Alan Jackson Has A Hankerin’

Alan Jackson, a tall skinny singer from Georgia, obviously identifies with Hank Williams, country music’s late tall and skinny singer from Alabama. In his eerie “Midnight in Montgomery,” Jackson wrote about being haunted by Williams’ ghost, and it has become a tradition for him to visit Williams’ grave whenever he’s in Montgomery, Ala.

“I’m a huge admirer of his songwriting and his whole life,” Jackson says. “It still affects a lot of people, even young artists coming along who are just like me (in that) he was dead before I was born, and I was older before I really knew that much about him or his music.

“He was from Alabama not far from where I was raised in Georgia, and it’s real similar. There’s just something different about growing up down in those parts, that rural, Southern, Georgia-AlabamaMississippi kind of raising. I read things about him, and it kind of reminds me of the way I grew up, even though it was many years later.”

Like Williams, most of Jackson’s songs are ones he wrote or co-wrote himself. But his current single, “Song for the Life,” was written by Rodney Crowell. Jackson says he liked its idea that life’s timeless entities - such as sunrises and children, rather than material possessions - keep a person connected to the essence of living.

“I’ve always felt that way, but I realize it more now that I have everything,” Jackson says. “Now I’ve got more than I ever dreamed of, and I realize those things are great, but if I didn’t have love at home, family, and be able to watch the normal things in life … when it all comes down to it, those are the important things.”