Some American success stories are overlooked in favor of the polished, credentialed ones. Among them is Alan Jackson. Jackson, who was born in Newnan, Georgia, on October 17, 1958, did not graduate from a prominent liberal arts college or music conservatory with a degree in songwriting. After graduating from Newnan High School, he joined the local band Dixie Steel and started working as a construction worker, forklift operator, and weekend performer at small clubs. In the truest sense of the word, that was his education.
It’s simple to undervalue the true lessons that such an upbringing imparts. Your perspective of the world is shaped by things like working with your hands, navigating working-class areas, and listening to people converse after a long day. Additionally, it influenced Jackson’s songwriting style. The simplicity, directness, and refusal to overcomplicate things did not originate from a classroom. It originated in Georgia.
Jackson went to small schools in a small town: Elm Street Elementary and Newnan High School. His academic background did not hint at a future filled with thirty-five number one country hits or sixty-six Billboard chart appearances. Perhaps it did imply that someone was closely observing daily life. Years before Nashville even knew his name, he started writing music in 1983. He mostly developed the habit of sitting with an idea and refining it until it became a song on his own, without official guidance.
When he and his wife Denise relocated to Nashville in the mid-1980s, at the age of about 27, his actual education took a different turn. He discovered that it was a mailroom rather than a welcome mat. He took a job sorting mail at The Nashville Network and watched and studied the industry by sitting in the audience while their singing competition was being taped. Jackson had years of experience with a particular type of learning that can only occur when you’re looking in from the outside. He was then drawn from the crowd one afternoon and asked to perform a song for the camera. His selection of George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today” reveals a great deal about the type of music school he attended. He picked a song that was important.
Songwriter and producer Keith Stegall, who would later produce nineteen of Jackson’s albums, heard about that moment. Pausing on that number is worthwhile. Making 19 albums with the same producer is more than just a business partnership; it’s a decades-long creative education. Jackson developed his skills in studios, on stages, and through the back-and-forth between a singer and a producer who understood what he was attempting to do, rather than in discrete semesters.
On a flight, his wife Denise, a flight attendant, met Glen Campbell and sought his counsel on her husband’s behalf. She received a business card for his manager from Campbell. It’s an odd method of getting a career tip, but it worked, and it illustrates how Jackson’s path was informal and almost accidental. No alumni network, no mentorship program. Only good fortune, perseverance, and a wife who was open to striking up a discussion on an airplane.
Jackson became the first country artist to sign with Arista Nashville in 1989. Here in the Real World, his debut album, yielded four Top 5 hits. He was thirty years old. There didn’t seem to be any gap left by the formal education he never pursued. He never learned to write for anyone other than himself and was never trained out of the instincts that gave his music a genuine feel, so if anything, the lack of it might have been advantageous.
Small clubs, a Nashville mailroom, the seat of a forklift, and night after night in front of a microphone until the songs improved comprised Alan Jackson’s education, whatever it is. This type of background does not appear on a resume. On the other hand, 75 million records sold is a pretty impressive transcript in and of itself.
