On April 9, 1987, drummer, composer, and Fort Worth native Ronald Shannon Jackson entered a Dallas recording studio with his Decoding Society band to record an LP entitled Texas.
Noted New York producer Bill Laswell helmed the sessions, which took place at January Sound, a studio that had also hosted Willie Nelson and Freddie King.
The Decoding Society melded bebop, free jazz, funk, and punk into a cohesive unit with plenty of space for solo and group improvisation. Texas was released by Caravan of Dreams productions, the folks behind the then state-of-the-art performance venue of the same name in downtown Fort Worth.
It should come as no surprise that Ronald Shannon Jackson attended Fort Worth’s I.M. Terrell High School, an institution known for producing musicians like Ornette Coleman and Charles Moffett, with whom Jackson performed and recorded. Other musical alumni include King Curtis, Prince Lasha, and Dewey Redman, all testament to the school’s august tradition of musical instruction.
Jackson also worked with free jazz giants Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor before issuing the first of his many solo records in 1980.
Ronald Shannon Jackson and the Decoding Society have taken stages as far afield as the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland and as near to home as Oak Cliff’s Kessler Theater. Wherever Jackson’s drum beats fall, it’s proof that Fort Worth’s experimental jazz reach is long, and ranges far and free from its Cowtown home.
Sources
Dave Oliphant. Texan Jazz. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.
“Ronald Shannon Jackson,” Discogs, accessed January 5, 2026,
https://www.discogs.com/artist/271714-Ronald-Shannon-Jackson
