Jackson, Alan

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ALAN JACKSON

Born: Newnan, Georgia, 17 October 1958

Genre: Country

Best-selling album since 1990: Drive (2002)

Hit songs since 1990: "Here in the Real World," "Chattahoochee," "Little Bitty"

The music writer Alanna Nash has called Alan Jackson "the last of Nashville's pure traditionalists." Unlike contemporary country performers such as Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, whose styles often resemble pop music, Jackson harks back to the country feel of the 1950s and 1960s, mining traditional country themes of heartbreak and loneliness. With basic instrumentation of guitar, piano, and fiddles, Jackson pays tribute to older, hard-living country singers such as George Jones and Merle Haggard. Jackson's voice, although less distinctive than the keening tones of those performers, is flexible and warm, an ideal vehicle for the sensitive songs he writes.

Jackson's modest early life and long struggle to the top are the stuff of country legend. One of five children born to an auto-mechanic father in the small Georgia town of Newnan, Jackson spent his childhood singing gospel music in church and listening to the music of his idol, Hank Williams. As an adult, Jackson worked as a forklift operator, car salesman, construction worker, and, after his move to Nashville with wife Denise in 1985, mail sorter at the cable network TNN, all the while honing his singing and songwriting.

A chance meeting at an airport between Denise, a flight attendant, and the veteran country singer Glen Campbell led to Jackson's official introduction to the music business. Although signed with Campbell's management company, Jackson was rejected by one record label after another during the latter part of the 1980s. Many Nashville executives felt the mild-mannered singer lacked star quality and stage presence. Fortunately, Arista Records, a label known mostly for its pop and rhythm and blues artists, announced in 1989 its intention to open a Nashville office and subsequently signed Jackson as its first country artist. The next year Jackson released his debut album, Here in the Real World, and became a hot commodity with the title track, a melodic ballad built around the theme of romantic fantasy in movies versus the hard reality of love "in the real world." Although the song features strong lyrics and melody, its most memorable aspect is Jackson himself. Virile but gentle, his voice carries an emotional authority that draws listeners into the lovelorn story.

Jackson's third album, A Lot about Livin' (And a Little 'bout Love) (1992), is one of his finest works. Adhering to the short Nashville format of ten songs per disc, Jackson fills the album with nothing but first-rate material, most of which he wrote himself. "Chattahoochee," one of the album's six hit singles, is a charming up-tempo number featuring a loping rhythm that suggests the Cajun style of Louisiana dance music. On the lovelorn ballad, "(Who Says) You Can't Have It All," Jackson proves himself a master of lyrical irony, a country music hallmark. On the line, "I'm lord and master of a fool's Taj Mahal," he achieves the careful balance between humor and self-pity that marked the work of Jackson's forebears Jones and Haggard. Adding to the dramatic atmosphere is the heavy, supple piano playing of Hargus "Pig" Robbins, whose flowery style was featured on numerous country records of the 1960s and 1970s. The album's song titles—"She's Got the Rhythm (And I Got the Blues)" and "Up to My Ears in Tears"—sum up Jackson's woebegone but lighthearted persona.

Jackson went on to release five more albums during the decade, each containing multiple country hits. During an era in which country artists such as Garth Brooks incorporated rock elements into their repertoire, Jackson's consistency and adherence to country formula were unique. His down-home image also stayed the same. Tall, wearing tight blue jeans and a cowboy hat that partially covered his long, blond hair, Jackson came off as a self-effacing hunk, a family man with sex appeal.

Behind the scenes, however, stardom was taking a toll on his marriage, forcing a temporary separation from wife Denise in 1998. The pair later reconciled, and Jackson's stance on his life and music remained humble. In 1997 he told a reporter, "I listen to my records and don't know why they're so popular." A decade into his recording career his homespun message was evident in the lyrics to his 2001 hit "Where I Come From": "Where I come from, it's corn-bread and chicken / Where I come from a lot of front porch sittin'." Beneath Jackson's simple persona, however, lay a sophisticated musician with a sharp intellect.

As it turned out, Jackson's biggest fame was still ahead of him. During late 2001, in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he wrote "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)," a song that summed up what many Americans were feeling on that frightening day. Against a sparse, restrained musical arrangement, Jackson considers the range of reactions to the horror: "Did you shout out in anger and fear for your neighbor / Or did you just sit down and cry." Written quickly during the middle of the night, the song comes across as an artist's attempt to grasp the extent of human cruelty rather than a commercialized exploitation of tragedy. The single proved enormously popular, pushing the album that contained it, Drive (2002), to the number one position on the pop album charts. Despite his new stature as pop star, Jackson remained true to his country roots. Reviewing a 2002 concert performance, a critic for The Louisville Courier-Journal called him "one of the few superstars in country music to actually sing country music."

Alan Jackson's success proves that, no matter how much modern country music embraces pop, older, more traditional approaches to country still find an audience. Although gentler in image than the hell-raising singers of the past, Jackson conveys emotional resonance through music that is humorous, probing, and likable.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Here in the Real World (Arista, 1990); A Lot About Livin' (And a Little 'Bout Love) (Arista, 1992); Who I Am (Arista, 1994); Everything I Love (Arista, 1996); When Somebody Loves You (Arista, 2000); Drive (Arista, 2002).