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[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

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[♪ MUSIC: "Gone Country"]

How y'all doin' tonight?

[CHEERING]

I still regard him as the greatest country songwriter

since Merle Haggard.

He just had a way of saying things

that people related to, could identify with,

and I think that's the secret

to what he does in all of his writing.

♪ She's gone country

♪ Look at them boots

♪ She's gone country

♪ Yeah, back to her roots

♪ She's gone country...

I mean, definitely had a huge impact on me as a fan

and also, of course, as an artist and songwriter.

♪ There, you've gone country...

[MAN] I remember standing on stage next to him

and hearing his voice come back through the monitors at me,

and sometimes it was so strong and so powerful,

it would stand the hair up on the back of my neck,

and sometimes I would just stop playin'

because I'd be listening to his voice

coming through that monitor, going, "Wow."

And then I'd have to remember,

"You're supposed to be playing, man."

♪ Well, I hear Red Rocks, Colorado

♪ Y'all gone country

♪ Yeah, you've gone country

♪ Cos we all gone country...

[MAN] He gives you what's in his heart,

he gives you what he's experienced

and what he is experiencing,

and in the end that's what we all want.

Whoo!

Thank you very much.

I grew up down there in Newnan, Georgia,

down off of Highway 5.

There was this river down there

I always thought had a kind of interesting little name.

I wrote this song about it.

[ALAN] I guess at the time I wasn't that crazy

about being somewhat moderate income,

and I had friends that had nice homes

and air-conditioned cars and all that kind of stuff,

and I think that's one reason I've been so driven

to have things in my life, cos I never had anything, but...

So at the time I probably didn't appreciate

parts of that childhood.

He was special because they waited so long for this boy.

They didn't think they would ever have a boy.

They had given up. They had four girls.

And they lost a girl at five months between us and Con.

So they had no hope that this last baby was gonna be a boy,

so they were ecstatic.

Connie was his nursemaid.

Yeah, they called her his little mother.

She was just four years older.

You can look back in some of the pictures

and she's got him by the hand.

I don't know how he ever learned to walk.

When I look at the pictures, I think I never let him go.

[CAROL] Yeah, you were always holding onto him.

But I told Diane earlier today, Mama must have been crazy,

I was only four, to just let me have this baby.

[CATHY] She was really busy, so while she...

She cooked three meals a day and took care of all of us,

made all our clothes from scratch,

so she didn't have time to babysit either.

♪ In a small town down in Georgia

♪ Over 40 years ago

♪ Her maiden name was Musick

♪ Till she met that Jackson boy

♪ They married young like folks did then

♪ Not a penny to their name

♪ But they believed the one you vow to love

♪ Should always stay the same...

[CATHY] Our grandfather was a builder,

and he had just built himself a nice toolshed,

excited about using it, I'm sure,

and then they got married, Mom was 16 and Daddy was 19,

and they had nowhere to live, no money, nowhere to go,

so he had to give 'em that toolshed to live in.

[DIANE] It's part of the house now.

It actually is sort of the centre of the house.

- It's the den of the house. - The centre room.

And all the other rooms were built around it, you know, as...

Every time they had a child, they added another room.

♪ And they made that house a home

♪ And they taught us 'bout good livin'

♪ They taught us right from wrong...

[DIANE] He had to sleep in the hall,

cos there wasn't room in the house for him to have a bedroom.

- Not until you moved out. - I was gonna say.

When I moved out, he was so glad because he could have my room.

He finally got a bedroom of his own.

It was our room.

People have told that story about him sleeping in the hall

a thousand times,

but the hall was almost as wide as this room.

It was probably as big as this room.

It was just an area of the hall set aside, yeah.

Yeah, and so instead of a wall being built there,

that section of the hall became his section of that room.

But that hall now is a full bathroom,

with double sinks and a tub and all of that, so it's a big room.

It's not near as big as this room, though.

- Maybe half. - It maybe would come to here.

- OK, maybe this. - [LAUGHTER]

- Maybe it was kind of small. - It was small.

♪ And they made their house from a toolshed

♪ Granddaddy rolled out on two logs

♪ And they built walls all around it

♪ And they made that house a home

♪ And they taught us 'bout good livin'

♪ They taught us right from wrong...

I had great parents and my life was very simple,

but it was also very calm.

There wasn't a lot of drama and a lot of turbulence there

that so many people have to live through,

regardless of their income.

So as I've gotten older, I've learned to appreciate that

and just the attention that we got and the love from them

was what was the value,

and even though my daddy was very quiet,

never said he loved me and all that kind of stuff,

it was always understood,

and I've learned to maybe

not be quite so quiet as him with my kids,

but he had some great qualities.

But, yeah, I was very fortunate to be raised by two people

who had a great relationship with each other

and were committed to their family.

That's what made us turn out semi-normal, I think.

[♪ MUSIC: "Livin' On Love"]

♪ Two old people without a thing

♪ Children gone but still they sing

♪ Side by side on that front-porch swing

♪ Livin' on love...

[CATHY] I remember Alan'd come in and listen to us sing.

Like, if Carol and Mary and I were practising our trio stuff

when we were little girls,

he would come and stand beside us and listen.

And one time he asked, "Can I sing with y'all?"

We didn't know what to tell him, what part to tell him to sing,

but he was interested, he was listening.

[CAROL] He sang in a quartet,

barber-shop quartet in high school,

and they won a prize, wherever it was they went.

[CATHY] He sang at his own wedding.

[CAROL] Yeah, sang to Denise, and that was the second time

we heard him sing a solo, I guess.

He was definitely grown before we heard him open his mouth.

And then after that, he got started with the local band.

I really was not that interested in music early on,

and I got a guitar when I was in high school

and kind of had a band like a lot of people do

and I was quite a bit older before I decided

to really try to make a career out of it and move up here.

He was singing at a wedding

for who was my brother-in-law at the time.

And I remember sitting there and hearing this guy sing

and thinking to myself,

"His voice is filling this whole church up,"

and his pitch was perfect.

And at the time I was trying to get a little band started

and I had some equipment set up down there in the basement,

and we wondered downstairs and he saw the equipment

and asked me if I was in a band.

And I said, "Well, I'm trying to get a band started

and we're looking for a singer, somebody to front the band."

So I called the guys that were in the band at the time

and I said, "Look, I think I've found us a singer."

"This guy's really good

and I think with him fronting the band,

we could get out of the basement."

About halfway through the first song,

I was looking at the other guys' faces

and I was thinking, "Yeah, they're along for the ride."

"They see the same thing I see."

And that's how the band Dixie Steel was born.

[WOMAN] At first I think it was just fun,

something to do on the weekends.

But then the more he played and the more people heard him,

the more he began to hear, "Boy, you're really good..."

Hey, Alan. How you doin'?

Great. How you doin'? Good to see you.

When are you gonna let me buy that old Chevy?

I can't sell that car. I've had it too long.

Too many memories there. I'm gonna fix it up someday.

You know you're never gonna fix it up.

Yeah, someday it's gonna be a classic.

750 cash. That's my last offer.

- Can't do it. Thanks anyway. - OK.

[ALAN] I was a regular person, a regular working man,

had all different kind of jobs and careers

and had been married for a lot of years.

I'd lived all that before I ever got the opportunity

to make records,

so I think that's helped me...

Had I been 19 years old

and all of a sudden, bam, I'm a big superstar,

you'd never have a chance to really grow up and live,

and... and then it's hard to...

and then after that nothing's normal,

so you never have that normality to draw from,

and I think that's probably what's helped me

continue to be able to write from that position.

[DIANE] He was always interested in being financially successful.

[CATHY] He was serious about that.

He was building houses and selling cars.

[CONNIE] He worked at the shoe store

for starting with at age 12.

[DIANE] He'd bring his change home at night

- up to the kitchen table... - He waited tables.

