On September 28, 2021, Alan Jackson sat down with Jenna Bush Hager on NBC’s Today and revealed that he had been quietly living with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease for ten years.

On September 28, 2021, Alan Jackson sat down with Jenna Bush Hager on NBC’s Today and revealed that he had been quietly living with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease for ten years. Diagnosed in 2011, the degenerative nerve condition had been passed down from his grandmother, his older sister, and his late father, Eugene Jackson, the Georgia mechanic who inspired his song “Drive (For Daddy Gene).” Throughout the decade that followed, while Jackson toured the country and entered the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2017, the disorder steadily weakened the peripheral nerves in his lower legs and eroded his balance. At six feet four inches tall, Jackson had spent more than thirty years standing steady behind a microphone in boots and faded jeans. He decided to speak publicly after his physical symptoms became impossible to hide during concerts, admitting he felt self-conscious stumbling on stage and wanted fans to know he was struggling with his balance rather than drinking. Although the incurable condition made walking across an arena stage difficult, it left his baritone voice untouched. Supported at home by his wife of over forty years, Denise, and their three daughters, Jackson stated that he was grateful for the career he had lived and refused to announce a formal retirement. Between 2022 and 2025, Jackson brought his Last Call: One More for the Road Tour to arenas across the United States. Even when he could no longer roam the stage or toss souvenirs into the distant rows as he had in his youth, he stood planted at the microphone under his white cowboy hat, delivering his catalog to standing ovations for as long as his legs allowed him to stand.

When Alan Jackson welcomed NBC correspondent Jenna Bush Hager to his Nashville home for a broadcast on September 28, 2021, he chose a familiar, unhurried setting to explain a medical reality he had kept private since 2011.

At sixty-two years old, four months after releasing his twenty-first studio album, Where Have You Gone, Jackson announced that he had been living for a decade with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. The inherited neurological disorder damages the peripheral nerves that carry signals from the brain and spinal cord to the muscles of the arms, legs, hands, and feet.

For Jackson, the diagnosis in 2011 explained symptoms he had watched earlier generations of his family endure in Newnan, Georgia. His paternal grandmother, his older sister, and his father, Joseph Eugene Jackson—the auto mechanic who died in 2000 and inspired the 2002 hit “Drive (For Daddy Gene)”—all lived with the same condition.

Because Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease progresses slowly and is not fatal, Jackson continued working without public comment through the 2010s. During those ten years, he recorded The Bluegrass Album in 2013, Angels and Alcohol in 2015, headlined his Keepin’ It Country Tour for his twenty-fifth career anniversary, and accepted induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in October 2017.

By 2021, however, the loss of muscle strength and nerve sensation in his lower legs had begun to visibly alter his movement under arena lights. Speaking with Bush Hager, Jackson explained that he decided to share the diagnosis because he was stumbling on stage and felt uncomfortable thinking concertgoers might assume he had been drinking before shows.

Standing six feet four inches tall in cowboy boots and jeans, Jackson had spent three decades walking the lip of the stage and signing autographs while his band, The Strayhorns, played extended instrumentals. The nerve damage did not affect his vocal cords, allowing him to sing in his original keys even as standing still for ninety minutes became physically demanding.

During the Today conversation, Jackson credited his wife of over four decades, Denise, and their daughters—Mattie, Ali, and Dani—for helping him manage the daily adjustments at home. Rather than framing the diagnosis as an ending, he told Bush Hager that he felt no bitterness after thirty years of living out the music career he had hoped for in Georgia.

In May 2022, Jackson announced his Last Call: One More for the Road Tour, designing the schedule specifically around his physical endurance. Instead of the back-to-back nightly bus runs that defined his 1990s calendar, his management spaced the arena dates across weekends, kicking off the run in Biloxi, Mississippi, on June 24, 2022.

Even with rest days built between cities, the unpredictable progression of the nerve condition required adjustments along the way. In September 2022, Jackson postponed the final autumn dates in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, citing health issues related to his condition and following medical advice to rest before resuming live performances.

After taking most of 2023 off the road to conserve his strength, Jackson announced the final leg of the Last Call tour in May 2024. The routing covered just ten arena dates stretching from Boston’s TD Garden in August 2024 through Grand Rapids, Fayetteville, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City, Fort Worth, Orlando, and Tampa, concluding at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in May 2025.

At each stop on that final run, Jackson framed the concerts carefully for his audiences: they marked the end of his years traveling to distant cities, though he left the door open to recording songs at home in Tennessee. Out on the arena floor, where he once walked from wing to wing tossing rolled-up T-shirts into the crowd, Jackson remained centered at the microphone stand under his white Stetson, letting his voice and The Strayhorns carry the room through the final chords.