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Ray Jackson (musician)

British musician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ7297659 ↗
Source-derived summary

Lindsay Raymond "Ray" Jackson (born 12 December 1948, Wallsend, Northumberland) is a retired English singer-songwriter, who played a variety of instruments including the mandolin and harmonica. He was a member and also joint lead vocalist (with Alan Hull) of the folk-rock group Lindisfarne from their original formation in 1970 until his departure in 1990.

Early life

After leaving school he studied graphics at Newcastle College of Art and Industrial Design, where he met Ray Laidlaw.

Career

Lindisfarne: 1968–1990, 2013–2015

Jackson joined Lindisfarne in 1968. Also in the band were vocalist/keyboardist Alan Hull, guitarist Simon Cowe, bassist Rod Clements, and Jackson's friend from Art college, Ray Laidlaw. As Jackson and Laidlaw shared the same forename, Jackson was generally known in the group as "Jacka". He designed the group's logo and the sleeve of their debut album Nicely Out of Tune.

In Lindisfarne, Jackson generally took lead vocals on the songs written by bassist and fiddle player Rod Clements, including "Meet Me on the Corner", their first hit single. He stayed with the group in 1973 when three of the five original members left to form Jack the Lad. He designed the sleeve for Jack the Lad's third album Rough Diamonds, and played harmonica on the record.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ray Jackson (musician)” is british musician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Jackson, musician and British, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1948, 1970, 1990, 1968—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1948-12-12. For this dossier, Jackson, musician and British is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “british musician” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7297659. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948, 1970, 1990 and 1968.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Ray Jackson (musician)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Ray Jackson (musician) primary sources, Ray Jackson (musician) archive and Jackson research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ray Jackson (musician)”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Ray Jackson (musician)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.