He would sit with Mother.

And they would put the change together in the wrappers.

You know, he was... He saved his money.

[CONNIE] He was saving for this...

[DIANE] Probably it was for the T-bird. He saved it.

[CONNIE] He wanted a car,

cos there's nothing that's more important to Daddy and to Alan

than things that move.

♪ Smiling like a hero

♪ He just received his medal

♪ It was just an old hand-me-down Ford

♪ Three speed on a column and a dent in the door

♪ A young boy Two hands on the wheel

♪ I can't replace the way it made me feel

♪ And I would press that clutch

♪ And I'd keep it right

♪ He'd say "A little slower, son You're doing just fine"

[ALAN] I rode many bikes and motorcycles

and go-karts when I was young,

and I guess the earliest remembrance I had

of actually driving a full-grown vehicle

was we'd go to the trash dump in that truck.

I wrote about it in Drive. And that's what we did.

And they had long dirt roads in there and there's no traffic,

so he'd let me drive when we were at the trash dump,

cos we were on a main road.

I drove boats earlier than that, cos boats were different.

You could drive a boat without running into somebody.

He was always out riding mini-bikes and go-karts.

He stole all our Barbie doll cars

and tied 'em up to the back of his bicycle

and took off with them,

so they were bumping along behind his bicycle.

That sounded pretty good.

Alan Jackson grew up in this kind of,

bucolic Georgia setting,

and he was inspired by country music,

honky-tonk music, roots music, of the American South,

and out on the left coast with Merle Haggard as well.

But the music was music for good times,

music for hard times, a lot of storytelling music.

He was inspired by people like Tom T. Hall,

who could write their own stories into song.

And he was also inspired by people like George Jones,

one of the greatest singers ever to put wind into a microphone,

who wasn't so much a story writer

as a singer who could excavate his very soul

right in front of a microphone.

I guess the more we played, people would encourage you,

say, "Man, y'all sound good" or "You sound good."

"You ought to think about singing for a living."

And I guess after a while

I thought, well, got enough confidence to try it, so I did.

[DENISE] We were still living in Newnan.

I was commuting out of the Atlanta airport

and I saw Glen in the boarding area,

and I just am not the type to approach people,

but I just thought, "This may be our only chance."

"I have to do it." So I approached Glen.

And he basically gave me his manager's card,

the guy that ran his publishing company in Nashville.

He asked me if Alan wrote songs and I said no.

And he said, "Well, he needs to start writing himself

and just put together a demo tape

and go see Marty at my office and see if he can help him."

And that was our first connection.

He came down to my house.

He lived right up the street, of course.

And he said, "I need to talk."

And I said, "What do you wanna talk about?"

He'd come over there all the time just to bum around.

And he said, "I'm unhappy with what I'm doing in my life."

"I'm sick of selling cars."

"I don't wanna build any more houses."

I said, "What do you wanna do?" He said, "I wanna sing."

And I remember saying, it's funny now,

I said, "Can you sing?"

[LAUGHTER]

And I said... Cos I'd never heard him sing.

You wouldn't have. I know.

And he said, "Yeah, I think I can."

And I remember saying this to him.

Cos we had been gone a long time and we were older.

I said, "Well, what have you gotta do?"

He said, "I think I'll have to move to Nashville."

I said, "Well, I think you should go."

I said, "You can always leave, come back,

but you can't always go."

I said, "Now you're young, you have no children,

you're free, go."

And, of course, the next day

my mother was frantically calling me on the telephone.

"You gotta come talk to Alan."

"He's moving to Nashville, selling all his stuff."

I said, "I don't think you want me to."

[LAUGHTER]

"I told him to go."

But that's how that started.

And Daddy told him the same thing.

Daddy encouraged him.

He said, "You don't wanna be 80 years old

and wonder if you ever could have done that had you tried."

He said, "You gotta go try,

and if it doesn't work out, you can come back."

And he wrote that song recently, You Can Always Come Back.

And that's what Daddy told him.

That was something that Daddy...

That was a quote that he remembered.

♪ Spread your wings

♪ Don't be afraid to try

♪ The world can be hard

♪ You gotta live a little 'fore you die

♪ So open that door

♪ Step out in the bright sunshine

♪ Follow your heart

♪ And remember anytime

♪ You can always come home

♪ Wherever life's road leads

♪ You can get back

♪ To a love that's strong and free

♪ You'll never be alone...

He came over to the house one day and he said,

"Look, I think that Denise and I are gonna move to Nashville

and I'm gonna try to give this thing a go."

And I was thinking,

"Man, I don't know if I would go to a place

where there's thousands of other people

wanting to do the same thing."

But I knew that he had the talent,

he had the work ethics and the drive,

and he had the personality.

He was real humble,

and if you met Alan, you just liked him.

So I figured he had as good a shot as anybody

and I said, "Look, you know, go ahead and do this, man."

"Go do it,

and we'll save your place in the band for you,

and if it don't work out, then you can come on back to Newnan

and we'll keep going."

He said, "Well, I kind of hope you all do keep playing."

I said, "Yeah, we're gonna keep playing."

And that's kind of what we did.

♪ Daddy won a radio

♪ He tuned it to a country show

♪ I was rockin' in the cradle to the cryin' of a steel guitar

♪ Mama used to sing to me

♪ She taught me that sweet harmony

♪ Now she worries cos she never thought

♪ I'd never really take it this far

♪ Singin' in the bars and chasin' that neon rainbow

♪ Livin' that honky-tonk dream

♪ Cos all I've ever wanted

♪ Is to pick this guitar and sing

♪ Just tryin' to be somebody

♪ Just wanna be heard and seen

♪ I'm chasin' that neon rainbow

♪ Livin' that honky-tonk dream...

[MAN] Denise was, I guess, the breadwinner.

She was a flight attendant.

And Alan was making $50 a week.

And...

Yeah, I mean, I was here five years

and making demos whenever I could

and pitching 'em to record labels,

and I got passed on by every label in town at the time,

some of 'em twice, and some of 'em were...

some of 'em were real discouraging,

you know, their responses.

But I guess I'm hard-headed.

In some ways it made me wanna succeed more, I guess,

so I kept trying, but the year I finally got something going,

I was about... tired, you know, I was about ready to give it up.

[MAN] I can remember here in Nashville,

he played a club called Cruisers.

There were five people in there, counting Alan,

and it was myself, my wife, his wife

and some old drunk woman.

[LAUGHS]

But he played it like he was playing to 20,000 people.

I've had it easier than probably some people,

but I still heard a lot of no's and a lot of doors closed

and people telling me that I ought to go back to Georgia.

Had a record executive actually say that one time.

I think country music in the '80s

was this odd brand of pop synthesisers,

and traditional country music was really not very...

I don't wanna say respected, it just wasn't very prominent,

it wasn't really part of the mix.

Some folks were thinking that country music had lost its way

and that a lot of what was on the radio

was kind of pale replications of pop music

that had been popular a few years before that,

kind of like the second lap of that watered down.

[MCBRIDE] We were still kind of in the aftermath

of the urban cowboy era,

and if you go back and listen to the music in the mid '80s,

you will see that a lot of it was kind of pop,

cos that's kind of the way Nashville is.

It's, like, that crossed over to the pop charts,

so let's do that.

I don't think they really believed

in that traditional country sound

and that it could ever be that big, you know.

As the saying says, "Too country for country."

And Alan would very respectfully tell them,

"You need to get out from behind your desk

and go out and go to these honky tonks.

People love it. They love this kind of music.

The artists are singing about life in most instances.

There's definitely songs that are more just for fun

or blowing off steam or whatever,

but, I mean, they're singing songs

for and about the every man, you know.

It's not look at my, you know,

look at all the things I have or my car or, like...

It's not that.

It's more like, I'm like you. I understand you.

You can turn on the radio and relate.

