Mike Jackson (born Fishtoft, Lincolnshire, England) emigrated to Australia in 1970. He taught himself harmonica in high school and acquired a taste for comic songs from his grandfather and the radio. He branched out onto other instruments and acquired a reputation for being able to get a tune out of almost anything. Michelle Jackson (born Noosa Heads, Queensland) already played guitar; fiddle; and mandolin when she met Mike on stage at the 1979 Kapunda Celtic Music Festival and married soon after.
They toured Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S. almost non-stop for seven years and in between tours they created three songbooks, co-wrote an instruction book for string figure novices and recorded many albums – two collections of Australian folk music for adults ‘Patchwork’ (1980) and ‘The Roaring Days’ (1982) on the Larrikin label plus a few for children. The bulk of their thousands of performances together were Arts in Education performances designed to introduce children to a wide range of unusual instruments and encourage them to play music.
Mike and Michelle’s children’s albums were a huge success with their second, ‘Playmates’ (1983) going platinum and the rest of their first four kids’ discs going gold in Australia. They had two North American releases, ‘Bunyips, Bunnies and Brumbies’ and ‘Playmates’, which were released in Canada on Sharon, Lois and Bram’s Elephant Records label, distributed by A&M Records. They were featured artists on the ABC TV program Playmates and regular contributors to many other 1980s Australian children’s shows. In 1986, the pair went their separate ways. Mike Jackson has continued touring, writing and recording both in Australia and internationally.
References
Mike and Michelle Jackson – Wikipedia
