Born on June 23, 1956 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Randall Darius "Randy" Jackson started building his music career during the early 1980's. For two years, he played the bass guitar for the musical group, Journey, and from there went on to become one of the executives at both Columbia Records and MCA Records. He has performed with many big names in the music industry, such as Aretha Franklin, George Michael, Billy Cobham, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Herbie the Car, Blue Oyster Cult, Richard Marx, Billy Joe, Banana Republic, Carlos Santana, Jerry Garcia, Bob Dylan, Tracy Chapman and The Charles Daniels Band, with whom he played at the Grand Ole Opry. Randy is also an accomplished songwriter and record producer, having produced a record for Zucchero, a popular Italian music artist and well-known American artists like Mariah Carey, N*Sync, Bruce Springsteen and Madonna. He is also the host of his own music countdown radio show entitled Randy Jackson's Hit List.

In 2002, Randy, along with British record producer Simon Cowell and 1980's pop star Paula Abdul, was asked to judge for the first season of American Idol, the American counterpart of the reality program Pop Idol. After the success of the first season, Randy and the rest of the judges have become permanent forces to be reckoned with by aspiring artists. On the show, Randy is known to be kinder than the other male judge, Simon. He is also popular for his constant use of the terms "dawg," and "dude" when addressing the contestants and "pitchy" and "dope" when talking about a contestant's performance. During the semifinals of American Idol, he affectionately calls the group of semifinalists "the 'dawg' pound."

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