In 1981, Ricky Skaggs and George Strait came along

and got the wheels turning for something that would be called

the new traditionalism or the neotraditionalist movement,

music that was brand-new

but that hearkened back to honky-tonk sounds of the '50s

or, in Ricky Skaggs' case,

hearkened back to bluegrass music of the '40s.

Skaggs and Strait were fantastic,

as was another major influence on Alan, Randy Travis,

who came along in the mid '80s.

And these people gave Alan a licence to do what he did.

They paved the way.

Randy Travis came along.

I met him in '81 and I thought,

"Dear God, please give this man a chance."

In 1987, he put outStorms of Life

and kicked the door wide open.

There were people who were doing quite well

with that middle-of-the-road stuff,

and they lost their deals because now it's, like,

you got Clint Black and Alan and Garth

and the whole bunch two years later.

But Randy... Randy kicked that down.

[WOMAN] There was that whole class

of Alan Jackson, George Strait,

Ricky Skaggs, Randy Travis, Dwight Yoakam.

They, you know, those guys all did

a lot more traditional-leaning country music,

and they were much more in the vein, in my mind,

they were like mavericks, like a Hank Williams would have been

or like a Johnny Cash would have been.

So even though it was

on the more traditional side of country music,

it was edgier than a lot of the middle-of-the-road stuff

that was being made at that time.

♪ Yeah, he's gone country

♪ A new kind of walk He's gone country

♪ A new kind of talk He's gone country

♪ Look at them boots He's gone country

♪ Oh, back to his roots He's gone country...

On Music Row, like a lot of the music business, I guess,

the wheels move slow,

and too slow for him many times,

and I think his frustration sometimes

led him to think maybe "This isn't for me."

Then he would write a great song and he'd get fired up again

and say, "You know what? I'm gonna do this."

This is a tough business and, I mean...

Not tough like busting rock tough

but tough like on you mentally and emotionally and all that.

But at the end of the day, Alan's kind of like me.

It's like this is what we do, you know.

So what are you gonna do? Give up and go home and do what?

I mean, you know, this is all I know how to do,

and I'm sure some of that

was playing on his heart and his mind too, you know.

This is kind of it. You don't give up cos you can't.

♪ Cos sometimes someday

♪ Just never comes

[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

[ALAN] Before I moved to Nashville,

I never really tried writing songs, but...

One guy I knew down there from home

that had a band and had done some recording in Atlanta,

from down around Georgia,

he said, "Man, if you're gonna go up to Nashville,

you gotta have some reasonable material."

"You can't go up there singing covers and everybody's stuff."

I said, "OK." So I started writing a few things.

And I went in this little studio in the basement of a house

and laid 'em down and packed up

and took 'em with me to Nashville.

But he wouldn't have gotten there

without your help, remember?

I don't know if he would or not.

- Mm-mm. - Why?

Remember you had to give him the money.

Oh, I gave him some money, yeah, for that first bunch of stuff.

Yeah, nobody else would give him the money.

He couldn't get a bank in Newnan

to loan him the money to get some demo tapes done.

Yeah, some demo tapes, and I...

- That's sad. - It was sad.

And he called me and... We didn't have any money.

- No, none of us had any money. - But we had credit.

And I told Jim. He said, "Do you think we should give him some?"

I said, "Yeah, we should give him some money."

So we went to the bank and borrowed nine or ten thousand.

I thought it was nine. I don't remember now.

To give to him. We sent it to him.

- That's a lot of money. - It was a lot of money.

- It was to us at the time. - Still is.

And we just paid on it every month.

It was just a note to the bank and we paid on it for years.

And when he got that first record deal,

he gave it back to me.

And I said, "Thank you. I appreciate it."

Cos I still needed it.

But I would have never thought not to give it to him.

[CONNIE] No.

[MAN] The first day he came to my office,

I asked him if I could hear some music,

cos I had a prior meeting with him

where I'd heard songs,

him singing other people's songs,

and he was pitched to me as a management client

singing other people's songs.

And I sort of said,

"Well, I can see why you're not getting a record deal

and I just don't think these work."

I thought they were Alan's songs, cos he was a songwriter.

And he came over to my office three or four days later

and said, "Can I just come and visit?"

"I loved your honesty. I'd love to talk to you again."

And it was, like, "What should I do?"

And I said, "Well, I didn't hear any of your songs."

He said, "I don't know whether I've got any good songs."

And I said, "Well, I'd love to hear them."

And he said, "Yeah, I don't really have any good demos."

And I said, "Well, have you got anything?"

And he was, like, "Well, yeah, I've got some things."

So he went out to his truck, it was an old Dodge truck,

as is depicted in Neon Rainbow,

and he came back in and he had this little kit bag

and it had room, probably, for five cassettes in it.

And he pulled out a cassette and he said,

"This is a ballad, but I really like it."

And he played me Wanted.

♪ Excuse me, ma'am

♪ Can you help me?

♪ I need to place an ad with you today...

I was, like, "Whoa. I love this."

He was, like, "Really?"

And I said, "Yeah. What else have you got in there?"

And he pulled out another cassette

and it was Neon Rainbow.

And he said to me, he said,

"People tell me this is too personal and, you know."

"But it's sort of about me."

And I was, like, "This is perfect."

"This is just the most wonderful description of who you are."

And...

"Really? You like that?"

I was, like, "What else have you got?"

And he played me a song called Home.

He said, "This is about my mummy and daddy

and it's probably too personal for everybody."

And it was a song that we put on the first album,

but it never came out as a single

until the greatest hits album came out some years later,

and it was added to that

and became a really big single as well.

So they were the first three songs I ever heard.

I had kind of tiptoed into producing by...

I worked with Kyle Lehning

and we did the first tracks on Randy Travis's first record.

And I was an artist at the time,

and I was still actively on the road

with a bus and a band and all that stuff,

and I opted out of that production relationship

and I told Kyle, Randy, I just said, you know,

"I just feel guilty that I can't be here for you."

So I bowed out and continued to be an artist,

losing money head over heels on the road.

It was just killing me.

And I remember I had parked my bus one night

at a grocery store right up the road from where I was living,

I was walking back, walked past the mailbox,

opened up the mailbox and there was this big envelope in there

from Warner Bros Records.

And I opened it up and there was a cheque in there for $13,000,

and I went, "Oh, my," you know.

"I just lost $20,000 on the road this weekend."

And at that point I thought to myself, you know,

"The next artist that comes through

the path that leads through my life that I get excited about,

I'm gonna stay the course."

And remarkably it was Alan and I thought,

"OK, I don't need to be reminded of this twice."

So I sold my bus to Randy Travis

and really kind of retired as an artist

to become a record producer.

[ALAN] He got me on tape in the beginning

that caught the ear of Tim DuBois

that got me the initial record deal,

so even those first demos I made to get a record deal,

they haven't changed much.

I mean, what we make now sounds pretty much the same

as far as production and style of song.

[MAN] Alan came into my knowledge

because Shelby Kennedy passed a cassette to me

and said, "Take a listen to it."

And I listened to six songs that he and Keith had done

and was very impressed.

And Tim called me and said,

"Mister, I really like these songs," you know.

"I'd really like to talk to you about this."

"When can I see him play?"

And I said, "Next Tuesday."

And Tim said, "I'm sorry, mister."

"I'm gonna be out of town."

He said, "When can I see him again?"

And I said, "Well, the following week

you can see him in Homestead, Florida,

and then the following week you can see him in Delaware."

He said, "When's he playing Nashville next?"

I said, "I don't know. He's only ever played Nashville twice."

And Tim called me back about an hour later and said,

"I'll be there."

I knew it was something special that night

and I reached out very quickly to Barry Coburn, his manager,

and I said, "Let's get this deal done."

Tim invited me over and said, "What are we gonna do?"

