Stonewell Jackson is Just An Old Country Boy Doing What He Loves

He's a fixture of the Grand Ole Opry, and his songs inspired, among others, Elvis Presley.

Yes, Stonewall Jackson has been around a long time — more than half a century, in fact. He continues to tour today, not because he has to, but because he wants to. The 76-year-old country legend isn't about to listen to anyone tell him he's too old to play.

"I was involved in a lawsuit recently that a lot of country fans may have heard about, and we ended up settling out of court," Jackson said in a recent telephone interview from Nashville, Tenn.

The lawsuit to which Jackson referred made headlines in 2006, when he sued the venerable Grand Ole Opry for $10 million, citing age discrimination. He believed the Opry was squeezing him out in favor of younger acts, and he wasn't content to sit on the sidelines.

"The point is that working the road and touring is exactly what I want to be doing with my time. I'm just an old country boy, and I'm doing this because I love it," he said.

Jackson will join country stars Bill Anderson, Jean Shepard, John Conlee and Jack Greene for the Opry Legends Fest on Saturday, June 27, at American Music Theatre on Lincoln Highway East.

Born in Emerson, N.C., a small town near the South Carolina border that Jackson described as "just a railroad crossing," the country icon spent much of his childhood growing up in nearby Tabor City, a rough-and-tumble community in the Tarheel state's tobacco country that earned the unfortunate nickname of "Razor City."

"Back in the day, it was like a wild frontier town," Jackson recalled, "and it was famous for what we called 'rooster fights,' like you see in the movies, where two men hold a knife or a razor in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, and they circle around and go at it," he said. "This was before my time, understand, but there were always stories floating around about how some guys there had gotten cut up real bad."

Jackson family lore has it that Stonewall was related on his father's side to the famous 19th-century Confederate general Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, who died of complications from an injury he sustained at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863.

"Because my dad died when I was so young, I didn't get to learn much about the details of that side of my family," Jackson said. "I guess that today I could go and research the genealogy on the Internet, but my grandparents always told me that [Gen. Jackson] was an ancestor of mine, and that's why I got the name Stonewall.

"But even if I am descended from him, there's still a big difference," he said. "Stonewall Jackson shot people. Me, I write love songs."

Jackson did join the Army at age 16, lying about his age in order to enlist, but military authorities caught Jackson and sent him back to live with his grandparents until he was old enough to join for real. For his second go-round with Uncle Sam, Jackson chose the Navy.

Discharged in 1956, Jackson decided to head to Tennessee and try his luck as a singer. Scoring an audition with the Opry — which then, as now, broadcast a weekend radio show from Nashville — Jackson began appearing on the Opry's "Friday Night Frolics," hitting the airwaves with Ernest Tubb and the Texas Troubadors.

Jackson's appearances at the Opry eventually scored him a deal with Columbia Records, which for 16 years helped Jackson record such hits as "Life to Go," "Why I'm Walkin'," "B.J. the D.J." and "Waterloo."

In 1973, Jackson scored his last hit with "Herman Schwartz," and in 1991 he published his autobiography, "From the Bottom Up." Today he lives with his family in Nashville, making regular appearances at the place it all began, the Grand Ole Opry.

Recently, a new generation of fans has been discovering Jackson through the video-sharing Web site YouTube. His vintage hits have scored hundreds of thousands of views.

"I'm an older artist, so for this to happen makes me feel very, very lucky," said Jackson, who has recorded more than 300 songs on 32 albums. "I just wish I understood the Internet more. It's such amazing technology, and it's hard for me to dive in and wrap my head around it."

Technological impairment can be forgiven in a man who's been standing in front of a mic for some 52 years. His long career has had plenty of ups and downs, but one thing remains constant: his fans. "With me, I like to say that my fans aren't fans; they're friends. And I love going out and spending time with them."

Thanks to James Buescher