Alan Jackson

Singer, songwriter

Traditions are sometimes forgotten in favor of the new and improved. In the early 1980s, the synthesized pop music of the urban cowboy seemed to be eclipsing country music's roots. However, in 1989 a new group of country singer/songwriters, including a tall, white-hatted Georgia boy named Alan Jackson, began to revive the country music tradition. Over the next two decades, Jackson would hit number one on the country music charts some three dozen times and win over 45 awards. But Jackson, who nearly lost his 20-year marriage to his high school sweetheart, Denise, along the way, remained humble, telling twangthis.com that he was "just a guy who sings [and who] hopes I'm keeping a little bit of traditional country music alive for the next generation so they'll know what it is."

Alan Eugene Jackson was born on October 17, 1958, in Newnan, Georgia. His father, Eugene, an auto-worker, and mother, Ruth, a homemaker, married in 1952, raising a family of seven children. While still in high school, Jackson met his future wife, Denise, at a Dairy Queen, and they married in 1979. Soon after, they moved to Nashville so Jackson could pursue a music career. While Denise worked as a flight attendant, Jackson worked odd jobs, including used car salesman and mailman for cable TV's Nashville Network (TNN). During his lunch breaks Jackson would study the types of country music that hit the charts, what fans liked, and what they were buying.

In the early 1980s, country music fans seemed to like and buy the bland "pop-ified" country music of the urban cowboy. As the 1980s urban cowboy fad cooled off, however, according to Ken Kragen, speaking on TNN's The Life and Times of the All-star Class of '89, "Country music started to retrench and almost as a reaction against this popularizing of country music, traditionalists came along." One of these new traditionalists was Alan Jackson. However, it would be Denise, Jackson's wife, not Jackson himself, who found his big break. On an airplane flight, she ran into country superstar Glen Campbell. She told him about Jackson's desire to be a country singer/songwriter and asked Campbell for advice. Campbell gave Denise the name of his company's manager, Marty Gamblin, and told Jackson to call. Soon after, Gamblin hired Jackson to write songs for Glen Campbell Enterprises.

Icing On The Cake

By the late 1980s, a new class of country music superstars—musicians who sounded a lot like country music legends Hank Williams, Merle Haggard and others—began to emerge, led by performer Randy Travis. In 1989, seeing this return to tradition, record labels signed their own "new traditionalists," including Clint Black, Travis Tritt, Vince Gill, Garth Brooks and, on the Arista label, Alan Jackson. In 1990 Jackson saw the release of his first album, Here in the Real World, as well as the birth of his first daughter, Mattie. Here in theReal World produced four number one singles, and Jackson also won two major awards that year: the TNN/Music City News Song of the Year for "Here in the Real World," and the Academy of Country Music (ACM) award for Top New Male Vocalist.

In 1991 Jackson released his second album, Don't Rock the Jukebox. Five songs, four of which Jackson wrote or co-wrote, topped the country music charts. In two of these number one hits, Jackson paid respects to his musical inspirations—Hank Williams and George Jones. "Midnight in Montgomery" honored the legendary country singer/songwriter Williams. In the book Country Music Culture, author Curtis W. Ellison wrote that Jackson paid "homage to George Jones—another Hank Williams admirer—and to honky tonk music, a statement against rock and roll in favor of country music." Jackson won four awards that year, including TNN/Music City News Star of Tomorrow and Album of the Year, and ACM's Country Music Single and Album of the Year.

In 1992 Jackson's success continued with two new albums, Honky Tonk Christmas and A Lot ‘Bout Livin’ (and a Little 'Bout Love), the latter producing five number one hit singles, including "Chattahoochee." Jackson not only won five awards that year, including CMA Music Video of the Year, ASCAP Song of the Year, and TNN/Music City News Male Artist, Single, and Album of the Year, and also welcomed another baby daughter, Alexandra.

In 1994 Jackson released his fifth album, Who I Am. According to Entertainment Weekly music reviewer Alanna Nash, the album seemed to "show him to be more emotionally vulnerable." With hits like "Let's Get Back to Me and You" and "Job Description," Nash felt that "seldom has a star made his life away from home sound so lonely." Thus, for the first time, Jackson seemed to be feeling the pressures of success. He told People magazine that he realized that "all those things that you wanted so bad aren't gonna make you happy or keep you happy." He added that he realized that "my life is really like a fairy tale [and] you gotta be happy with yourself and with your spouse and with your life. All the rest is just icing on the cake." Jackson won ten awards in 1994, including ASCAP Song and Songwriter of the Year, as well as ACM Top Male Vocalist and American Music Awards Favorite Album and Single of the Year.

