Artist of the day - Alan Jackson
Nikhil Dev | January 18, 2007 | 5:01 pm
Alan Eugene Jackson (born October 17, 1958) is an American country music singer and songwriter, who became one of the best-selling country musicians of the 1990s.
Alan Jackson was born in Newnan, Georgia to Eugene Jackson and Ruth Musick.
He previously worked in The Nashville Network’s mailroom. Jackson’s wife Denise got him connected to Glen Campbell, who helped him jumpstart his career.
His first album, 1989’s Here in the Real World, was a major hit, as was his second (1991) album, Don’t Rock The Jukebox. His 1992 , A Lot About Livin’ (And a Little ‘Bout Love) was a smash success, spawning five major singles with “Chattahoochee” being the most enduring and successful. After a few more hit albums, Jackson again rocketed to fame with “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning),” a song about the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, which became a hit single and briefly propelled him into the mainstream spotlight. He debuted the song at the 2001 Country Music Association Awards.
Although Jackson has been characterized as a commercialized “hat act“, his influences go deep into the roots of country music and his songs have been recorded by some of the greats like Charley Pride, who recorded “Here In The Real World”. He has sung with George Jones on the award-winning “I Don’t Need Your Rockin’ Chair” and “A Good Year for the Roses.” His sense of humor comes through in “Gone Country” with the satirical description of the wannabes who cynically jumped on the country music bandwagon in the 1990s: “Everybody’s gone country/Yeah we’ve gone country/The whole world’s gone country.” He has been credited for popularizing a Neotraditional Country sound. After country music changed toward pop music in the 2000s, he and George Strait criticized the state of country music on the song Murder on Music Row.
Jackson married his high-school sweetheart Denise on December 15, 1979. He is the father of three daughters: Mattie Denise (born June 19, 1990), Alexandra Jane (born August 23, 1993), and Dani Grace (born August 28, 1997). Jackson and his family live in Franklin, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee.
