IN MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS OF MAKING RECORDS, ALAN JACKSON HAD NEVER WRITTEN A SONG WITH ONE OF HIS DAUGHTERS. He finally did in November 2021, and the reason was the worst thing that ever happened to his family. Three years earlier, his oldest daughter Mattie was on vacation near Jupiter, Florida, with her husband, Ben Selecman. Ben was 28, an assistant district attorney in Nashville, eleven months into the marriage. He reached out to help a woman step onto the boat dock, slipped, and struck his head. He died twelve days later, on September 12, 2018, roughly three weeks before their first anniversary. Jackson shelved the album he had been working on. He has said he spent a long time afterward angry at the world. Six years passed between records. The song he and Mattie wrote together is called “Racing the Dark,” and it was released on November 16, 2021, the same day her book about losing Ben, “Lemons on Friday,” arrived in stores. There is one more detail. Two months before Ben died, Mattie had co-founded a small organization supporting orphans, trafficked women and widows. At 28, she became one.

Alan Jackson, Mattie Jackson Selecman, and the Song That Came From the Hardest Place

For more than thirty years, Alan Jackson built a career on songs about family, memory, faith, and the kind of everyday truth people carry quietly. But one thing had never happened before: Alan Jackson had never written a song with one of his daughters.

That changed in November 2021, and it did not happen because life had become easier. It happened because life had become unbearably difficult.

A Loss That Changed Everything

In September 2018, Mattie Jackson Selecman was on vacation near Jupiter, Florida, with her husband, Ben Selecman. Ben Selecman, 28, was an assistant district attorney in Nashville and had been married to Mattie Jackson Selecman for only eleven months. While helping a woman onto a boat dock, Ben Selecman slipped, hit his head, and suffered fatal injuries. He died on September 12, 2018, just weeks before what would have been the couple’s first anniversary.

The grief hit the family like a wall. Alan Jackson later said he spent a long time angry at the world. He also put aside the album he had been working on. Years passed before he returned with a new record.

The Song That Brought Father and Daughter Together

In 2021, Alan Jackson and Mattie Jackson Selecman finally wrote together for the first time. The song was called “Racing the Dark.” It was released on November 16, 2021, the same day Mattie Jackson Selecman’s book, Lemons on Friday, arrived in stores.

Sometimes a song does not come from joy. Sometimes it comes from survival.

“Racing the Dark” was not a glossy tribute or a neat answer to tragedy. It was a gentle, honest piece of work born from shared pain. Alan Jackson wrote the melody after Mattie Jackson Selecman brought him the lyrics, and the result carried the sound of a family trying to make meaning without pretending the loss was smaller than it was.

Purpose After Pain

There was another detail that made Mattie Jackson Selecman’s story even more striking. Two months before Ben Selecman died, Mattie Jackson Selecman had co-founded a small organization focused on supporting orphans, trafficked women, and widows. Then, at 28, she became one herself.

That fact gives the story its deepest ache, but also its quiet strength. Mattie Jackson Selecman did not disappear into grief. She wrote. She worked. She kept going. Her book and her song arrived together as two different forms of witness: one in prose, one in music.

A Family Story Turned Into Art

Alan Jackson has often written about the people closest to him, including his daughters. But “Racing the Dark” marked something different. It was the first songwriting collaboration between Alan Jackson and Mattie Jackson Selecman, and it came after a season that tested every part of their family.

The song’s release did not erase the loss of Ben Selecman. It did something more human than that. It gave grief a voice. It gave memory a melody. And it showed how love can still create something lasting, even when the original story is broken.

In the end, “Racing the Dark” became more than a song. It became a father and daughter meeting each other in the middle of sorrow, choosing honesty over silence, and turning one of the worst moments of their lives into something that could be shared with the world.

IN MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS OF MAKING RECORDS, ALAN JACKSON HAD NEVER WRITTEN A SONG WITH ONE OF HIS DAUGHTERS. He finally did in November 2021, and the reason was the worst thing that ever happened to his family. Three years earlier, his oldest daughter Mattie was on vacation near Jupiter, Florida, with her husband, Ben Selecman. Ben was 28, an assistant district attorney in Nashville, eleven months into the marriage. He reached out to help a woman step onto the boat dock, slipped, and struck his head. He died twelve days later, on September 12, 2018, roughly three weeks before their first anniversary. Jackson shelved the album he had been working on. He has said he spent a long time afterward angry at the world. Six years passed between records. The song he and Mattie wrote together is called “Racing the Dark,” and it was released on November 16, 2021, the same day her book about losing Ben, “Lemons on Friday,” arrived in stores. There is one more detail. Two months before Ben died, Mattie had co-founded a small organization supporting orphans, trafficked women and widows. At 28, she became one.

