Graham Washington Jackson (1903-1983) was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, to Graham Wilson Jackson (1876-?) and Pauline Agnes Hinton Jackson (1877-?). He began his musical career at age seven accompanying silent movies. He played piano, organ, accordion, and led singing groups. He later worked as a music teacher, an orchestra leader, and an organist at WERD, the first Black-owned radio station in Atlanta, Georgia. Jackson attended Morehouse College, Chicago Musical College, Hampton Agricultural and Industrial Institute (later Hampton University), Loyola University Chicago, and Atlanta University (later Clark Atlanta University). In 1924, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia, as leader of a musical group, the Seminole Syncopators. He later became the orchestra leader and pianist for Bailey's 81 Theater on Auburn Avenue. From 1928 to 1940, Jackson worked at Booker T. Washington High School where he was a music instructor and the director of the school’s band and orchestra. He married Allie Mae Allen Hubbard (1911-?) in 1930 and they divorced in 1938. He married Lurlene Elizabeth Baker Garland (1913-1991) in 1939 and they divorced in 1952. In 1953, he married Helen Balton Jackson (1927-1998) in 1953 and the couple had two sons, Graham Jackson Jr. (1954-) and Gerald Wayne Jackson (1958-).

In 1933, Jackson first met and performed for President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) at the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia. In 1942, he enlisted in the United States Navy where he was assigned to recruitment and entertainment duties. The United States Treasury Department commended him for bond sales totaling more than two million dollars. Jackson obtained worldwide recognition following the publication of the April 17, 1945 issue of Life magazine which published a photograph taken by Ed Clark (1911-2000) of Jackson playing Going Home on his accordion for President Roosevelt's funeral procession, as it left Warm Springs. Clark’s image became one of the most remembered images surrounding President Roosevelt's death. In 1947, Jackson built a home in Atlanta modeled after Franklin Roosevelt's Little White House in Warm Springs. The original address was 60 Abbott Street, Atlanta, Georgia, but Jackson had the name of the road changed to White House Drive.

Graham Washington Jackson played for five other United States presidents: Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973), and Jimmy Carter (1924-2024). In 1969, Georgia Governor Lester Maddox (1915-2003), a well-known segregationist, appointed Jackson to the State Board of Corrections. He was the first African American to hold such an office in Georgia since Reconstruction. Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter named Jackson the state's official musician on November 30, 1971. Graham Jackson appeared on Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town in 1951 and Dave Garroway's Today Show in 1956. In 1985, Jackson was posthumously inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame.