“She had a great range and control with her own sound, and that was what was cool about her,” Tatum says. “She could do all these styles, like rock, pop and jazz. It was wonderful.”
Jackson, a former Valley resident, had many opportunities to show off her talents in the ’80s and ’90s. Music was Jackson’s life, both as an artist and venue owner. After moving to Arizona in the late ’70s, she became a mainstay of the Phoenix music scene and performed at local venues both solo or in bands alongside her husband, bassist Jim Simmons, and Tatum.
Jackson is best known for her 11-year stint co-owning iconic Tempe club Chuy’s with Simmons from the early ’80s through the early ’90s, transforming it into a jazz and blues hot spot.
The venue drew major talent, hosting legends like Charlie Musselwhite, Jaco Pastorius and Gatemouth Brown, while also showcasing local standouts like singer-songwriter Walt Richardson and bluesmen Hans Olson and Bob Corritore.
Jackson died suddenly at her home near Asheville, North Carolina, on June 25. She was 69.
Corritore describes Jackson as a mentor and credits her with helping elevate Phoenix’s music scene while inspiring its performers and laying the foundation for its future success.
“She was really a positive force in the community, and she kept a lot of us working and a lot of us inspired and amazing shows,” Corritore says. “And she seemed to do it with kindness and grace, and a real sense of musicality.”
A ‘wonderful voice’
Jackson was born in Ohio in 1956 and raised in a musical household, where she was immersed in everything from Tony Bennett and Laura Nyro to Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page. She moved to the Valley in the mid-’70s to study music at Arizona State University, performing with local jazz and big band ensembles on the side.Around that time, she began dating Simmons, her future husband, who played in several local jazz groups of the era. Tatum recalls first meeting Jackson through Simmons.
“She was dating Jim, my bass player at the time, and I met her while she was sunbathing in his backyard,” Tatum recalls. “We hit it off right away and just became really good friends.”
Jackson and Simmons were inseparable both onstage and off, performing together in a band of their own. Walt Richardson recalls first encountering the couple at a show by their then-act, Nancy Jackson and the ENT Band, in the late ’70s.
“She was in several bands, it seemed like, or maybe it was the same band that kept evolving, I’m not sure,” Richardson says, laughing. “I was just starting out, and we were all playing some of the similar venues.”
Corritore caught several of Jackson’s shows back then and remembers her effortlessly showcasing her versatile talents.
“It was kind of like a pop-jazz thing that was just beginning to come up,” Corritore says. “And she would also sing pop songs, but it was a nice, easygoing, sweet thing with her wonderful voice.”
A year after earning her vocal degree from ASU in 1980, Jackson and Simmons turned their shared passion for music into a business. Using seed money from her businessman father, the couple bought Chuy’s Choo-Choo, a ground-level bar at the now-demolished Casa Loma Hotel along Tempe’s Mill Avenue where they’d previously played.
“Since I was a child, I was always tinkling with the piano or singing,” Jackson told Phoenix New Times in 1993, “And I was determined to open a nightclub where others who truly loved music could come and listen.”
‘The most happening place in town’
Within a few years of taking over Chuy’s, Jackson and Simmons ditched the “Choo-Choo” portion of the club’s name. They dove head-first into transforming the club into a hit, with Jackson meticulously working long hours behind the scenes. “I was a perfectionist, never happy with anything,” Jackson told New Times in 1993. “It was seven days a week, 14 hours a day of running the club, doing business.”
Longtime Arizona concert promoter Danny Zelisko says the couple brought a parade of iconic names to perform, including Little Charlie and the Nightcats and McCoy Tyner.
“Every big jazz and blues person you could think of played there, like the Crusaders and John Lee Hooker,” Zelisko says.
All of the hard work by Jackson and Simmons resulted in packed crowds. In the ’80s, Chuy’s became what New Times described as “arguably the most popular music hot spot in Arizona history.”
Corritore, who attended shows at the club, says the description was very much true.
“Chuy’s was the most happening place in town, and it was the cultural beacon for so many of us. We got to see great acts that were coming through,” he says. “It just always stood for great music and a great venue.”
