Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 2, 1990 TAG: 9006290065
SECTION: SALEM FAIR PAGE: SF-13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"It seems that everyone wants to come up with a great story about music in their background, but it's not like I grew up with a guitar in my hands," said Jackson.
"In a small town, you have to understand, you go to school, then you go to college, then you get married and you have a kid or two. You've got this pattern that you just kind of follow, and everybody does the same thing. Something like singing in Nashville or having a record out, that was just another world, a dream, something you couldn't really achieve."
Jackson was born and raised and married in Newnan, Ga., a town of about 30,000, south of Atlanta. He was the youngest child, the only boy, in a family whose sense of well-being was drawn from traditional values rather than material wealth.
"We weren't very well off financially. I mean, I had shoes, but I slept in the hall until I was 10 years old when my oldest sister went away to college. I didn't realize until I was older that we might have been considered poor.
"I have good parents. My father might be the only truly good man I've ever known. He's as honest as they come. If I turn out half as good, I'll be happy."
Jackson held his first job at 12, working in a shoe store. At 15, he bought his first car, an interest fostered by his father, a mechanic. Jackson and his father spent a year rebuilding that 1955 Thunderbird. But that was just the beginning.
"You might think this is crazy," said Jackson, "but this is the truth. I have owned and sold, personally, at least 300 boats, cars and motorcycles since the age of 15."
After he married, Jackson continued selling cars and he also built or remodeled houses. "But whatever I was doing for a living, I'd just get tired of it," he said. "Music's the only thing I kept coming back to, but I didn't think at first that was any big deal.
"See, growing up, we didn't even listen much to the radio, except maybe some gospel. But we all sang - at church, around the house, in the car. Then, during high school, I did some singing with a partner, just local performances. But I was about 20 years old before I went to my first concert or saw any of the big country acts.
"One thing that probably got me going was that one of my best friends had started flying these little planes in high school, and said he was going to be an airline pilot. Well, that was about as far out of reach as being a singer, but by the time I was 23, he was doing it.
"That's when I told myself I really ought to be doing the music thing. It was all I'd ever really wanted to do, and I'd never really taken the chance on it. So I told my wife I was going to sell the house and move us to Nashville."
About that time, wife Denise also made a career change, which was indirectly going to influence Jackson's career. When Denise made a temporary move to Greensboro, N.C., to take a job as a flight attendant, Alan spent a summer alone, working at a marina on a lake near Newnan.
"I didn't really have anything to do except fish, work at the marina and write songs," he said. "So I wrote all summer." Then one day, while Denise was waiting on a flight in Atlanta, she saw Glen Campbell sitting in the terminal with his band.
"She went right up to Glen and said, `Excuse me, my husband's about to move to Nashville to be a singer and a songwriter. What does he need to do?' And Glen gave her a card with the name and address of his office in Nashville on it."
The introduction to Glen Campbell Music yielded a publishing contract. Jackson's first album on Arista Records is titled "Here in the Real World" for which he wrote or co-wrote nine of the 10 songs.
Jackson will hold two shows on July 6, at 7:30 and 10 p.m. Tickets are $12.50.
by CNB