Alan Jackson joins Country Music Hall of Fame
April 5th to you may be just an ordinary day, but for Alan Jackson, it’s a day that will go down in his memory of one of the best, a day that will go down in Country Music history as the day Mr Alan Jackson was invited into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Jackson will join an elite collection of Country Music Super Stars including recent inductees Randy Travis and Charlie Daniels and other greats like George Jones, Alabama and Glen Campbell.
The Hall of Fame was established in 1961 and is located in Nashville Tennessee. The first members inducted were Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers and Fred Rose. In 1967 the museum opened in Navhville’s Music Row, before moving to a new purpose built and bigger building on May 17th 2001 in Downtown Nashville. 2015 was the first year the museum welcomed more than one million visitors, of which I was lucky enough to be one of them.
Yesterday morning at a special ceremony at the museum, Vince Gill announced with eager anticipation from the crowd who was going to join that exclusive list. During his introduction Vince commented that “Nobody’s stuck up more for country music than this gentleman. Nobody.” After striding out to much applause, Alan Jackson went on to explain how his Father had been his greatest inspiration. Back in Alan’s younger days his Father happened to win a radio, on which Jackson could listen to country music. Jackson’s Father then encouraged him to pick up the guitar and perform. The story about the radio is referenced in one of his early hits, “Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow”.
Alan went on to comment that the radio his Father won is on display in the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum, along with his water skis (as appeared in the “Chattahoochee” video). Having now been inducted, Jackson remarked “I’m going to be here with my radio”.
His list of achievements include 14 ACM awards, 15 CMA awards and two Grammy awards.
Also announced as inductees were Jerry Reed, a guitar playing legend and famous for playing the part of “Snowman” in all three of the Smoky & The Bandit films (his own personal Trans-Am is in the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum) and Don Schlitz who wrote “The Gambler” and “Forever and Ever, Amen” amongst many others.