Corritore says both Chuy’s and Jackson helped lay the groundwork for his own venue, The Rhythm Room, which he opened in 1991.
“I gradually got to know Nancy and eventually earned her confidence. And I started booking acts over at Chuy’s as kind of an independent promoter. She was really sponsoring the acts, but I was bringing things that I thought would be very good for the community,” Corritore says. “She called upon me to put bands together behind some of the blues people who were coming through. She was like a mentor to me and gave me a lot of pointers that I took to heart. I can honestly say if it wasn’t for Nancy Jackson and Chuy’s, there’d be no Rhythm Room.”
Richardson remembers how gigs at Chuy’s were “just about having fun.”
“It’s like it was party time. Party time in Tempe. Nancy held jam sessions at her place. Her husband was a great bass player, and he was in all of the top (local) jazz groups at the time, so it was like a club by musicians, for musicians. And they really were doing things right.”
Tatum says she and Jackson also had their own band, the jazz-rock fusion act Secret Society, in those days, and would perform at Chuy’s
“Some of my best memories are her and I in the dressing room getting ready for gigs, and we’d be globbing on the makeup and ratting our hair up,” Tatum says. “When I look back at pictures, I just laugh at our styles. She was more rock ‘n’ roll back then and I was more jazz. But we merged together and had that happy medium and fun times. It was always fun times with Nancy.”
Getting bigger and then dealing with drama
Due to ongoing real estate development along Mill Avenue in downtown Tempe, Jackson and Simmons had to relocate Chuy’s twice during their 11-year run. By 1989, they had moved the club into a much larger space in Hayden Square, a mixed-use development just off Fourth Avenue. There, they began hosting enormous outdoor concerts in the square’s open-air amphitheater, including booking acts like Edie Brickell and Branford Marsalis, with smaller shows inside the club.Despite Mill Avenue’s growing popularity in that era, particularly among rock and alternative, most of the action was happening further south. By the early ’90s, foot traffic around Hayden Square slowed, businesses began to struggle and the property’s development company went bankrupt. Eventually, control of Hayden Square went into receivership and wound up in the hands of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.
Then, the drama began. Met Life’s representatives reportedly nixed Chuy’s access to Hayden Square’s amphitheater for concerts, which cut off a major cash cow. Then, Met Life reportedly offered to buy the club from Jackson and Simmons for pennies on the dollar, with the couple alleging the company was attempting to drive down the price.
The battle wound up in Maricopa County Superior Court, but the couple eventually decided to cut their losses and sell Chuy’s in October 1992.
Another factor: The year prior, Jackson realized she was burnt out from the strain of running a hit club while dealing with alcohol abuse and other personal issues. She and Simmons became born-again Christians and, after selling Chuy’s, formed a 12-member pop-rock band to perform for Scottsdale’s Eagle’s Nest Christian Embassy.
By the 2000s, Jackson and Simmons moved away from Arizona and eventually settled in North Carolina. Tatum says they remained friends.
For most of the past decade, Jackson and Simmons dealt with health issues. In 2017, Simmons was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, and Jackson began to take care of him full-time. Earlier this year, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and began getting treatment.
Tatum says they stayed in contact up until Jackson’s death in June.
“We were communicating (regularly) because we were just worried about Jim. And in one of our last texts, I asked how her treatment went, and she goes, ‘It’s as good as I could want.’ Then goes, ‘I love you,’” Tatum says. “I’m so happy we were talking right up until the end. One day, I called her, and another person answered and said, ‘Nancy passed away.’ I was devastated.”
Tatum says Jackson was a lasting influence on the Valley’s music scene.
“She brought a lot of music to Tempe that wouldn’t have had the opportunity to come here otherwise,” Tatum says. “She was a musician herself, so she knew where to look and how to book jazz, blues, and other nationally touring acts you just didn’t see in Phoenix back then.”
An open jazz jam and tribute to Nancy Jackson will be held from 7 to 11 p.m. on Thursday at Darkstar, 526 S. Mill Ave., #201 in Tempe. Admission is free.
