A country boy’s city soiree

“All my rowdy friends are coming over tonight,” sang Hank Williams Jr. in one of the country superstar’s best-known tunes, and that’s exactly what happened recently at the Gibson Amphitheatre, where Williams was feted during the taping of “CMT Giants,” a two-hour special set to air Saturday on the country-music cable channel.

The guest list featured some of Nashville’s biggest names, including Alan Jackson, Tim McGraw and Toby Keith. But Kid Rock, Jessica Simpson and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith were also present, underscoring the influence Williams’ famously outsized persona has had on rockers and pop stars beyond the reach of Music Row.

Veteran blues man Buddy Guy made an appearance too. In his dressing room before the show, Guy said Williams’ music reminded him of an age when “everybody was just an R&B; player -- before you had to be a country singer or a Motown star or a rock-and-roller. He flashed me back to when it was all just m-u-s-i-c.”

Peering out from behind a pair of his signature shades, Williams himself seemed unsure of what to think about all the attention.

“I’m not exactly a shy kind of guy,” he said backstage after catching up with members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, with whom Williams toured earlier this year. “But, ‘Oh, you’re great’ -- I’m just not into it. You know who a giant is? My father,” he said, referring to the country-music pioneer who wrote some of the genre’s most enduring songs before dying at the age of 29 in 1953.

Comfortable with the praise or not, Williams was swimming in it before the official tribute even began.

“What I’ve gotten out of Hank is just about everything,” said Gretchen Wilson, the straight-talking “Redneck Woman.” “He spoke the truth, he wrote the truth and he sang the truth -- and he sang it with pride and conviction. You see a lot of phony in a lot of people, but Hank is the most genuine of them all.”

Brad Paisley said Williams inspired his hit “Ticks,” which Paisley said he originally envisioned as a cross between a love song and Williams’ “A Country Boy Can Survive.”

“There weren’t a lot of things in country music in the late ‘80s that you could pull up to a red light cranking and look cool,” Paisley said, then quoted a line from “Country Boy”: “ ‘I’d love to spit some beechnut in that dude’s eyes and shoot him with my old .45’ -- that’s what you wanna have blaring.”

Alan Jackson emphasized the value of Williams’ softer side. “Everybody thinks Hank’s just a big party man who writes all the drinking songs,” he said. “But tunes like ‘Old Habits,’ things he wrote about his life -- if you’re in some of the harder times, those are really great, meaty songs.”

Speaking before the show singer-songwriter Holly Williams said she was glad the tribute to her father took place in L.A.

“Some people here and in New York only know him as the guy from ‘Monday Night Football,’ ” she said. “But his audience reaches so much further than Nashville. Hopefully this’ll help get people to see him as a singer and as a songwriter.”