In Memoriam, Lance Jackson: Conservator of Historic Soap Opera Theme Music

Lance Jackson

Marlena says: Today I am saddened to hear of the passing of my dear friend Lance Jackson. Close friends reported that he died in Atlanta of cancer at 67.  I profiled Lance, a church organist and fervent soap fan, last year.  Here is a reprint. His husband Richard passed a year ago, also a cancer victim. I was always grateful for Lance’s support.  He was a delightful, charming man.  I loved starting my day on Facebook with one of his organ performances of soap themes.   We all loved him and will miss him so much. A funeral service will be held Aug. 29 at his home congregation, Paradise Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta, with a celebration of his life and music slated for Sept. 5.

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 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.