Stonewall Jackson

Stonewall Jackson (November 6, 1932 – December 4, 2021) was an American country music singer and musician who achieved his greatest fame during country's "golden" honky tonk era in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Born in Tabor City, North Carolina on November 6, 1932, Jackson was the youngest of three children. Stonewall is not a nickname; he was named after Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. His father believed himself to be a descendant of the general, a claim that was reproduced in some of Jackson's publicity, but that is unlikely.

When Stonewall was two, his father died after which his mother moved the family to Moultrie in South Georgia, where he grew up first working under his abusive sharecropper stepfather, and then under his uncle, who was also a sharecropper. Jackson lied about his age and enlisted in the Army at 16, but was soon discharged when his lie was discovered. He subsequently joined the Navy in 1950 and was discharged in 1954. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1956. Jackson later wrote a memoir From the Bottom Up: The Stonewall Jackson Story as Told in His Own Words about his childhood.

After hearing Jackson's demo tape, Wesley Rose, president of Acuff-Rose Music, arranged for Jackson to audition for the Grand Ole Opry. Jackson became the first artist to join the Grand Ole Opry before obtaining a recording contract. He toured with Ernest Tubb, who became his mentor. Jackson signed with Columbia Records in 1957.

His breakthrough came in the country Top 40 in late 1958, with a song written by a young George Jones, "Life to Go". It peaked at No. 2 in early 1959 and his follow-up record, "Waterloo", was No. 1 for five weeks, and crossed over into the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, where it reached No. 4. The track also reached No. 24 in the UK Singles Chart in July 1959. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. The song was a haunting and catchy tune that states "Everybody has to meet his Waterloo", meaning their fate. The song cites Adam, Napoleon and Tom Dooley as examples.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.