And I said, "I'd really like to know more

about what this record company's gonna be."

And later that afternoon I got a call at the office

and said, "It's Clive Davis's office."

"They wanna know if you'll meet with Clive Davis

tomorrow at 2pm."

I said, "Say yes."

Well, Clive came to town for our grand opening,

and I think that Alan and Barry Coburn

both wanted to hear directly from Clive,

yeah, we're really gonna do this,

we're really gonna start a country music label.

And it took that little extra nudge, I think,

to get him to believe in us, cos we were brand-new.

We were as new as he was to the scene at that point in time.

I started calling Alan that morning

and I eventually got through to him about 12:30.

And I said, "Look, I've got this meeting set up."

"It's with Arista Records. Clive Davis is coming down."

And he said, "I've been working on my van

and I just banged my head and I'm bleeding,

and the top of my head is bleeding,

and I just don't think I can get there."

"I'm covered in grease and dirt."

And then a few minutes later he called me back and said,

"Well, if I come, what will I wear?"

And he came and we got in my car

and he said, "So who are we going to meet?"

And I said, "It's Clive Davis."

I said, "He's got Barry Manilow, Whitney Houston, Kenny G."

And he said, "That ain't country."

"What does he know about country music?"

He was smart enough to bring people in like Tim DuBois,

who had some history in the town, and trusted Tim's ears,

and it's really Tim's ears we're talking about here

because he was the one that actually took the chance

when we had been turned down by everybody in town.

And then Clive Davis set off and explained Arista Records

and what he wanted to do and what the intention was here.

And we got to the end and he said, "So what do you think?"

"Will you be the flagship artist?"

And I said, "We need to think about it."

And he said, "What do you need to think about?"

I said, "Well, we need to consult with Alan's attorney

and we need to just make a determination."

"Well, how long will that take?"

I said, "No, no, just give us a couple of days."

As Alan shook hands with Clive,

he said, "Mr Davis, it's been a real pleasure to meet you.

If I'd known what I know now about you,

I would have been too scared to come."

Which Clive just, of course, loved.

It was just perfect.

And we left and as we walked out of the building, you know,

he said, "What are you doing?"

"That man offered me a record deal."

"We've been trying to get a record deal and you've said no."

I said, "We've gotta play it. We wanna get the right deal."

[OVERTON] Again, this is something that he lived for,

breathed for, bled for, you name it,

sacrificed for, and Denise did too,

and Tim was relentless, you know.

And other labels, they were hovering,

cos they heard there was interest,

but no one else was putting a contract in front of him

like Tim DuBois did.

I said, "Bring in all the stuff you've written,

even work tapes, and let's sit and listen

and then we'll fill in the gaps

with outside songs if we need to."

And he came in literally with a croker sack

full of songs, full of cassettes,

and it was at that point in time that I recognised the depth

and recognised what a lucky man I was,

because he had song after song.

There were songs in that sack

that carried us all the way into the third album.

If I remember, there's at least one, maybe two songs,

that were in that sack on the third album.

[COBURN] The record contract was signed 12 days later,

and the album was finished 14 days after the show.

We actually signed the contract over in OMNI Studios

and then started cutting and the album was done in three days,

and it was those nine songs,

plus Tim DuBois added one outside song.

♪ She loves the violin I love the fiddle

♪ We go separate ways But we meet in the middle

♪ Don't see eye to eye But we're hand in hand

♪ The blue-blooded woman and her redneck man...

[DUNGAN] Whenever you're introducing a new artist

and talking about trying to get that artist on the radio,

there seems to be an issue with tempo,

and it's always easier to ingest new artists' music

when it's got life and it's got tempo

and it's got some bounce to it.

And for whatever reason, Tim and his team at the time

decided that they were gonna go

with the song called Blue Blooded Woman.

He called me one day and he said, "What are you doing?"

I said, "You know, not much."

He said, "Why don't you come over?

We'll have pizza and watch TV."

"OK." He said, "Bring your wife, Jan." I said, "OK."

So we went over to the house, and pizza's already there,

has a couple of beers out for us.

So we ate our pizza and drank beer

and he turns on the TV, scans the channels and says,

"There's nothing on."

"Why don't we call radio stations,

to see if they'll play my record?"

[CHUCKLES]

And we said, "OK."

And so he said, "Well, Jan," which is my wife,

"and Denise, y'all are Southern girls."

Y'all will call the Southern states.

Gary, you're from New Jersey.

You can cover the rest of the United States."

And we're, like, "What do we do?"

He says, "I've got the numbers from the record company here."

"We'll just start calling 'em and ask them to play that."

"But don't be so obvious." So it was really funny.

So we sat there for hours calling radio stations,

saying, "Hey, would you play

that Blue Blooded Womansong by Alan Jackson?"

They're, like, "I don't think I've got a copy of that."

We'd go, "Yes, you do." And they'd go, "How do you know?"

"Oh. I bet you do," you know. It was pretty funny.

But Alan was always scheming on how to further his career,

and so it was Alan, Denise, Jan and I and Ethel the cat

calling radio stations from that little apartment.

Blue Blooded Woman, Redneck Mandid OK,

and I remember it had a real presence

on the country video networks,

but it didn't go to the top of the radio charts,

and there's worry when that happens.

What you want is the number one out of the box,

you want the rocket ship,

and Alan wasn't piloting a rocket ship.

It lasted, I don't know, three or four weeks, not very long,

and died a miserable, miserable death.

I've been working for years in Nashville

to get a record contract, and I finally did,

and we were so excited and recorded an album

and put the first song out, and it didn't do good at all.

And I was sad.

And I was bummed out, came home.

My wife, she looked at me and said she was pregnant

and neither one of us were ready for that

and it was a tough time.

I thought, "I'm gonna have to go back to work, I guess."

- And then we... - [MAN] Alan Jackson!

And then we put this song out.

Put this song out and I haven't worked since.

♪ Cowboys don't cry

♪ And heroes don't die

♪ And good always wins

♪ Again and again

♪ And love is a sweet dream

♪ That always comes true

♪ Oh, if life were like the movies

♪ I'd never be blue

♪ But here in the real world

♪ It's not that easy at all

♪ Cos when hearts get broken

♪ It's real tears that fall...

[OVERTON] I'm sure the promotion people that called radio

for Arista Records were, like, "Oh, my gosh."

"It's a ballad, it's really country, with fiddles and steel,

and, ah, man, this is probably not a good idea."

But it certainly was. It was his first number one.

I remember thinking, "Whoa. Who is this?"

Because, again, it sounded like he was telling a story,

a real story that really happened to him,

and it went like, "Hey, girl," you know.

"You look good in those shorts" or whatever.

It was, like, this is something that happened to me.

And I loved that and...

just the honesty, really, struck a chord with me.

When I heard the song and, of course, Alan wrote the song,

co-wrote it, I think, and he wrote the song, sang the song,

and then when I saw the guy and the video,

I thought, you know, how can this miss?

You know? It's gotta go.

[COOPER] It was a song about values,

it was a song about heartbreak

and it was a song about reality

and it was a ballad,

and it resonated.

And people heard the depth and texture in his voice

and they understood that this was something new

and they'd been waiting on it,

they just didn't know they'd been waiting on it.

[DUBOIS] It just established the fact

that this guy's different, he's real, he's genuine.

It was the start of something really wonderful

cos radio embraced that song and took it to number one.

We had tracked that song earlier

and something... it didn't work.

I remember I was sitting up in the window at OmniSound,

and Alan, he said, "What's the matter?"

I said, "I don't think we have that track."

He said, "You don't?" I said, "No."

And he goes, "Well, let's do it again."

And so at this point

the musicians are already signing the card

and putting their instruments away.

We're getting ready to leave and I said,

"Guys, would you all, please, just one more shot at this?"

"And, Rob, do some of the Mel Tillis fiddle stuff

we were talking about earlier."

