Lance Jackson
Marlena has always said that soap fans make the best and most fascinating friends. Recently, via my Facebook page “Marlena’s Current and Classic Soaps,” it was a pleasure to meet Lance Jackson, a longtime soap fan and church organist who collects vintage soap opera organ themes the way many of us collect classic magazine covers and other memorabilia.
He plays them all beautifully, with obvious relish for the memories they evoke. Check him out on YouTube and feast on his rich renderings of the radio and early television organ theme music from “Love of Life,” “Search for Tomorrow,” “The Secret Storm,” “The Guiding Light,” “The Edge of Night,” and more.
Growing up in Atlanta, Jackson, 66, watched soaps after school, as I did. In those days, soaps still had their traditional organ music openings. Each show had its own theme song, played behind an introduction by an announcer with a big radio voice.
A music prodigy, Jackson learned piano and organ as a youth. He was 11 when he asked his church organist one Sunday if he could touch the keys of her instrument, and she agreed. A lifelong love was born, and he discovered his vocation.
“It was amazing,” he told me by phone from his home in Miami. “It was as if I had been blessed. If I could hear it, I could play it.”
He watched all the soaps, his favorite being “As the World Turns.” “I was in love with Penny (played by Rosemary Prinz) and Ellen (played by Patricia Bruder),” he recalls.
To this day, he is friends with Rosemary Prinz, who is now 94, and he visits her when he is in New York.
As a teen, he located composer/soap organist Charles Paul in New York and became a long-distance apprentice by mail. Paul’s numerous credits included composing and playing the music for “ATWT” when it became television’s first 30-minute soap. Paul pioneered the composition of character themes and musical motifs for settings like hospitals and law offices that were regularly visited in the course of the storytelling.
“He always answered my letters,” Jackson recalls. “He invited me to New York, but of course I couldn’t go at that time. Even so, I learned a great deal from him.”
As an adult, Jackson worked as a church organist. He had a 15-year stint as staff organist and director of the Martin Luther King Sr. Choir at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, and he’s still the artistic director of the Christine King Farris Memorial Choir, named for Dr. King’s sister. It performs an annual concert to benefit a scholarship fund.
He remembers when Martin Luther King Jr.’s mother, Alberta Williams King, was assassinated in 1974 while she was playing the organ at the Ebenezer Baptist Church during a Sunday morning worship service. “What a tragedy,” he says.
In Miami, he is currently the music director of the Mt. Tabor Baptist Church. His husband, Richard, is also an organist.
Jackson continues to watch soaps and is intrigued with our newest show, “Beyond the Gates,” since it is produced in his hometown of Atlanta. “I’m just happy another soap has joined the airwaves,” he says. Still, he adds, “I’m so unhappy that ‘As the World Turns’ was cancelled (in 2018). It broke my heart. But it wouldn’t be the same to bring it back.”
Lance is happy to generously share his memories of long-gone soaps by making his renditions of soap themes available to Marlena and her readers. His YouTube handle is Lance Jackson@LanceJacksonOrgnPlyr. He welcomes new subscribers. Enjoy!
Lance also is a spectacular dresser. He is a magnificent fellow!!!
Thanks Kel for writing in. You are a wonderful musician too!
I love this. Always interesting to hear about a fellow native Atlantan who also happens to be a soap fan.
Thanks as always G.L! Besides “Between the Gates,” Lance and you, Atlanta is a place full of talent. I hope to revisit it someday!
Hey, metro Atlanta here, too!
Thanks so much, G.L.
I think that this is a beautiful piece about my brother. I recall growing up he would play and I would sing. He is a proverb 18:16 man who I love dearly.
Thank you so much for writing in. Your brother is a truly amazing talent and a wonderful man.
Love this guy. Congrats on your interview. This I was not aware of. Much love Lance.
Thanks for writing in Rubye!
Beautiful article spotlighting a beautiful man!!
Blessings & all the best to you Lance!
Thanks so much, Dianne
Connie/Marlena, In my soap group on Facebook Lance is one of my guys! I have about a half dozen really great guys who are also really great soap fans. It’s because of Lance that we found out that Kathy on SFT had an abortion. Everyone knows about AMC Erica’s abortion but none of the rest of us knew about Kathy’s! I ended up in email with none other than Courtney Sherman Simon because she played Kathy! Lance knows so much about so many of the older soaps, very knowledgeable. Of course, I also love his organ music.I’ve been subscribed to his YouTube channel for several years. I only saw this today.
What a nice letter, thank you Donna. I’m so glad that you and Lance are friends. He’s a wonderful, knowledgeable and talented man. I didn’t know that about Kathy’s abortion either. As Marlena has been saying a lot lately, soap friends are the best friends!
I love “Soap friends are the best friends!” That is IMO an excellent coinage. Since #BTG I’ve been saying, hopefully, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Not a coinage but I don’t have a cite for it, either. I had a professor once who said we were each entitled to only 2 coinages in our lifetimes. I tried, but I can’t live within that boundary.
Some of us have theorized that P&G, conservative, kept quiet about an abortion on SFT. While Nixon, progressive, trumpeted it loud & often, AMC.
Another very nice message. I always found it interesting that Agnes Nixon, who was Catholic did Erica’s abortion story. It came soon after abortion was legalized. Agnes always kept up on societal trends, and she was an early feminist.