Randy Jackson of Zebra

Randy Jackson
Randy Jackson was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. He started playing piano and guitar at age 5. His earliest influences were Les Paul and Mary Ford, The Beatles, The Allman Brothers, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, The Moody Blues, and Led Zeppelin.
In 1973, he joined “Shepards Bush” as lead guitarist. It was here that he met Felix Hanemann. Felix worked at “Jazz City Studios” in New Orleans owned by Engineer/Producer Cosimo Matassa (Fats Domino,
Randy and Felix left “Shepards Bush” a year later. They soon met drummer Guy Gelso and former “Zebra” in 1975.
It was at this point that Randy started singing lead vocals.
After playing the New Orleans area for 2 years Zebra moved to New York (Long Island) in 1977 and in 1982 signed a recording contract with Atlantic Records.
Their first album, “Zebra” produced by Jack Douglas (John Lennon, Aerosmith), went Gold and was the fastest selling debut album in the history of Atlantic Records. During the next couple of years Zebra played opener for Aerosmith, Journey, ZZ Top, Loverboy, Cheap Trick, Sammy Hagar and REO Speedwagon.
The group has produced 5 albums and 5 videos with combined sales of over 2,000,000!!!
In 1989 Randy got a call from drummer Kenny Arronoff to join him and tour playing guitar and keyboards with the original “Jefferson Airplane” (Grace Slick, Marty Balin, Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady) on their U.S. reunion tour!
“Randy Jackson’s China Rain”, a project that featured songs co-written with Mark Slaughter and Jack Ponti was released in 1993 in the US, Europe and Japan.
From 1992 to 1996 Randy was involved with Lonestar Technologies (Long Island) in the hardware and software development of an Interactive Multimedia Musical Instrument called “The Key” which allows anyone to play music instantly. Jon Anderson of “Yes” used “The Key” to perform live and wrote many songs with the instrument during that time.
In 1992, Randy started performing “Solo” live with the use of a MacIntosh computer he programmed to perform the Drums, Bass and Keyboards. Randy has also programmed the computer to run the Sound and Lights during the show! He toured all over the south and the Northeast U.S. with the show.
Randy has also been performing Solo acoustic shows for over 25 years. His solo shows include songs from Zebra and China Rain as well as Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Elton John and many others. “I love being able to performing the music I grew up with”.
Randy uses 12 string guitars for the entire performance and incorporates many different tunings into the song arrangements. “The 12 string guitar allows me to add a much bigger sound with more dynamics to each song.”
Ray Charles, Lee Dorsey)
Shepards Bush recorded a demo at the studio which was Randy’s 1st experience in a recording
studio.
Randy completed work on “Zebra IV” which was released on July 8th, 2003. He produced and engineered the entire CD.
In September 1995 Randy performed his first show with an orchestra in Norfolk, Virginia with the Virginia Symphony singing lead vocals and adding acoustic guitar to the Virginia Symphony’s performance of the music of Led Zeppelin with conductor Brent Havens. Today Randy continues performing the shows nation wide to sold out audiences and now also performs The Music of “Pink Floyd”, and “The Doors”,
On July 10, 2010 Zebra was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame On Oct 18, 2012 Zebra was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall Of Fame