LORETTA LYNN WAS ALREADY INSIDE THAT SPRINGFIELD HOSPITAL WHEN THEY BROUGHT CONWAY TWITTY THROUGH THE DOORS. She wasn’t there as anybody’s duet partner that night. Her husband, Oliver “Doo” Lynn, had been admitted with his own health crisis, and Loretta was sitting with him at Cox South when the man she’d recorded “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” with was rushed in off the highway. Hours earlier, on June 4, 1993, Conway had played the Jim Stafford Theatre in Branson and boarded his bus for Hendersonville. He was fifty-nine and carried forty number one country hits — a record nobody touched until George Strait in 2006. A ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm stopped him somewhere on the road home, and the bus turned for Springfield instead. Surgeons went in. By the early hours of June 5, he was gone. Loretta got a few minutes with him before they took him to surgery. Then she stayed with his wife the rest of the night, waiting on news that never improved. Two decades of harmony, a run of CMA awards, a voice that could say “Hello Darlin'” like nothing else needed saying — and it ended with her sitting in a Missouri waiting room, refusing to go back down the hall.

HOSPITAL CARE COULD NOT SAVE HIM, AND CHARLEY PRIDE PASSED AWAY AT 86 IN DALLAS ON DECEMBER 12, 2020 — JUST 31 DAYS AFTER HE WALKED OFF A NASHVILLE STAGE WITH 29 NUMBER ONE HITS TO HIS NAME. On the night of November 11, the sharecropper’s son from Sledge, Mississippi gave what would be his final performance at the 54th CMA Awards. He didn’t step away because of a fading voice or an empty room. At 86 he sang “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin'” beside Jimmie Allen, accepted the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award, and spoke at length to a small, socially distanced room that rose and listened. Then he flew home to Texas. The turn was brutally fast. He tested negative more than once after the ceremony. By late November he had been diagnosed with COVID-19, and the virus overwhelmed a man who had outlasted every barrier ever put in front of him. By Saturday, the voice that broke country music’s color line was gone. The shockwave hit Nashville immediately. Dolly Parton called him one of her dearest and oldest friends and said she was heartbroken twice over — once for the loss, again for the way it came. For Jimmie Allen, who had shared that last stage with him and who credits Pride for every Black artist who followed, the grief was personal. Within hours, other artists were publicly demanding answers about how he had been exposed. Audiences will always remember that warm, easy baritone on “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’,” a 1971 hit about ordinary love that suddenly sounded like a goodbye. He never meant that November night to be a farewell — but what he said in that final speech, and how a Negro Leagues pitcher out of the Mississippi cotton fields became the first Black member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, remains the deeper chapter.

TWO YEARS OF CHEMOTHERAPY, RADIATION AND SURGERY COULD NOT SAVE HIM, AND TOBY KEITH DIED AT 62 ON THE NIGHT OF FEBRUARY 5, 2024 — JUST 53 DAYS AFTER HE WALKED OFF A LAS VEGAS STAGE WITH 20 NUMBER ONE HITS TO HIS NAME. On December 14, 2023, the Oklahoma giant gave what would be his final performance at Dolby Live at Park MGM. He didn’t book those shows because he was healthy again. He booked them because he refused to disappear quietly — three nights, every seat sold, the first two gone in under two minutes. He appeared too weak to stand for much of the night. The voice never wavered. Twenty-three songs. He closed with “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” walked off, and told fans online that three sold-out nights in Vegas was a fine way to end the year. He was already mapping out a 2024 tour. Fifty-three days later, the stomach cancer he had been fighting since the fall of 2021 took him at home, surrounded by his family. The shockwave reached far past Nashville. Clint Eastwood, then 93, said he was extremely saddened by the loss of his friend. Willie Nelson, his duet partner on the six-week No. 1 “Beer for My Horses,” posted footage of the two of them onstage and one short line of goodbye. Both men were bound to the same song. Audiences will always remember him at the People’s Choice Country Awards on September 28, 2023, visibly thinner, accepting the Country Icon Award and then singing “Don’t Let the Old Man In” — a song he had written five years earlier for an 88-year-old Eastwood, never imagining it would become his own farewell. He fully intended to tour again. But what happened backstage in Vegas, and the vote the Country Music Hall of Fame cast six weeks after he was gone, remains the deeper chapter of his final months.