And there it was.

So it was that close to not happening,

and it was really the breakthrough record.

- Mr Alan Jackson. - Yeah!

♪ Before you drop that quarter

♪ Keep one thing in mind

♪ You got a heartbroke hillbilly

♪ Standing here in line

♪ I've been down and lonely...

[ALAN] I think everything was real overwhelming at the time.

And I was just so excited

about just having the record deal itself,

and the next step was trying to get ahead on radio,

which I finally did,

and, yeah, it just seemed to be snowballing after that

and really going fast.

We were playing up in Doswell, Virginia,

this old truck stop that had these lounges upstairs,

and they was real nice places and...

after one of those long nights there, we took a little break

and I walked over to the jukebox

and Roger, he was playing bass with me back then,

and he was already over at the jukebox reading the records.

And I leaned up on the corner

and one of the legs was broken off of the jukebox

and it was kind of wobbling around.

And Roger looked over at me and he said...

♪ Don't rock the jukebox

♪ I wanna hear some Jones

♪ Cos my heart ain't ready

♪ For the Rolling Stones

♪ I don't feel like rockin'

♪ Since my baby's gone

♪ So don't rock the jukebox

♪ Play me a country song

♪ Before you drop that quarter...

My imagination just wasn't big enough

to even comprehend back then

what kind of a superstar he could turn into

and what a poet for the people he could become.

He had great songs, but he also had that amazing look

and that real shy streak that is a part of who he is,

and it just worked.

And, no, I didn't have a vision

of how big he could be or how long it could last.

[OVERTON] When Alan walks in a room,

he doesn't even have to open his mouth

and he can walk in a room behind you,

he's a star, you can almost feel that.

There's something about him, and, to me,

I don't think there was any doubt,

even though he'd been passed on by label after label,

there was never a doubt to me that he would get a record deal.

How big he was gonna be, cos he was so country,

I didn't dream he could be that big,

but his music took him there and all the fans too.

Alan came up at the end of an era when country music artists

still signed autographs,

stayed after their shows and met their fans.

And he's always gone out of his way

to still have fan club activities,

or something where they can get a little bit close to him

or he can sit and talk to 'em.

He can be very shy, but if he gets in the right situation,

sitting and talking to people, he opens up,

he tells you stories about his family, about growing up,

about a lot of the background of his songs.

And he's great at that, cos it comes across so real.

He's so genuine.

So he's always courted and understood that relationship

and I think because he grew up a fan and he was such a fan

and his father was a fan of country music

and talked about country music stars,

I think he's always been aware of that role he plays

and that country music artists are closer to their fans

and do develop different relationships with them.

I'm a fan from Singapore. My name is Nashville.

I love you, Alan Jackson. I love you.

All right. We enjoy the show.

Alan Jackson!

Hi, Alan Jackson! We love you!

We love you, Alan Jackson!

We love you, Alan Jackson!

Whoo!

[COBURN] Right from the beginning when I first met him,

there was just something uniquely...

simple yet expressive in the way he could write songs,

and so many of them were personal,

but they had a sort of a universal connection.

They may have had elements and stories about himself,

but there'd be lines in there that drew you in,

whether it was inNeon Rainbow

orHere In The Real World or whatever.

You think about those songs and you think about

how you found a piece of yourself in what he was saying.

♪ Cos I'm a country boy I got a four-wheel drive

♪ Climb in my bed I'll take you for a ride

♪ Up city streets Down country roads

♪ I can get you where you need to go

♪ Cos I'm a country boy...

He was a good writer from the start.

The first time I ever sat down with him,

he played me a song called Home

that he had written for his mom and dad

and I played him a song called Dixie Boy

that the group Alabama had recorded of mine.

I guess the reason he called me,

I think he perceived that I was a hillbilly just like he was,

and turns out I am.

[ALAN] I was real lucky to get hooked up

with some songwriters early on

that were nice enough to give me a shot writing with them

and wrote a lot of traditional country stuff like I do.

And that probably helped me more than anything,

because I wrote with these people

and it helped me gain some experience there

and get a little exposure round town.

Well, I brought some experience,

but he had such... I mean, he had the in-born talent.

I'd seen the same thing in Randy Travis

and I wrote a song or two with Randy back in '81 or 2,

and then that kind of slipped away, I didn't pursue that.

I thought, "If this ever happens again,

I'm not gonna let go if I can help it."

So all of sudden here's this guy sitting across from me,

and I found out two things the first time we sat down together:

he could sing, I loved his voice, and he was a good writer.

[WOMACK] Again, I think with Alan's look

and the way he sings and his stage show and everything,

it's all very true to who he is,

and so I think him writing all of his songs,

it's really his story

and you feel like you're getting to know him, it's personal.

He's the best Alan Jackson there will ever be, you know,

and he's not trying to be somebody else's idea of a star,

and so instead of following, he's leading

and telling his team and fans and the industry and everything,

"This is the way I'm going if you wanna follow me,"

and everybody did,

and I just think that's his biggest strength.

Obviously he has written a lot of his hits.

But he also recorded songs by other songwriters,

cos he always said, "The best song wins."

"That's what's best for my career."

[MCBRIDE] There were some pretty big acts

that thought their songs were better than anything

that the writers on Music Row were writing,

and so they only recorded their songs,

and their careers were about this long.

George Strait and Alan and Conway and Kenny Rogers,

those guys, their careers, this long.

They chose the best songs that fit them they could find.

The greatest songwriters in the world are on Music Row,

just right down here,

and if you don't tap into that if you're an artist,

then you're being very shortsighted

just because you don't have the publishing

or you didn't write it.

Make me believe you wrote it. That's a real artist.

[OVERTON] Alan has had...

I think it's five or six number ones by other artists.

That's unheard of. That is unheard of.

When you think of some of the greatest

writer artists in country music,

you talk about a Merle Haggard, someone like that,

I mean, there are not many people that you can talk about

that are an icon and a superstar in country music

and wrote their songs

and on top of that wrote hits for other people.

It's really a tremendous accomplishment.

It's a huge deal to have your song go number one as an artist,

but as a writer it's that much more, you know,

it's that much more important and that much more meaningful.

There's a lot of great songs out there

and all you can do is cross your fingers

and hope yours gets to the top at some point,

and sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't,

and for him to be able to be

in that class of artists that have done that as well,

I mean, that's just a testament

to him as an artist and as a songwriter.

♪ It's a rainy day in June

♪ The sky is grey

♪ And I am blue

♪ Trying to make it without you

♪ On this rainy day in June...

[STEGALL] What I found fascinating

was that there were things that he did that were imperfect

but were so relatable,

and I figured out pretty early on in the process

that the way he wrote,

his style of writing, did not need to be messed with.

So whereas a lot of guys that I'd written with in the past,

I would always be making...

"Well, you should do this" and "You should do that,"

and there was something

very unique and different about Alan's songs.

In their imperfect way, they were so relatable

and struck such a common chord.

It was like poetic conversation, you know.

And it's not even poetry but just great conversation.

He'll play us an idea he has for a song

and he'll play us the chorus,

or he'll play us the verse and chorus,

and it'll be, like, "Wait a minute," you know. "That..."

"You can't say that,"

or "You can't rhyme it this way with an imperfect rhyme,

or use the same word to rhyme twice in the same chorus."

"You can't... You can't do that."

But then Keith said,

"I've finally figured out, I need to leave him alone."

Cos it's magic what he's doing.

It's not the way most of us on Music Row do it,

but hopefully I'm smart enough to know,

"You know what, there's magic here, I'm gonna leave it alone."

[ALAN] Between albums I'm always trying to listen for ideas,

you know, or see 'em and try to write 'em down, song titles.

And sometimes I do, I have a list,

and then when it gets serious about writing,

I pick some of those and start trying to make 'em work.

