Alan Jackson Celebrates 30 Years

Alan Jackson marked 30 years since signing his first record deal on Wednesday, June 26th. To begin the celebration, a newly-produced documentary chronicling the Newnan, Georgia native’s career is being released on DVD this week.

Alan Jackson: Small Town Southern Man features rarely-seen performance and interview footage, never-before-seen photos, and interviews with such peers as Carrie Underwood, Lee Ann Womack and Alison Krauss, along with industry leaders like his current label president, longtime producer and even the man who signed him to that record deal on that fateful June day.

Alan once told reporters that his success story reads like a fairytale.

“It’s hard for anybody really to understand where I came from and to have all this happen and to get to where I am today, it’s just . . . it’s truly the American dream. I mean it’s just ’cause people don’t realize that we had nothing and I didn’t know anything about the music and somebody in Georgia said, ‘Hey, you sound pretty good. You sound just as good as good as some of those guys on the radio, why don’t you move to Nashville’ and I said, ‘Okay . . .’ (laughter) and that was basically what happened, and we came up here and it just happened it was just a miracle.”

The anniversary recalls some of the highlights of Alan’s career, including inductions to the Country Music Hall of Fame and to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, multiple Grammy, ACM and CMA wins and membership in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Grand Ole Opry. He’s also sold more than 60 million albums.

Thirty years in, Alan continues to tour, while at the same time writing and recording new music. He’s also the owner and creator of AJ’s Good Time Bar, one of the first – and the only solely-owned – artist-named honky-tonks in downtown Nashville.

Categorised in: Country Music News

This post was written by Cheryl Johnstone