones that hung around to know what it’s all about, him being a younger kid behind us, I think he picked it up and grasped it.
“I wish him well, and best of luck to him. It’s a lifetime dream, right there in your town. Hopefully … he’ll put on a great show Saturday night.”
The young T.J. Jackson’s dream came true.
By the time he was a teenager, Jackson had traded in his plastic horn for the real thing, swapped out his drum-major costume for the real getup: McKinley High football fields had become his stage. In the fall of 1994, Isaac Greggs visited McKinley to recruit Jackson to the Jukebox. He didn’t need much convincing.
Jackson played the trumpet once he joined the band, and eventually, Greggs named him drum major.
“To be selected,” Jackson said, “it was the ultimate honor. I was what or who they saw first.”
Which meant he had to bring the energy. He would channel it — from him, to the crowd, and from the crowd back to the band. Jackson called his traditional Jukebox back bend at the 50-yard line — when the drum major bends down, arches his back and tilts his head until his tall gold hat scrapes the grass — the “ultimate adrenaline rush.”
Jackson is now a Baton Rouge nightlife promoter and entrepreneur whose company will put on several events this weekend surrounding the LSU-Southern game.
Saturday night, Jackson will be in the stands, watching Southern’s new drum major, NaToj Johnson, take the field. He’ll hear the song, see the dance, feel the energy, watching the spirit that sucked him in decades ago touch a new crowd in a new place.
But Jackson said what he’s most looking forward to is Sunday morning, when he hopes a new tradition will begin to take hold.
“We should continue this,” he said.
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