And then sometimes when I get in a songwriting mode

and I get excited about it, it makes me write more,

like some of those, I wrote two or three

in a day or two, you know, just real quick.

I mean, Alan's not a very emphatic person,

but I wish I had been there around him

to see the look on his face when he got that line,

"Livin' on love, buyin' on time".

I think... I just... I imagine that even Alan Jackson

might have allowed him...

"Well, I'm gonna write something about livin' on love."

"Livin' on love. Buyin' on time."

♪ Livin' on love Buyin' on time

♪ Without somebody Nothin' ain't worth a dime

♪ Just like an old-fashioned storybook rhyme

♪ Livin' on love...

I think that most country fans think that all the artists

write their songs, and that's just not true.

But for Alan, he's had 35 number one songs.

He wrote 24 of 'em himself.

I mean, that's unheard of,

especially when you hear how personal those songs are.

So when you look at the number of number ones he's had,

and if you even go back and look at his number twos

and top fives, I mean, it's insane.

It's over 50 top ten hits he's got.

It is comparable to Lennon and McCartney and Haggard.

So, I mean, he is in a different echelon of songwriters.

And then if you go back and look at the ones

he just wrote by himself, it's just...

Go look at how many songwriters are on a song these days.

There's four and five songwriters.

This is a man who just sat in a room

and wrote these songs by himself,

many of which he wrote multiples in a day,

and that just does not happen any more.

The great thing about Alan's music

is, you know, it's definitely, it's about the common man

and the human condition.

And the way he writes songs, it sounds simple,

and it is simple, for him, and...

but I think the simplicity of it

lends itself to the genius of it.

He's the singer/songwriter of the neotraditionalist movement.

These were not just songs

that sonically hearken back to things that had come before,

but they were songs about him and his experiences

and the things that he observed, and he did that,

gosh, he's done that for more than two decades now,

writing his own material and causing you to care

about the people in his life that you'd never met before

until he brought 'em up in verse and melody and rhyme.

[DEAL] Occasionally we would go to the lake

and ski and do that kind of stuff,

and I remember his notebook

being on the table there in the kitchen,

that he wrote songs and stuff in.

And I probably shouldn't tell his, but I snooped.

I opened it up and started looking through

at some of the songs he was writing and working on,

and I see where the ideas for some of his songs started.

So he was actively writing,

and I think maybe in the beginning

maybe his thinking was,

"This is how I'm gonna make it, is songwriting."

And I always thought, no, your singing,

your voice is what's gonna make it.

♪ Remember when

♪ I was young and so were you

♪ And time stood still

♪ And love was all we knew

♪ You were the first So was I

♪ We made love and then you cried

♪ Remember when...

[WOMAN] His singing was just so beautiful, and he...

I have more respect for him now than I could have imagined,

just by how unbelievably talented he is.

He's such...

I feel like I learned more about singing

in those five months working with him

than I have in I don't know how many years, you know, since...

I compared working on this like I felt when I was a teenager

and really getting in the music

and how that's all you thought about.

And watching him out there singing.

If I made a suggestion, just, "So what do you mean by that?"

And then if I'd phrase it a different way in there,

he just goes bam and nailed it, you know?

It wasn't much, I don't wanna make it sound like I said much,

because he's just... he's incredibly gifted.

It blew my mind hearing that voice come through the speakers.

We were yelling at the speakers, bending down like this.

"Oh, my goodness."

He was just... He was incredible. He was incredible.

It was a magical time for me to hear him sing.

♪ Remember when

[WOMAN] OK, roll to you.

[MAN] Here we go. Stand by.

Thanks, Steve. Breaking news tonight.

I'm here in Nashville with country superstar Alan Jackson

on the set of his new music video

for his hit song Good Time...

The music video was a fairly new concept.

MTV didn't get started until early '80s.

And Alan embraced the format really quickly

and he had very, very strong opinions

about what he wanted to do

and the storyline he wanted to follow.

And he followed who were the right directors out there,

and usually he came to us with very firm ideas on

"This is what I wanna do, this is who I wanna hire,

this is what I want it to look like."

And, you know, it worked very, very well for him.

And then we got to the point of Chattahoochee,

and that's where he really shined

because he knew exactly what he wanted to do,

and all you had to do was see him

in those incredibly torn-up jeans

out there on that water-ski and you were in.

♪ Well, way down yonder on the Chattahoochee

♪ It gets hotter than a hoochie coochie...

[DUNGAN] That video couldn't be played enough.

People couldn't get enough of it.

And the aerial shots and everything,

those were things that didn't really happen

in country music videos up to that point.

It showed him in a way that was pretty defining for that career

and, you know, really just took him into the stratosphere.

[MAN] He was a great songwriter, good singer,

he had the look, and I hate to bring that up,

but it's like when videos became popular,

lots of really good singers went away

because they didn't have the look.

Some of those guys who are great traditional country singers,

you know, once they were in a video...

Video killed some of those people, really did.

♪ Well, we fogged up the windows in my old Chevy

♪ I was willing but she wasn't ready...

No one wanted to put that out but Alan.

Not the label, not the managers, no, they were just, you know...

Up till then a lot of his songs had been about love,

and, you know, there was mystery about Alan,

he was very quiet,

and just the photos that were out there

in the media of him and stuff,

and Chattahoochee was just

a wide-open, have fun kind of song.

And I don't think anybody really wanted that,

but he really believed in it.

And then he came up with the idea

of the water-skiing with his boots on video,

and everybody was, like, "Oh, my gosh. What are we doing?"

"This guy was taking off. Are we gonna mess up?"

And Alan said, "No, man. This is gonna work."

The single record of the year is...

Chattahoocheeby Alan Jackson.

[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

Chattahoocheeis my biggest record.

I thank so many people for making it a success.

Thank y'all so much.

[DUBOIS] He just had a way to speak to people,

just to the general audience.

If you take a song like Chattahoochee,

it spoke to that teenage experience

of experimenting with alcohol, cars and women.

And he was also smart enough as an artist

to recognise a great song that he didn't write too,

and that was a big part of his career.

[COBURN] He had a real respect for other writers,

and they knew it, and people I think respected him

for the fact that he was open to it,

it wasn't an impossibility to get there,

and the outside songs he chose,

whether it was from Tom T. Hall or anybody else,

they were always really interesting songs.

♪ Pour me something tall and strong

♪ Make it a hurricane before I go insane

♪ It's only half past twelve but I don't care

♪ It's five o'clock somewhere...

[STEGALL] Alan called me out to his house one afternoon.

He said, "I've found this song, I want you to listen to

and see what you think about it."

So he played it for me,

and it didn't sound anything like an Alan Jackson record.

It was...

It was very much Jimmy Buffett the way the demo was produced.

So we went to Key West to work with Buffett,

to get Buffett's part on there,

and when we started the track, Buffett said,

"Hey, Alan, it's like you're trying to steal

some of my sounds."

And so we took a break and Alan goes,

"You need to take that track back

and figure out how to make it sound

like an Alan Jackson record."

♪ Say, pour me something tall and strong

♪ Make it a hurricane before I go insane...

Let me solo the electric guitar here so you can hear...

This is the signature instrument that changed everything.

[ELECTRIC GUITAR RIFF]

And so there you have a lot of the twangy twangy

that's on most of Alan Jackson's records,

and some of those key instruments like that

are what put the frame together around that to go,

"Hey, it's an Alan Jackson record."

♪ I can't help but wonder

♪ What would Jimmy Buffett do?

Funny you should ask, Alan.

♪ I'd say pour me something tall and strong...

[OVERTON] So we listened to it and I said,

"Wow. This is fantastic, man. This came out great."

He said, "Who were the writers?"

And I told him Don Rollins and Jim Brown,

and he said, "I don't think I've heard of them before."

I said, "Alan, this is gonna be their first cut."

