A few weeks after Dion Jackson was born, the sleeping infant was on his mother’s bed when she left for a moment to run to the bathroom.
When she returned, the baby was dangling from the side of the bed, gripping the sheets with both hands.
“He was holding on for dear life, and for me to see that, how tight he was holding on, I knew he was going to be something,” said his mother, Connie Jackson.
Similar derring-do was on display a few decades later when Mr. Jackson, then known as Chicago radio personality “Spank Boogie,” went out on a limb.
Mr. Jackson locked himself in the studio of WGCI-FM (107.5) and went against the wishes of his bosses who wanted him to play trending music.
He instead played tracks from a series of Chicago rap artists who hadn’t established a name for themselves. He was fired for the stunt.
“Spank felt Chicago music didn’t get the type of exposure it deserved,” said former WGCI colleague Shannon “Trey the Choklit Jock” Brazier. “He gained respect from Chicago hip hop artists for that stunt he pulled.”
His four-hour hip hop show “Boogie Nights” started at 10 p.m. and aired on WGCI in the late 90s and early 2000s, until his stunt.
“He opened the door for a lot of young Chicago talent to be recognized through the power of radio,” said his sister Connie Faye Jackson.
Mr. Jackson was known to Chicago listeners for shouting a promotional tagline for the clothing store Belvidere Blues with a spirited “Belvidere Blues, baby!”
He also worked at several other local radio stations and regularly hosted night club dance parties in Chicago featuring top deejays.
Mr. Jackson died July 24 in Los Angeles from natural causes, family said. He was 51.
After getting his career off the ground in Chicago, he did radio stints in Wisconsin, Michigan, Connecticut and Alaska.
“When he told our family he was going to Anchorage to be on the radio it was like, ‘What? Who goes to Alaska?’ He was like a unicorn there, the only person of color, but he was well received and loved it there,” his sister said.
One game Mr. Jackson played on-air was the “don’t say um game” in which he’d ask a caller to name, for instance, five different types of soda pop in 10 seconds without saying “um.”
On a whim nearly two decades ago Mr. Jackson, who grew up in several spots on the South Side, moved to Los Angeles to try to make it as an actor and rapper.
He made minor appearances on a number of shows like “Two Broke Girls” and “Key and Peele” and also worked in audio engineering.
In grade school he was a bright student who filled classroom boredom with highjinks, leaving his parents wondering: “What do we do him? He’s getting all As.”
At 16 he graduated from Whitney Young Magnet High School, where he played trumpet and was on the chess team.
“I didn’t want him to go to college so young, but he was saying ‘Mom, I need to go,'” his mother recalled.
He became a baby-faced freshman at Northern Illinois University who quickly ingratiated himself with classmates by cutting hair in his dorm room and hosting rap battles, occasionally with future actor Wood Harris, who starred in HBO’s “The Wire.”
Mr. Jackson, who picked up the nickname Spanky in college, went by the rap handle Spank the Mad Hatter. Harris went by Fruit of the Mind, according to Mr. Jackson’s college roommate and longtime friend, Stephen Smith.
In recent years Mr. Jackson used the stage name Buda Quan.
Connie Jackson, a chef, accompanied her brother to Los Angeles, where the siblings chased their dreams.
“We had a hotplate and a skillet and stayed in a hotel for two weeks when we got there, and the drawer under the television became our bread and condiment pantry,” she said with a laugh.
“Spank was one of the coolest people you could ever know, a vibe you wanted to be around, and just a really talented guy with a smile and laugh that were contagious,” said former WGCI colleague Jeanne Sparrow.
A memorial service will be 1 to 4 p.m. Aug. 22 at Cornerstone Church, 3440 178th St., in Lansing.