For the Record …

Born Alan Eugene Jackson on October 17, 1958, in Newnan, GA; son of Eugene (an autoworker) and Ruth Jackson; married Denise, December 15, 1979; children: Mattie, Alexandra, and Dani.

Hired by Glen Campbell Enterprises as a songwriter until signed to Arista Records, 1989; released first album, Here in the Real World, 1990; became member of the Grand Ole Opry, 1991; success continued over the next 18 years with 15 more albums and over 30 number one hits; opened Alan Jackson Showcar Cafe in Pigeon Forge, TN, 1998; released Precious Memories and Like Red on a Rose, 2006; released Good Time, 2008.

Awards: Academy of Country Music (ACM) Top New Male Vocalist, 1990; TNN/Music City News Star of Tomorrow, 1991; ACM Country Music Album of the Year, 1991; Country Music Association (CMA) Music Video of the Year, 1992, and Single of the Year, 1993; ASCAP Songwriter of the Year, 1993, 1994, 1998, 2003; American Music Awards (AMA) Favorite Album, 1994; CMA Entertainer of the Year, 1995, 2001, 2002, 2003; ACM Male Vocalist of the Year, 1995, 1996, 2002; TNN/Music City News Entertainer of the Year, 1996, 1997; CMA Vocal Event of the Year, 2000; CMA Album of the Year, Male Vocalist of the Year, Music Video of the Year, all 2001; CMA Best Male Vocalist and Album of the Year, for Drive, and Single of the Year and Song of the Year, both for "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)," 2002; ACM Song of the Year and Single of the Year, for "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)," 2002; CMA Male Vocalist of the Year and Vocal Event of the Year, for "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere," (with Jimmy Buffet), 2003; Grammy Award for Best Country Song, for "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)," 2003; Grammy Award for Best Country Song, for "It's Five O'clock Somewhere," 2004.

Addresses: Record company—Arista Nashville, 1400 18th Ave. S, Nashville, TN 37212. Web site—Alan Jackson Official Web site: http://www.alanjackson.com.

Separated, Reconciled, and "High Mileage"

Throughout the mid-to-late 1990s, Jackson's star continued to burn brightly. In 1995 he released a Greatest Hits album and won eight major awards, including CMA Entertainer of the Year. In 1996 Jackson released Everything I Love, his first album of all-new material in three years. Country music fans loved what Jackson wrote, and awarded him TNN/Music City News Enter- tainer of the Year in 1996 and 1997. Dani, Jackson's third daughter, was also born in 1997. Thus, Jackson's music career and home life seemed to be on solid ground.

However, in February of 1998, USA Today announced that Jackson and Denise had separated. Jackson told USA Today's Brian Mansfield that "I couldn't be happy. … I worked so hard to get all this stuff to make me happy." He continued, "Then that didn't do it. It actually got worse. This career added other problems to it. I isolated myself more." After months of therapy, Jackson and Denise finally reconciled, and renewed their wedding vows on their nineteenth wedding anniversary. Denise told Life that the separation "forced us to put our attention back on our relationship." Jackson told Life, "I realize what makes you happy: It's having someone to love and someone who loves you."

In September of 1998, Jackson released his eighth album, High Mileage. Life called the album "an ode to marriage," while country.com stated that "the album is Jackson's take on life's latest chapter."

Jackson's ninth album, Under the Influence, appeared in 1999, followed by When Somebody Loves You late in 2000. In 2000 Jackson generated controversy and attracted media attention when he collaborated with George Strait on the song "Murder on Music Row," which bemoaned the commercialization of the country music industry.

Perhaps Jackson's biggest and most poignant hit was "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)." A recollection of the events of September 11, 2001, the song appeared in two forms on Jackson's album Drive, released in 2002. The album included a studio version of the song, as well as a live version recorded at the Country Music Awards just two months after the attacks. The title song for the album was a tribute to Jackson's late father, Eugene, who had recently died.