And he sat there and kind of grinned a little bit

and he said, "Well, you know, that's good for them, man."

"Their first cut is gonna be on my greatest hits record

which should sell a lot,

and they're guaranteed a single and it should do well.

I mean, the song's a smash."

He said, "I'm really happy for 'em. Tell 'em I'm really happy."

"And tell 'em thank you for letting me have that song."

And those two songwriters, they'd never had a cut before,

they were out of their minds, like, "Oh, my God!"

[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

Oh, Lord help us.

It's really hard to say Alan Jackson is one thing.

While he's always been a very stable, very real artist

in what he's saying and his perspective,

he covers a lot of ground and he is...

If you ask him to describe exactly what his lane is...

There's a little speech he does in his shows every night.

He's, like, country music's about livin' and dyin'

and drinkin' and partyin' and, you know,

breakups and all of those things,

and that's what his career has been.

They're not one specific thing.

Sometimes he gets tied too much to

Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning

or Remember Whenor...

but he's not just that, he's really all of those things.

♪ Blessed assurance Jesus is mine

♪ O what a foretaste of glory divine

♪ Heir of salvation Purchase of God

♪ Born of his spirit Washed in his blood...

[ALAN] We went to the First Baptist Church,

which was downtown.

It was a small church when I was very young.

Probably when I was almost a teenager,

they built a new sanctuary next door,

so the old one still remains there.

But the original one I went to

was a small, really pretty little church.

[WOMAN] Church was very important in our family.

We started off at my husband's First Baptist Church

when I married him,

but I didn't belong to a church,

because I grew up in a country church

and never was a part of the church

like I wanted my children to be.

And I made a point that they were always

in the Sunday school and in the choir.

They started when they were just real, real young.

It was just a pretty standard Southern

kind of easygoing church

and you were real reverent and quiet in there.

Nobody said anything and they stood up and sang the hymns.

I enjoyed the traditional gospel hymns and music

that I grew up in the church listening to

I guess because anytime you're familiar with a song,

you automatically feel you have a connection,

whether it brings back a memory or something.

Of course, I guess you know we're here

singing some gospel songs.

My mama's been wearing me out for ten years

to do this gospel album.

[RUTH] I didn't know that he was going to do it.

He had promised me that he would make me one sometime,

but I had no idea that he was making it

until we were up here just before Christmas.

[ALAN] We just put the CD on and let it play.

We were all in there opening presents for our family.

And so I just put that on and said, "Here's your present."

Come out and handed her a copy of the CD case.

So we sat there and listened to it.

And I sat there and cried.

[DENISE] She just wept.

She sat at our bar in our kitchen

and every song just kept saying over and over again,

"This is the best gift you could have ever given me."

♪ Saviour all the day long

[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

[ALAN] I didn't sit down

and try to write something for any reason.

It just kind of happened that way.

And I think most of the input we've had from people,

just fans or people that weren't necessarily

my fan or a country music fan,

they just heard the song, you know,

we had a lot of comments from people

outside of the normal country music listener,

and people that were directly involved in the tragedy.

I even met one guy outside of New York

that was part of the Port Authority police

and was one of the guys that was trapped inside of the tower

for 24 hours or longer,

and he was one of the few that survived.

And he still couldn't walk. He was in a wheelchair.

But he came up to one of my shows

and came backstage and said hi

and he told me how he had been in bed for, you know, weeks,

or it may have been months, I don't remember now,

after the 11th, recovering,

and he just couldn't deal with it at all

and that this song had really meant so much to him,

and that made me feel like it was all worthwhile.

And he brought me a piece of the tower

that was cut out of a steel beam,

and he and a group of his other officers,

and a lot of his coworkers died, a lot of 'em were fans of mine,

and so, anyway, they all made this piece of steel

and cut a cross in it,

and gave it to me from the tower,

and that's a real special piece of history

that I have I keep at home now in a nice place.

♪ I remember this from when I was young

♪ Faith, hope and love are some good things he gave us

♪ The greatest is love...

[STEGALL] When he played Where Were You for me on the bus

I went, "Oh, my."

And he said,

"I don't want people to take this the wrong way

that I'm trying to take some kind of advantage

of this tragedy."

I said, "Man, the world needs to hear this song."

So we went in and we recorded that song,

and it was... the moment is indescribable,

to go back and think about it.

The oxygen was sucked out of the room, it was so powerful.

And it was a milestone in his career,

it was a milestone as a writer,

it was a milestone as a human being.

♪ Did you open your eyes and hope it never happened

♪ Close your eyes and not go to sleep...

[COOPER] Where Were You is just an essentially honest response,

an admission by somebody who just doesn't know

what the hell is happening in the world.

It was taken as a song of patriotism in some ways

and it brought people together,

but it wasn't flag waving.

It was just, like, "Let's talk to each other

about this thing that has happened

that has changed all of us at our core."

♪ I'm just a singer of simple songs

♪ I'm not a real political man

♪ I watch CNN but I'm not sure I can tell you

♪ The difference in Iraq and Iran...

[DUNGAN] And then, of course, he performed it

on the CMA Awards,

and it was the first time I'd heard it,

and I sat in the fifth row and was just dumbfounded

by what this man was saying and the way he was saying it,

and, again, he just did what Alan's always done

and he spoke the honest, everyman's truth.

You know, "I watch CNN."

"I don't really know the difference

between Iraq and Iran."

I mean, I promise you,

most people that heard that for the first time said,

"Well, that's pretty much me."

And that's what Alan's always represented,

is the every guy out there that can't express himself.

That's what the great musicians do

is they express our emotions for us

because we just don't have the skills

and we don't know how to do it.

If you go above that certain baseline amount of humanity,

you run the risk of completely losing the audience,

but Alan was right in the pocket.

He was one of us, he was one of them,

he was one of everyone.

♪ Where were you when the world stopped turning

♪ On that September

♪ Day

[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

How y'all doin' tonight? Thank you very much.

[♪ MUSIC: "Where I Come From"]

♪ I was rollin' wheels and shiftin' gears

♪ Around that Jersey Turnpike

♪ When Barney stopped me with his gun

♪ Ten minutes after midnight

♪ Said, son, you broke the limit Had a rusty ol' truck

♪ I don't know about that accent, son

♪ Just where did you come from?

♪ I said where I come from It's cornbread and chicken

♪ Where I come from A lot of front porch dickin'

♪ Where I come from...

[OVERTON] His music is not gonna cross over

onto the pop charts and pop radio

or any other kind of radio.

But to have sold the amount of albums he has,

the amount of airplay that he has

and all the awards he gets from ASCAP,

for all the performances and things like that,

it's truly phenomenal

when you sit back and look at what he has accomplished.

It really, really is, and, again, by doing it his way,

with traditional country music,

or, as he says, good old country music.

It seems even more monumental now in this age that we live in,

looking back on it,

with what's happened in the music industry.

But it was happening so fast

that it was mind-boggling.

And it was so difficult to go, "This is really going on."

And it just kept going.

♪ Where I come from...

[MABE] I think there will never be an artist

that sells the number of records that Alan did.

He'll be the last of a breed.

60 million albums worldwide.

And this is a guy that you would think

would only stay here in the United States, but go look.

He has sellouts in Brazil and Australia and Norway.

This is a global superstar,

from a guy that just came from a really small hometown

in Newnan, Georgia, that grew up in a toolshed.

[DUNGAN] There was next to no international reach in the '90s,

and, what do we have, 250 million people living in the US?

You know, you do the math and you can tell

Alan Jackson made his dent on the public psyche, you know.

It's pretty hard to find someone that does not own

some kind of Alan Jackson music in one shape or another.

Those numbers are off the chart, and they all came from him.

All these other things are nice,

all these awards and these number one songs.

But he's still just like he was when he left home.

He hasn't changed and it hasn't affected his...

the way he thinks about his family.

He still calls, wherever he is, once a week...

and keeps in touch with us and anything that he can do for us,

we don't have to ask, he'll do it.

He just... I'm proud of that part.

And even if he lost all his other,

he'd still come back home.

♪ Where I come from

[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

Whoo!

It's been a crazy run.

I've had more hits than I can even remember now,

and sold more records than I could ever imagine,

and I always try to thank people like y'all

who've supported my music all these years. God bless you.

[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

Come to the shows and buy the records. Thank you so much.

I've got to do so many things.

I can't even remember all the crazy things.

I just came from that little town,

working man and never been anywhere.

Next thing I know, I've played for four presidents

and travelled all over the world

and I even got to jump a Bigfoot monster truck, Bigfoot,

over six cars one time in a video,

so I've done a little of everything.

Thank y'all for being here tonight.

That's what I've been trying to do

since I moved to Nashville years ago,

is to make the kind of country music

that I liked and I thought other people did,

and songs about life and love and heartache and drinkin'

and dyin' and cryin' and havin' a good time,

you know, all the things that go with life sometimes.

So that's the kind of music

I've been writing and recording for years

and that's what we're gonna do for you tonight

and I hope I play one you like.

[♪ MUSIC: "Angels And Alcohol"]

♪ You can't mix angels

♪ And alcohol...

[MCBRIDE] To be associated with him,

just the trickle-down from his success,

was something I could never have even dreamed of.

Just kind of standing there in the shadow,

which is where I wanted to be.

[DEAL] He did things that I saw over the course of his career

that made me wanna do better,

and he became a big fish

in an ocean full of singers and songwriters.

And because of me having an opportunity

to spend a small amount of my life with him,

I gained some respect here locally as a musician

and I got to become a big fish in a small pond.

And I appreciate the opportunity that I've had

to be a part of the life of a man

that to me has become a legend in country music.

♪ Can't blend whisky

♪ With a good woman's love...

[UNDERWOOD] I feel every generation of country music

looks at the generation that they grew up listening to

as just the best of all time, right?

I know Alan had, you know, George and Hank and...

I know he just had that group of artists that he was just like,

"Oh, my gosh, this is what I'm influenced by."

"I'm gonna take this. I'm gonna make it my own."

And my generation does the same, and it's Alan, it is Alan,

it is Garth, it is Reba, it is Tim McGraw.

It's that '90s country awesomeness that I grew up with,

and so we take that and we make it into our own.

We're all just, you know, kind of in the long line of legacy

that country music has left and is continuing to leave.

[MCCALL] When people look back

at the '90s, 2000s of country music,

Alan Jackson will be one of those figures that stands out

in the way that we now look at Hank Williams,

we now look at Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson,

George Jones and then some of those heroes of his,

Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, the artists that will stand

as the major artists of the country music genre.

I think Alan will be at the top of that heap.

I think that as people look back

over the history of country music

and look back over Alan's career,

I think they'll think of him as being true to himself.

The fact that he wrote almost all of his number one hits.

The fact that they were true and personal stories to him.

He's one of the greatest artists

we've ever had the pleasure of having in this business,

and I think that people when they think of country music,

they'll think of Alan Jackson.

[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

Thank you so much.

Oh, thank you.

[MAN] Here to induct Alan Jackson

as a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame

is Loretta Lynn.

[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

This is the first time I've been out of the house, Alan.

You're the only thing that would have brought me here.

[LAUGHTER]

I love you, honey, and I wanna say congratulations

and I am so proud of you.

And I'm glad that you're being...

Hey, you should be here.

[LAUGHTER]

Bless you. God bless you.

I love you, baby.

OK, I don't know how to do it.

You don't put on many necklaces, huh?

I haven't before.

Me and Alan here, we're crippled.

- Here you go. - [ALAN] Is that right?

[WOMAN] Fine.

Country Music Hall of Famer, huh?

Yeah.

[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

Loretta Lynn said I should be in here.

[LAUGHTER]

That's...

[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

That's all I needed to hear, so...

[APPLAUSE]

You know, of course, I have to thank my family.

Denise and the girls have just been with me

every step of the way here

and have inspired me and supported me

and told me when I was doing stupid things

and have kept me in line,

and I just have been so blessed.

And I know when I hear Kyle up here

saying all these wonderful things about me

and how great I am and all this stuff

and, you know, I just don't take that serious.

I mean, I just... I really don't. I don't...

I just write these songs,

and I don't think about it much, I just do it,

and I don't try to figure out anything

or make some preachy statement about it.

I just write and sing from my heart

and I just don't...

What I'm trying to say is

I just don't put myself up on this pedestal.

Like I wrote in that song, I'm just a singer of simple songs.

That's all I am. That's all I am.

[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

So, all that said, I'm just gonna wrap it up here,

I know everybody's tired,

and just say how much I appreciate the CMA

for including me in this, in the Hall of Fame,

and I just love real country music

and there's still a lot of people out there,

young and old, wanna hear what I call real country music.

[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

So I'm very proud and I don't feel like I really belong here,

but I'm just so humbled by it

and just will just continue

to try to make country music as long as I can,

and just thank everybody once again,

and thank God for all that he's given me and my family

and blessed us so much.

[APPLAUSE]

I think that's all I'm gonna say.

[APPLAUSE]

[STEGALL] The thing that can be learned from Alan

is Alan was able to take from the icons that preceded him,

whether it was Hank Williams or George Jones

or Merle Haggard or Vern Gosdin or Conway Twitty,

all these people that were really iconic.

He was able to take and study and learn,

and I hope the generation that follows this

will be able to look at his body of work

and what he has represented,

and learn from it and grow from it

and gather what they can

from somebody who has done it the right way, you know.

I don't think he'll ever change. He's still...

I had the opportunity to talk to him three or four weeks ago,

and it wasn't much different from 25 years ago.

He's still an amazing quiet, polite, you know, guy

and unique and one of a kind.

Amazing.

I'm so proud to have played a little part

in an amazing career that affected so many lives.

He is truly an American treasure

and I'm really, really happy for him.

We're not finished with our story yet,

and I think that we have a lot left to go with Alan.

In much the same way that Cash had a lot to go

from this point on in his career, or Haggard,

so does Alan.

We have a lot of territory left to go,

and he's gonna define those moments,

but I think 50 years from now,

when there's the hundredth anniversary of the CMA Awards,

they're gonna be singing Alan Jackson songs.

[GENE] Well, as proud as a father could be.

He couldn't have done any better as far as I'm concerned.

I'd still be proud of him if he was down there washing dishes.

He's still my son, no matter what.

But I'm real proud for him,

that he's gone this far in the music business

and done so well.

I know that when Alan came along

that people like George Jones and Merle Haggard

looked to him as the next in their line.

Jones loved him, just loved him.

And Haggard saw someone who, as he had done,

was writing his own truth from his own perspective

and wrapping it in fiddle and steel.

And I think that history will find Alan mentioned

along with people like that.

He's gonna be just like his heroes.

I really do appreciate you coming out.

I'd do anything for you.

I can't believe you came out here.

You know why I'd do anything for you?

I don't know why.

Because you're the only one in country music today

that has kept it country.

[CHEERING]

I love you.

[♪ MUSIC: "Small Town Southern Man"]

♪ Born the middle son of a farmer

♪ And a small town Southern man

♪ Like his daddy's daddy before him

♪ Brought up workin' on the land

♪ Fell in love with a small town woman

♪ And they married up and settled down

♪ Natural way of life if you're lucky

♪ For a small town Southern man

♪ First there came four pretty daughters

♪ For this small town Southern man

♪ Then a few years later came another

♪ A boy, he wasn't planned

♪ Seven people living all together

♪ In a house built with his own hands

♪ Little words with love and understanding

♪ From a small town Southern man