Recorded Outside the Country Genre

In 2004 Jackson released his fourteenth album, What I Do. Once again, Jackson's heartfelt baritone, combined with his extraordinary ability to write good songs, turned the album into a platinum success. It debuted at the top of the Billboard country and pop album charts and was popular due to its great mix of songs. Jackson recorded love songs like "Too Much of a Good Thing," as well as lighter, funnier songs such as "If French Fries Were Fat Free."

In 2005 Jackson went on tour, accompanied by Sara Evans and a new music duo, The Wrights, which included Jackson's nephew Adam Wright and his wife, Shannon. For all his success, Jackson remained down to earth. "A lot of times when you get to the level I'm at now, [people think you're] this big star and there's something magical about you," he told Billboard's Deborah Evans Price, "but really you are just the same old guy that sang in those bars 20 years ago, doing some of the same songs."

By the mid-2000s, Jackson had reached a level attained by very few other country artists—he could record material that fell outside the genre's normal styles, and his position atop the country charts was not shaken. Jackson's next two albums were unorthodox by any standard. His album Like Red on a Rose, produced by bluegrass vocalist Alison Krauss, was a quiet album of country torch songs whose sparseness set it far apart from the majority of the material heard on country radio. Gary Graff of Billboard called the album "one of the best things Jackson's ever recorded." Sparser still was Precious Memories, an album of traditional hymns recorded by Jackson in 2005 as a Christmas gift to his mother, using just a few quick takes in the studio. Executive Joe Galante persuaded Jackson to turn the album into a commercial release.

Galante's instincts were correct, for Precious Memories topped Billboard's country albums sales chart. The magazine also named it the most successful Christian album of 2006. Like Red on a Rose also topped the album chart despite the lack of a top-ten single. The following year, Jackson, George Strait, and Jimmy Buffett released Live at Texas Stadium, recorded during a 2004 concert.

Jackson seemingly returned to a more conventional sound with his 2008 release Good Time, and he wrote all 17 of the album's songs. Good Time got off to a good start when its leadoff single, "Small Town Southern Man," topped Billboard's country singles chart. The song drew heavily on Jackson's reminiscences of his own father, and as he approached his third decade at the top of the charts Alan Jackson still maintained a down-to-earth approach to his art—one that would never grow old in the field of country music.

Selected discography

Here in the Real World, Arista Records, 1990.

Don't Rock the Jukebox, Arista Records, 1991.

Honky Tonk Christmas, Arista Records, 1992.

A Lot ‘Bout Livin’ (and a Little 'Bout Love), Arista Records, 1992.

Who I Am, Arista Records, 1994.

Greatest Hits, Arista Records, 1995.

Everything I Love, Arista Records, 1996.

High Mileage, Arista Records, 1998.

Under the Influence, Arista/Nashville, 1999.

When Somebody Loves You, Arista/Nashville, 2000.

Drive, Arista/Nashville, 2002.

Let it be Christmas, Arista/Nashville, 2002.

Greatest Hits, Arista/Nashville, 2003.

What I Do, Arista/Nashville, 2004.

Very Best Of, Arista/Nashville, 2004.

Precious Memories, Arista, 2006.

Like Red on a Rose, Arista, 2006

(With George Strait and Jimmy Buffett) Live at Texas Stadium, MCA Nashville, 2007.

Good Time, Arista, 2008.

Sources

Books

Ellison, Curtis, Country Music Culture: From Hard Times to Heaven, University Press Of Mississippi, 1995.

Periodicals

Billboard, November 13, 1999; May 6, 2000; September 18, 2004; September 30, 2006, p. 47; December 23, 2006, p. YE-24.

Chicago Sun-Times, September 21, 1998.

Entertainment Weekly, July 7, 1998.

Good Housekeeping, June 1995.

Life, February 1999.

People, Special Issue, 1994; September 20, 2004; Fall 2007 (special issue), p. 30; March 17, 2008, p. 133.

USA Today, February 20, 1998; September 1, 1998.

Online

"Alan Jackson," All Music Guide,http://www.allmusic.com (June 29, 2008).

"Alan Jackson," County Music Television,http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/jackson_alan/bio.jhtml (August 14, 2008).

"Alan Jackson," twangthis.com, http://twangthis.com/ (1999).

Alan Jackson Official Web site, http://www.alanjackson.com/bio/index.php (August 14, 2008).

Additional information for this essay was provided by The Life and Times of the All-Star Class of '89, a TNN special program broadcast January 25, 1999; and from liner notes to Alan Jackson's albums.

—Ann M. Schwalboski and James M. Manheim